Calling All Mac Users...
Kovid Goyal's libprs500 is
almost ready for prime time as a library manager for non-Windows-using PRS500 owners. The conversion features are in pretty good shape (especially for HTML conversion), but some GUI glitches remain to be fixed. This is great news for all Mac/Linux/FreeBSD/etc. users who don't want to run Windows.
So why am I calling Mac users in particular? Well... some of the remaining GUI glitches show up only on Mac OS X, and Kovid doesn't have access to a Mac machine for debugging. He can't
fix the outstanding problems, because he can't duplicate them for debugging. An important additional piece that requires a Mac for development is a standard OS X installer for end-users who don't understand how to build from source in order to use the tools.
I'd like to arrange to provide a Mac for Kovid, so all of us Mac users can have a nice piece of library management software. I see two alternatives:
- Someone who has a spare machine around loans it to Kovid for a long-ish period of time.
- A bunch of us Mac users kick in some $$ (or Pounds, or Euros, or whatever) and buy an inexpensive used Mac that Kovid can debug on.
Obviously, the first choice would be ideal -- as long as the owner of the machine can afford to do without it for quite a while. Any volunteers? I don't have a spare machine (or I'd volunteer it), but I would be willing to cover shipping (up to $75) if someone else has the hardware.
The second choice requires raising money. I'll start the ball rolling by pledging $75. I figure that there's no point actually collecting any money unless and until enough people have volunteered to kick in enough money to do the job. Depending on model and prices, that'd be in the range of $275-400 or so. It has to be enough of a machine to run the Mac OS X 10.4.9 (at least), but need not be super-fast. In fact, if it's on the slow side, that'll lead to a leaner GUI implementation.
Xenophon
P.S. I originally posted this idea over in the "Reader Developer's Corner," where it has met with resounding silence. I guess that means either that no Mac users read that forum, or that no one else thinks it's a good idea. With this posting in the main forum, we'll find out which it is.
