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RE: Organizational Tools?
I could easily write my system in Excel. But that would require you to actually have Excel. I chose to use C# because it would be more portable .. I could provide versions which would run on Windows, MacOS, Unix, even some cellular phones (if they have enough memory). The problem is that there really is no difference at all between Excel or C#, which I was using.
You may look at Excel and see "a spreadsheet" but when I look at it I see a relational database with stored procedures where the only difference is in how I choose to present the information to you (that table format you're used to looking at is just the default presentation in Excel, I'm not required to use it) and whether I'm using "cell formula" and "Visual Basic for Applications" or "C#" to represent the sequence of operations I want the computer to perform. When I explained what I was doing, I was told it would not be allowed because you (the user of my work) did not author it.
You may copy-and-paste the Pedigree, from your web browser, into your Excel spreadsheet. I chose to write my own web browser. You'd not be allowed to use my web browser because you didn't author it yourself. I could have Excel use Explorer to obtain the web page, and save you the cut-and-paste step, if I were working in Excel. Or I could write an Active-X control for Explorer and have it fire up Excel for you. All those methods, including cut-and-paste, sound like very different things, but they're really all the same. The only difference is which environment I choose and how the data shuffles around inside your computer. But, since you're not allowed to use it because you didn't write it, it doesn't matter.
So, if you wrote a program you call "a spreadsheet" and I wrote one I just call "a program" and others are allowed to use yours, but not mine, what's the rationale?
Oh, well, it doesn't really matter any more. I've dropped the project; which is probably what they wanted, anyway. I just wish, if that were the case, they'd at least have been honest enough to have said it instead hiding behind "rules" (which, if they're written down, I can't find; but they claim they're there so they must be somewhere).
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