seeking beta test developers

[cr...@goingware.com]

Hi,

A friend of mine, Andy Green, has been working on a cross 
platform code library for several years that he wants to release as 
open source soon.

It includes a GUI toolkit and lightweight database access (that is, 
direct access to its own format for database files via C++, not SQL 
access).  The database is particularly nice in that the databases 
are single files, great for using them as an application document 
format.

I've been using it in my current project, and it's really nice.  Andy 
wants to have a small number of expert developers try writing with 
it.  It would probably be best to develop a real product with it, but it 
would probably be sufficient to just screw around with it or read the 
source code.

As I've just posted here, there are some gotchas in the code; I did 
something with the API that I thought was reasonable and it 
corrupted the heap.  After talking with Andy, he thought one should 
be able to do what I want to do, so he's going to look into fixing it.

I'll be managing the test so Andy can concentrate on polishing it up 
for the general release.

While I'm calling it a beta, it's not really a beta product, it's in real 
use in some commercial products.

You can write a single set of sources and recompile to target 
Windows, MacOS, BeOS, and XWindows.

Unlike some attempts at cross-platform API's that have failed, it is 
not cross platform.  In some cases you have to put an #ifdef and 
write a little bit of platform-specific code.  The API does something 
like 99% of it for you, and leaving out the remaining 1% I think is a 
big part of what makes it work as well as it does.

I've had to be dragged kicking and screaming into developing 
windows applications, but using Andy's API I find it a pleasure to 
develop windows programs.  I think so far I've had to make three 
windows API calls directly in my whole program.

Please send requests to crawford@goingware.com - it might be 
best to give a mention of your level of expertise; the library is easy 
enough to be used by anyone comfortable with C++, but because 
we'll be critiquing the library itself, I'd like people that are more 
towards the expert end.

Mike Crawford
http://www.goingware.com
crawford@goingware.com