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Name: Curran Nachbar

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Questions/comments about the syllabus or project handout:


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Project Title 1: BioSleuth? GeoSleuth?

Brief Description

A taxonomic classification aid -- for marine biologists or geologists
or hobbyists (pick one). Like a Peterson field guide, but useful in
the lab rather than in the field. Asks the user a series of questions
to determine (or at least narrow down) the species of an organism.

Identify Local Users:

Brown or high school students

Assign a 1-5 score for these criteria
	Useful to others: 4
	Has specific users: 5
	Can be scaled up to PC product: 5
	Divisible: 5
	In C++ on Suns: nope

	Overall: 4

Pros: 

-- separable into taxonomic database, decision-aiding algorithm --
therefore could probably be adapted for different fields and still
re-use a lot of code
-- can be networked
-- can choose to add or leave off add'l features (statistics on
identifications made, multimedia information about organisms)

Cons:

-- someone has to have significant knowledge of a specific field to
encode the information for the decision tree

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Project Title 2: Noteworthy

Brief Description

Sheet music editor, at its most basic, taking input from both
point-n-click interface (a la most drawing programs) and the
keyboard. Could possibly incorporate playback of files, *real*
keyboard integration. It would also be really interesting to include
some kind of musical analysis tool -- kind of like a debugger for
musical score -- that examines the music file(s) and highlights things
you wouldn't necessarily pick up yourself. However, I'm not a musician
so I'm a little hazy on what practical tasks that could accomplish.

Identify Local Users:

Probably not the Music department, as their web page implies that they
have quite the composition lab. So although it would be a useful
program, it would probably have few users within Brown CS.

Assign a 1-5 score for these criteria
	Useful to others: 4
	Has specific users: 2
	Can be scaled up to PC product: 4
	Divisible: 5
	In C++ on Suns: nope

	Overall: 3.5

Pros:

-- manageable size
-- has both graphical and logical components

Cons:

-- unsure about feasibility of real keyboard integration on suns 
-- the idea of a music "debugger" is neat, but the human ear/brain can
probably get along just fine. but perhaps the idea of marking up sheet
music in some semantically meaningful way can be adapted.

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Project Title 3: .Manager, dotMan

Brief Description

A GUI-based program for keeping track of and editing all your
dotfiles.  Possibly with a "rollback" function, whereby (as in CVS) if
you hose something and aren't sure how, you can return to a previous
configuration by date or name.

Identify Local Users: everyone in cs, potentially

Assign a 1-5 score for these criteria
	Useful to others: 5
	Has specific users: 5
	Can be scaled up to PC product: 4 
	Divisible: 5
	In C++ on Suns: nope

	Overall: 5

Pros:

-- really useful, especially for rookies who do things like cp /u/lri/.*
under the current system
-- ideally, it could provide a description of what changes were
possible for each program. xemacs' options interface is pretty useful
in this way

Cons:

-- dotfiles don't tend to have a uniform format or even a universal
language 
-- useful descriptions would mostly have to be added by hand, since
they don't exist for a lot of programs
-- painful maintenance. when a program is upgraded and its dotfile
format/terminology changes, the dotMan module would have to be
changed, too.

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