I am a huge fan of Jim’s that would love to see him have great success with Pan X. One of the things I think about is the non-programmer who might want to use this product. Most of the posts here are quite advanced in nature and cover items a non-programmer would not even think about. So, what would you think of generating some add-ons that newcomers would be willing to spend a bit of money on to get a Pan X sample? These addons would be created by those of you with lots of Pan experience. I do a lot of webpage design using Rapidweaver and there is a whole cottage industry of addon stacks and templates to help create web pages. Couldn’t Pan X do the same? The samples we have now are from the 1980’s and, in my opinion, shouldn’t even be shipped along with Pan X. New samples for invoices, bank statements, stocks, etc. where one would pay $10-$30 depending on the complexity would seem to me to be a great idea in generating interest. These would be basic templates that would then be customized by the purchaser for their own use. Right now, one starts with a blank page and has to do a lot of figuring out before putting anything useful together. Any thoughts on this?
I think when Jim actually implements the Panorama Database Exchange (see the Help menu) and allows folks to add their own files for others to access it will go a long way to do much of what you are requesting. I know I have some files I have already created that I intend to submit. Mine however tend to be utility tools more so than templates or sample files. I’m sure others will gladly add various sample files as time passes. I don’t know if there will be enough of a Panorama market for a pay for add-on scheme to be practical.
I don’t know about the market prospects either, but I do have some products in the works that I plan to offer inexpensively to use as-is or to build upon.
I don’t know how large an audience Pan has, so you may well be correct. I just thought it would certainly help newcomers get a much better feel for what Pan X can do if they were able to get some coded samples they could customize. My experience with Rapidweaver is I don’t want to learn a lot of web coding, so the stacks produced by the cottage industry saves me a lot of time and allows me to focus on my end product. I would think the same would be true with Pan X. But then, I am repeating myself…
That would be super, as your past contributions have helped me quite a bit already.
Looking at this from a perspective where I’ve created a few items that could be easily be used in other situations, I can imagine some interest in some of my work. I usually design my forms for use by ‘another’ situation whereas I often use Preference files (another Pano db) where the company name, address, phone, etc can be edited or added as necessary so my stuff is often very easily used by others. After all, ie, one doctors appointment book is pretty much like anothers.
Robert Ameeti