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Kevin Walzer, software developer.

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Phynchronicity 1.0 in the works

I'm taking a break from my update of PortAuthority to wrap up version 1.0 of Phynchronicity, a GUI for the Fink Unix software management system.

Phynchronicity is an important project for me in many respects. Most importantly, it's my attempt to apply the same design approach that I used with PortAuthority--which is a GUI for the MacPorts Unix software management system-- to Fink. Fink has a free, popular GUI called FinkCommander,, but FinkCommander has scarcely been updated in recent years. (Apart from a few bug fixes and being recompiled as a universal binary, it hasn't changed at all sinced 2003.) I want an easier-to-use version GUI for Fink, with the standard three-pane interface that is used by e-mail clients, RSS readers, and so on.

Here's a screenshot of Phynchronicity:

Phynchronicity is also important for me because it's written in Python. As I've written before, I've had some difficulty with Python, especially with creating a GUI that is more than moderately complex. However, coming back to it with a fresh set of eyes has allowed me to work through some of the issues I previously had. My difficulties were the result of my own lack of learning, rather than bugs in the language or its libraries.

So version 1.0 of Phynchronicity, written in Python and featuring a GUI as sophisticated as anything I would develop in my other programming language, Tcl, is due shortly. The first release will have a limited set of features; my emphasis is getting the basic design of the program (both in the user interface and under-the-hood) in place. Working from a stable foundation will allow me to add new features quickly.

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