Re: status of fplan?

[Kevin Horton <khorton01 rogers com>]

On 26 Dec 2003, at 12:07, John C. Peterson wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 23, 2003 at 02:14:29PM -0500, Kevin Horton wrote:
> > I've stumbled across fplan and managed to get it working on Mac OS X,
> > although I'm still puzzled by how to create a personal database.
>
> Kevin,
>
> There is a paragraph or so about this topic in the user's guide.
> Basically you create a text version of the database file with
> your favorite editor (see "man 5 fplan" for the format specifics),
> and then process the file with "paddb" to generate the fixed length
> records that fplan expects. Contact me directly if you have trouble..
I eventually got paddb working by creating a .csv file with gnumeric.  
My current suspicion is that I was feeding it the wrong kind of line 
endings on my early attempts.
> > I'm wondering what the status of fplan is.  Has development ceased?
> > Is anyone still using the program, or is there some other similar
> > unix program that I haven't found yet?
>
> There is a derivative work called xplan? out there (sorry I cant be
> more specific, I'm on the road for the holidays, and don't have all
> my usual resources handy). It provides a GTK based graphical interface.

I'll look for xplan once I'm back home again after New Years.  Thanks 
for mentioning it.
> I do have a ton of patches and small improvements for fplan that
> kind folks have sent me (as well as for the Linux Aviation HOWTO).
> So yes, it is used by quite a few pilots out there....
>
> Happy Holidays, John

For anyone who is interested, now that I have fplan running on OS X, 
I've started the process to add it to the list of programs supported by 
the Fink project.  Fink is a set of tools to automate building unix 
programs on Mac OS X.  Once they accept my submission, you'll be able 
to simply open up Terminal.app and type "fink install fplan-nox" (the 
-nox signifies without the X preview option), and fplan will be 
installed.  See http://fink.sourceforge.net/

Kevin Horton