Python voting demo discussion

[L. A. Jackson]

When it comes to language selection I'm of the opinion that it  should
be based on the skillset and expertise available to you. If youre
proposing python and have the human resources available with python as
a skillset  then go for it. If not then look closely at what
skillset/s are available and tailor language selection around that.

I will STRONGLY advise that you consider using XML  (and if necessary
get or train people with the necessary expertise ) since there are
already several specifications out there ( e.g. vXML, eML) which have
looked at the requirements for voting systems. These are open
specifications and although they tend to be complex, they do massively
increase the value and portability of any data which you capture.

In addition XML has the strength of being easily transformable to
other formats via XSLT. e.g. With some design and planning you should
be able to use the same underlying data/format for output to web,
screen or printer. My initial thoughts are that you should look at SVG
for the control over onscreen output that you require and XSL for
printed documentation. Python is  a suitable "glue" language for
this...see earlier comments however.

Sounds like an interesting project btw. Hope it has good auditing
features ;)

Good Luck

Lee

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 07:44:42 GMT, "Alan Dechert"
<adechert at earthlink.net> wrote:

>Thanks for the interesting discussion yesterday afternoon about the voting
>software development project I am working on putting together.
>
>Almost all of the discussion had nothing to do with my question, but that's
>okay.  Actually, I knew it would probably go that was but I could not very
>well say, "don't ask me all those other questions."  It was reasonable for
>you to ask.
>
>Ian Bicking and Andrew Dalke did say they thought Python should be fine for
>the demo but I didn't get much detail about why we should prefer it over
>some of the other possibilities:  HTML, XML, Perl, Java, PHP, C, C++, C#, C,
>etc.
>
>If you have anything to add regarding this specific issue, I would be
>interested to hear it.
>
>Thanks again for your time.
>
>-- Alan Dechert
>
>