data entry tool

[Peter]

This post seeks advice on whether python would be appropriate for a task, or
whether you can suggest another approach.

The project is to transcribe historical records such as schools admissions,
ship passenger lists, birth/death/marriages, etc for genealogy studies. 
What we need is a simple software tool that will give the user a form set
out like the page being transcribed, do some simple validation and put the
data in a file (can be fixed field length plain text).  Data files from
volunteers will be compiled into a master database.

This software tool needs to work on a variety of different computers; Win95,
Win98, WinXP, Mac, Linux.

So, would python be a good choice for this, and how should I go about it? 
I'm not a programmer and have only done a few little python scripts that
run from the command line.

TIA

Peter