[Koha-win32] At the risk of being unpopular

[Patrick Quinn-Graham]

I've only come across Koha in the last few days, and am certainly
excited by what I see: it's about time there was an opensource project
like this.

My one thing is: I'm not entirely sure I like the idea of doing
Circulation type things through a web browser. So, here's the bit where
I risk being unpopular: I've started writing a Windows client, for now
I've only just started, but intend to do at least issueing/returning of
materials. 

It's written in VisualBasic, so unfortunately probably won't be easily
ported anywhere else, but so far doesn't use any non-standard controls,
so it could be possible. It's currently sitting at a measly 132kb.
(Plus, of course the VB stuff).

It access the Koha system by connecting directly to the mySQL database
using Microsoft Remote Data Objects and the myODBC connector, and
authenticates based on the auth table. (I'm not sure how passwords are
protected in there at the moment, as I just made up that part of my
application - it md5's them, and stores them that way).

Would any one else find this useful? If I release it, it will be under
the GPL - it's not really based on Koha code, but I think it's only
right.

Just a little bio on me: I'm an 18 Software Engineering student at
Victoria University (Wellington, New Zealand) - 2003 will be my second
year, did all the Library Automation software stuff at my old High
School - there we used the MUSAC Library Manager software, so have a
reasonable understanding of at least the areas I'm working on here :-).

Is this the right place to put something like this? I'm not sure...

If you want to try a really really early version of it, I'll put one up
on my website (just need to recompile).

Thanks for your reading time!

Patrick.