CAVOR

CAVOR: Creating A Vision Of Reality

Update:

This project is defunct. There are now (2011) plenty of better-developed GIS and similar projects available in the open source arena. While I still prefer the overall design and capabilities of Cavor, the reality is that I don't have the time and no longer have the inclination to work on it. This is no great loss, the user community was virtually nonexistent. Time to move on.

What is CAVOR?

CAVOR is (or will be, when completed) an engine for building applications that involve modeling and retrieving graphical and textual data. Examples of such applications include GIS (geographic information systems), mapping programs, CAD (computer aided design/drafting), as well as less-obvious applications as project management (consider PERT charts, etc), CASE (computer aided software engineering) tools (DFDs, ERDs, etc.), and probably others that haven't even occurred to me.

Some info about Cavor can be found in this introductory document.

What does it run on?

The development platform is Linux, with Sybase and mySQL as example databases. It should easily port to any Unix platform with X11 and a relational database, although porting to some RDBMSs may be more problematic than others.

Can I download the source?

Er, not yet, there's not much code finished. But my intention is to make the code available. Since the design is modular, there'll be bits and pieces that can be used even if the whole thing isn't complete.

The intention is to open the project up, but I want to make sure there's enough there to make it worth people's while before doing that. At the moment, alas, I don't have a lot of spare time to devote to the project.

So, what is done?

Bits and pieces. A lot of the basic design work. Most of the Display List Manager, although there are still a few bugs in that. The database schema and some database interface. A partial implementation of CSL (Cavor Scripting Language) and a yacc/lex (actually bison/flex) grammar for it. I've thought about building some of this on top of, say, Tcl/Tk, but although superficially that seems like a good idea, in practise there are some underlying design concepts that make it easier to just rewrite from scratch, even if I am reinventing the wheel in a couple of places.

Can I help?

Sure, and as time goes on I plan to set up some good mechanisms for on-line collaboration (an area I have some experience in -- I wrote most of the software for the BYTE Information Exchange (BIX)). Meanwhile, there's email. I don't have a list of parcelled out tasks yet, but we can discuss possibilities.

I hope to have more up Real Soon Now.

RELATED INFO For those interested in the GIS side, there's some stuff here related to Bruce Peren's US Map project (see the mailing list), ie a simple viewer and a couple of data files, are in the file mapstuff.tgz, there's also a README file.