I want to create a program for teaching Latin grammar, one that will allow the student to easily run this at home with one script or executable. I don't want them to have to install this program and then that program, and then finally install the main script. Preferably something that can act as a stand-alone program, they download one file, click it, and it runs in any operating system.

My current goals for this program
- Input fields for the student to type in answers
- The ability to save the scores of the individual exercises
- The ability to graph these scores
- Optional: The ability to email these scores to the student's teacher
- MANADATORY: The ability for any student to easily install this software on his or her computer, whether it be Linux, Mac, or Windows
- Optional: The ability to run it from the internet on a website? (Wishful thinking)
I know bash probably isn't too realistic for my goals, but I'm very comfortable with it. Would gtk do the trick?

I suggest RealBasic.

Python....

I had the same problem for a completely different application. The goals were no installation and it had to run on every platform.

I ended up with writing a LAMP application (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). Your students would have to connect to your server though. The additional advantage is that if you update your program, your students will automatically use the new one from the web site. No updating on clients needed.

jlinkels

Well, I'm a high school senior, so they wouldn't be my students, and I'm thinking that this would be something for general distribution on the internet.
I'm thinking something like Java or flash would be good, as then it could be easily used on the internet, without any downloading, however it would need a way for the student's to log in and have their scores saved so that the teacher can see a chart and compare how his or her class and individual student is doing.
I suppose it would be up to the individual teacher to upload it to his website, but would the scores be available on his computer?
How about this:
I suppose I could develop a website that asks for the student's name and the teacher's email address, the website sends an email to the teacher with a file that contains the student's score, which a standalone program on the teacher's PC takes and saves.

Hi -

Have you had a look at Silverlight:

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

Just a thought .. PSM

Yeah, I know about silverlight, but it really isn't a widely used program yet. Maybe later I can try and get it run in silverlight, but right now I'm keeping it simple.

1) JAVA
2) Flash
3) server-side application available through web-interface.
4) Python.

I'd suggest to try java. Python is nice, but IMHO, Java betters fit "they download one file" request, and there are good chanches (not 100%, though) that it is already installed.

I use C++ for writting my own programs, but C++ doesn't automatically mean portability, and will most likely turn into "deployment hell" (supporting many platform) or "installation hell" (it is possible to run into completely unexpected problem on rare system/compiler). That's why I recommend JAVA. I don't recommend Python in the first place, because if application is GUI, chances are that something like wxWidgets will be used, and wxWidgets for Python requires additional installation, so user might run into trouble here. Because of this I think java is better here.

But if you need access to student's scores
, then it might mean client-server application, and I think in this case writing interactive php/mysql based website might be better, than even using java. With interactive website no one will have to download anything, so any platform that can interact with webpage will be supported automatically.

Are you sure you don't want to make it a web app?

if you need to keep track of scores/etc on a central server, you might as well do the entire thing online. if you make a program they have to download (and this includes java applets/flash), you'd have to invent some protocol for sending and receiving scores over the net. so it sounds like a job for a server, a database, and really any language that can handle cgi/generating html forms.

WRONG thread, soory

Java with JSP for the network part. But you'll have a bit of learning to do if you are starting from scratch...

This sounds like something begging to run as a web application. The centralized storage of scores or other data was the giveaway. Keeping it simple for the end user is also a strong indicator.
--- rod.

Alright, thank you, everyone, I suppose since we're getting this moved into servers I'll find the appropriate forum.
Thanks for you help!