• To: EdStauff@gmail.com
• Date: 9/27/2014

Ed:

Although I don't know how far I'll get with this idea, I thought I'd ask you 
for your thoughts.

I was thinking of creating an Android (phone) app that would allow a user to 
type in Organ stops, and then it would it would internally translate those 
stops to whatever the organ they are using has. I would have a small directory 
of organs, and allow the user to input what their organ has, and then do the 
translation real time.

The hard part would be to able to cross-reference between what a song calls 
for, and resolve it to the equivalent stops that they have.

I saw your http://www.organstops.org website that has lots of information on 
it. If I actually did go through with my app idea, what I'd love to do is to 
include your information within the web app so that the user could find out 
more about the organ stops themselves.

Perhaps we could work out an arrangement, where you'd give me permission to 
include your stuff, and I could pay you a percentage of sales of my app.

Again, this is just an idea, not sure how you'd feel about it, and I'm not 
sure about my availability to get this done. I am able, as I'm an experienced 
software developer.

Thanks.

-Dan Wheeler
Renton, Washington

• Date: 10/2/2014

Dan:

This sounds like an interesting project.  If you're willing to cut me a 
percentage, then I might be able to provide you with synonym data in a format 
that's more easily parsed than the web pages.  I definitely think we can work 
out an arrangement.

Do you know about the OHS database of pipe organs?  
http://database.organsociety.org/

?Sorry to take so long responding.

Regards,

-- Ed?

Thanks for your response.

Thanks for the database link. That might be helpful as well, but I need to 
figure out what should be included, and what is helpful. Maybe I'll be talking 
with them separately.

For now, although I'm a professional developer in a large company, I am 
currently learning the Android App technology. I think I'll be done learning 
that in about a month. I'll figure out what my proposed app will do, and then 
show you what I intend. Then we can work out an arrangement.

At some point I'll need to come up with a small (perhaps less than 20%) subset 
of your data for testing purposes. I can probably glean that on my own, but if 
you want to help provide that, I guess that could speed it up. If you are 
comfortable granting me permission to do that part (to grab content 
representing less than 20% of your website, and I won't publish the data, only 
use it for Proof-of-concept purposes), that would be great, or we can wait 
until I design the "system." Your choice.

One thing to keep in mind. I doubt that we'll be getting rich on this. The 
user community is probably something like a few hundred, even trying to go 
global. I had a target price in mind of $10 for the app. If you do the math, I 
think you'll get the idea here.

In case you're curious:

My piano playing: http://quizkid.isa-geek.net/misc/ItIsWell.mp3
My organ playing: http://quizkid.isa-geek.net/misc/lemmensRough.mp3

-dw

Dan:

Go ahead and grab whatever you need for testing & development, but don't 
publish or release it until we've worked out the details.

I haven't worked on it in a couple of years, but it looks like you should be 
able to grab what you need (synonyms) from each entry file by doing this:
1. Throw away everything up to "<!--NAMES-->".
2. Search for the next "</table>" and throw away everything that follows.
3. In the text that remains, each name is delimited by "<b>" and "</b>".

You can easily extract a list of all the entry files from either of these 
files:
http://www.organstops.org/_apps/FileList.html
http://www.organstops.org/_apps/FileIndex.html

I really should modernize the HTML; I developed the site long before I became 
fluent with CSS.

I'm on my third droid, and have an Android tablet.  I poked around with the 
SDK shortly after I got my first droid a few years ago, but didn't go beyond 
"hello, android".  I had wanted to develop a series of virtual musical 
instruments, but when I found how how unsuited that platform is for doing real-
time sound synthesis, I pretty much gave up on the idea.  (I hear iOS is much 
better, but I won't have anything to do with it because of how Apple treats 
independent developers.)

Regards,

-- Ed

I don't know if I let you know I received this. Thanks!

I'll probably need a few weeks to come up with a design, and to learn the 
Android programming "flavor." Feel free to ask me if you want status, 
otherwise, I'll let you know when I have something to show you.

I'm kind of busy personally, so thanks in advance for your patience.

-dw

Hi Ed:

As predicted, I've been quite busy, and have made no progress on this project. 
But I just recently got outsourced from one company to another, and the 
circumstances may be more conducive to resuming the effort.

I hope to start grabbing a sample of your data in the next couple of weeks. 
After that I'll come up with a functionality design. After that, once I get an 
idea of how this will all fit together, I'll make you an offer on your "slice."

Of course, I'm 100% in compliance and agreement with what you've asked 
regarding your data.

Thanks again for your patience.

-dw