A Labour of Love

Ten years on, and TaskMaster is still not finished? Well, it’s all a question of evolution. I have recently changed the format of equipment Control Numbers to improve usability. For example, from ECG-A-01 to ECG-01-001, to increase types from 26 to 99 possibilities, and instances of each type from 99 to 999. Good-bye, then, to Chacko Zard’s original format dating back to 1990.

At present, TM .exe runs only in a late DOS environment (ie, DOS with extended memory etc.). It gives “too many files open” messages if run in a Windows “DOS box”. Now I have to re-visit TaskMaster source code once again to get it to run readily in a “modern environment”. This will mean revision of the LoadFile procedure in FTM.prg and drastic changes in all forms. But it can be done, and it will prolong the usefulness of the original DOS version of TaskMaster.

This all came up again recently when I was emailed by an engineer studying the concept of “Risk-Centred Maintenance”. I sent him a zipped copy of TaskMaster by email attachment, as it contains an implementation of some of the risk-centred maintenance principles, including automatic PM interval adjustment etc.

Once all this has been hacked, I will need to update the Windows version of TaskMaster (written in Visual FoxPro) also. A true labour of love.