The goal is to have a single Perl program (or modules) perform functions that have been done by a sizeable collection of other language programs in the past.

Help is presently needed with learning how to get Perl to generate charts and also produce standalone .exe copies of itself. The plan is to then make those .exe copies available to other scientific researchers around the world for free use along with free use updates when they become available. If other researchers wish to get Perl running on their own computers then they will probably also be given the source code for the original program for free use so that they can do their own development work.

Perl was originally chosen because it is quite versatile, is a free download, and is supported both by ActiveState and quite a few independent programmers. So other researchers could get their own versions running without having to worry about viruses or cost.

So far the work is fairly advanced. The effort has been underway for at least a decade. The core data generation program was formally copyrighted several years ago. My present version of Perl will send data to Windows as if it were being manually typed into the keyboard (important for controlling other programs). And it can directed to respond to most keystrokes even when another program is the active one. Unfortunately, Windows also presently responds to those keystrokes. And that complicates things a bit.

Not being a professional computer programmer I have been finding it difficult to get new features such as a chart generating ability merged with and running with Perl. And the entire research project is now being slowed as a result. One of my colleagues has done an extensive amount of work with Basic. And I even offered to pay him to help with the Perl development effort. But after he downloaded a copy of Perl and examined it he decided that this would involve too much effort. I have to agree with him.