in reply to General advice desperately needed

For Tk, try AS perl. Pick a version, then point PPM at Bribes.org and install Tk from there.

For the (re)learning thing; I have two pieces of advice:

  1. Start.

    The sooner you start, the sooner you'll be able to frame specific questions for us to help you with.

  2. Detail (for yourself as much as anyone), why does your application need to be an .exe?

    It isn't hard to install AS perl -- not much more complicated than installing a Android App; and billions of non-tech users can do that.

    And the second step of downloading your application should be simpler still -- if you do it right.

If it is "A rather complex application"; then the users will need to have a certain level of smarts in order to use it, no matter how simple you contrive to make the interface; so maligning those same users as idiots is disingenuous. Give them some credit.

If you can document downloading AS perl

click this link; click "run"; wait; click "next"; click "I accept ..."; click "next"; click "next"; click "install"; wait; click "finish". (That took all of 5 minutes.)

Then you can do the same for setting up PPM to use Bribes; and then installing Tk.

And the same again for downloading your application.

And, in the process you've weeded out 95% of those that would become maintenance and support nightmares if you delivered your application more simply; they just won't get far enough to bother you.

With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". I knew I was on the right track :)
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
I'm with torvalds on this Agile (and TDD) debunked I told'em LLVM was the way to go. But did they listen!

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Re^2: General advice desperately needed
by twv (Novice) on Aug 07, 2015 at 02:33 UTC

    Ah, I was not clear. These people are cowboys, literally, horses, cattle, that sort of thing. This application runs of a potpourri of laptops, few of them even manufactured in this century, and none, as in none, of them have any sort of on-line access. The only reason they even have these machines is to run this application. Literally. Hence the desire for an exe file.

    The application exists and has done so for the last 16 or so years implemented as an Excel workbook (actually 3 Excel workbooks). It is inarguably complex, pretty much pushing Excel to its limits, and the people who use it are fine human beings but when it comes to all things digital, they are woefully lacking in anything resembling comprehension of just what might be going on.

    Excel was first chosen lo those many years ago because the thing started out a a simple list of entrants for team penning and ranch sorting events. Of couse nothing of this nature ever remains simply this or that. It has evolved over the years into a comprehensive package for singing up entrants, drawing teams both for draw pot events and order of go, maintaining rating information for any and all entrants, creating multiple incentive events within single events, handling any number of separate events concurrently, providing sound playback, a reasonable sophisticated event time, large screen arena display driver, jackpot and event accounting, and a host of other things. All the while being configurable such that virtually any penning or sorting format (there are well over 10^7 possible ways to conduct one of these things)

    Excel's reach has exceeded its grasp. It's a nightmare trying to keep one version of this thing (there's only me) alive and operating over a ragtag collection of windows and Excel versions. I have reached a tipping point. While I'm fully appreciative of Excel's list handling abilities, and VBA and all of that, it's just grown out of the realm of one simple set of files for everyone. Excel is rebelling, inexplicably running here, not running there, and I tire of it.

    I've always liked Perl but Visual Basic is also a possibility, it has a bit more sophisticated Windows capability but it's data handling is sometimes less than what I want. More importantly, I don't enjoy VB, I do Perl.

    That being the case, I'm willing to deal with creating a decent GUI with Tk, primitive though it might be, and go with Perl.

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      ... and you said that you had retired? .... (wink!) ...
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