PAPCO was written because of the basic need to have an easily extendible package for the scientific analysis of a great variety of data.
However, PaPCo is not only a stand-alone application, but part of a larger philosophy of data analysis and dissemination, which is aimed at making data available to a large audience. This has now grown to make PaPCo a full multi-purpose data display AND analysis package, while still keeping to the modular philosophy, allowing the user full power withour prescribing anything.
It has been said that if one gives a scientist any data tool to use, it will take him 5 minutes to find out what he CANNOT do with it. The basic idea behind PaPCo is to answer the question ``Can you do such and such?'' with ``YES! But you will have to do it!''