putting RIA into Euphoria
In http://www.listfilter.com/EUforum/m14305.html I mentioned a new direction for
Euphoria, and that is, targeting Euphoria towards Rich Internet Applications, or
RIA. I find it quite a coincidence that this acronym represents the last three
letters in "Euphoria". I don't care for superstition, but what better way to say
that it was "meant to be"?
Anyway, Euphoria has been plagued, like many other languages, with the GUI
problem, where it is difficult to make an application work the same, in a
visually-appealing manner, across platforms. I am aware of the various
solutions, as well as the fact that none of them are truly adequate. The one
thing which pretty much everyone appears to have ignored, is that, despite their
problems, incompatibilities, and general fickleness, web browsers make for a
usable, although not great, cross-platform GUI.
What I would like to see, are application servers, written in Euphoria, which
act as proxies to the Internet, and which communicate with the user through web
browsers. For example, I could have my own server, which is a Euphoria program
and a database, running all the time. I would call up a web browser, whether on
my computer, or on any other which is connected to the Internet. I type in the
URL for my server, get the main page, type in a password, and am then presented
with whatever I've specified as the default start page, which could be as simple
as Google's main search page.
I type some text in the search bar, my server brings back a results page, which
could be from my own database, from the Internet, or a mix. Instead of search
text, I could also type instructions, like I would at a dos/linux command prompt.
The server would execute the instructions, against its database, by getting
pages from the Internet, or a mix, and presenting a results page. In either
case, the results could be text or images, either of which could have come from
the local database, from the Internet, or generated by my server.
On a more complex level, the server could generate Flash or Silverlight, thus
providing a richer method of interaction. On an intermediate level, it would be
quite acceptable to have the server generate a still image, for every interactive
result, along with a client-side image map embedded in the HTML. Many types of
applications could be ported by such means, although the resulting interaction
wouldn't be quite as smooth as in standalone applications, such as when you need
to scroll through a large document. However, creating such things using EuphoRIA
would be far simpler than using AJAX, which can easily push browsers to their
breaking point.
Notice above my use of "EuphoRIA" to indicate a program written in Euphoria,
which interacts with the user through a web browser, and which interacts with the
Internet. The latter can easily be accomplished through the use of libcurl, or
even more easily, through system calls to cURL.
Additionally, EuphoRIA programs could be augmented by using URL-based includes,
which would come from code that's put up in journal entries, in a system such as
LiveJournal, where people can review and improve on the work. Mix the ideas of
social networking, the Euphoria code archive, and Euphoria's micro-economy to
create a vibrant community of developers, which generates quality code and whose
peer-review is near-automatic, as demonstrated daily through people actually
using the code in their own EuphoRIA systems.
I wanted to make this more detailed, but I'm pressed for time. I hope that I've
gotten across the basic ideas which could quickly and significantly increase
Euphoria's visibility.
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