[Zope3-dev] UI effort at Sprintathon

[sean.upton@uniontrib.com]

On a tangent, but... this thread bring up something else I've thought about
Zope UIs beyond simple HTML: it sure would be nice to have a way to do
long-running transactions for fat clients that may perform a single
transaction across several, spaced-out requests (say, via XML-RPC).  I
suppose one way to do this is ZODB versions, but I'm curious as to other
ideas for accomplishing this (perhaps with a higher level component)? 

For example, a simple HTML form with several fields could have a get/set
method associated with that field, upon a change event for a field 'foo',
the browser JavaScript would trigger XML-RPC call to server to call the
setFoo() method, and so on, and finally do a permanent commit with some
possible before-commit method call to the item.  This would mean that
unfinished work that isn't fully committed is both stateful and recoverable,
I think?

Sean

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tim Hoffman [mailto:timhoffman@cams.wa.gov.au]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 6:01 PM
> To: Joachim Werner
> Cc: Martijn Faassen; Paul Everitt; Zope 3 project list;
> kitblake@infrae.com; alexander@limi.net
> Subject: Re: [Zope3-dev] UI effort at Sprintathon
> 
> 
> Hi Joachim
> 
> > 
> > The core point is that they often don't use a simple 
> REQUEST-RESPONSE model
> > but open an application that permanently communicates with 
> the server in the
> > back, using XML-RPC and the like. So you can do things like 
> server-based
> > link or spell checking on the fly!
> > 
> > I can remember the first XUL efforts for Mozilla-Zope. 
> Those were quite
> > similar in scope, but they were never finished ...
> > 
> Have you ever looked at XWT.  It is an XML based windowing environment
> run as a signed Java applet, that communicates back to the 
> server soley
> through XML-RPC and HTTP. I have done some prototypes using it to talk
> to Zope, and implemented drag and drop of references to Zope objects
> (PNG's) to create authored exhibitions of artwork.
> 
> It works quite well, and in fact Zope could dynamically create XWT
> components as they are just XML and Ecmascript.
> 
> The author is scrupulously sticking to cross platform portability 
> OS/X, Linux, Solaris, Windows etc ....
> 
> Could be worth having a look at.
> 
> Rgds
> 
> Tim
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Zope3-dev mailing list
> Zope3-dev@zope.org
> http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-dev
>