Hi all, Thanks Alexander for your proposal and this mailing list. I am 100% with you in this!
Before Smileupps and Couchappy, when we first started developing couchapps, we find it very difficult to understand what a couchapp really was. There was too much confusion about it. The naming of the couchapp tool itself, the crowd of tools available(in python, node.js and erlang, for windows, for linux) and a not clear explanation of their distinctive features(if they have any) played a big role in pushing away developers from couchapps and, in the end, from couchdb. We tried almost all of the existing tools above and we were quite happy with erica(https://github.com/benoitc/erica), which shares the same syntax and file-system mapping of the couchapp tool(indeed they were started by the same developer, benoit). Also erica worked well in windows environments and installation was super easy. We had a very hard journey with kanso instead: too complicated. It seemed that you need to be a node.js expert to get started.Too few examples and the structure of your development files and folders doesn't map with the "file-system to design doc mapping" supported by other tools ( https://github.com/couchapp/couchapp/wiki/Complete-Filesystem-to-Design-Doc-Mapping-Example). Our final ranking so far was: 1.erica, 2.couchapp-tool, 9. kan.so Currently however we strongly think DDOC.LAB could be the PERFECT TOOL for a shining new future of couchapps and couchdb. It's a fact that cloud ide for web developers are becoming more and more popular and feature rich ( http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/cloud-ide-developers/ and https://c9.io/). Browsers capabilities and features are increasing day by day and I won't be surprised to see browsers totally replacing desktop IDEs in next years. Pure web tools have too many advantages over usual command line tools. They run on any operating system and device, withouth installation, immediately, even when disconnected. Team and versioning are only implementation details. I am to promote tools which attract new developers, instead of pushing them away and ddoc.lab seems to have what it takes. In this same direction I'm also for removing barriers which lead to confusion in the couchapp ecosystem and, at least to me, the name of the couchapp tool was very unfortunate. Do you think it would be possible to simply ask current mantainers to rename it from "couchapp" to "couchapp-client" or something like that? BR -- Giovanni
