On Jun 23, 8:46 am, rgibson <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi, Arne (and others). Sorry for slow response, and thanks for your
> input. To respond to your question, I think for now we have two
> scenarios, when we simplify things. Let's say we want to visualize
> some arbitrary data (e.g., a google map) in one entity, while
> controlling it from another entity (e.g., a "joystick" that moves the
> map around). (The reality is more complex, with multiple views of
> different data sets, but this is illustrative.)
>
> 1) Scenario 1: the map/joystick are all on the same user's page. I
> assume you're suggesting designing one huge "gadget" in canvas view
> that has a bunch of different entities in it that can all share the
> same data space? Is that right?
That's what I would suggest right now - it keeps everything coupled
together, so you don't have to worry about the case where the user has
the map installed but not the joystick, for example. Of course, that
means that you can't release "add-on" gadgets to take advantage of the
joystick gadget, but that's a limited use case I think, plus you could
just reuse your joystick code server-side for a couple different
canvas gadgets.
> 2) Scenario 2: I want to show another user (logged in separately)
> something. I move the joystick on my page and the map on their page
> moves. We will need a server (e.g., to serve up the data we're
> viewing), but most of the gadget communication methods I've seen only
> allow for _polling_ the server, not listening for callbacks when data
> arrives. That's not what we want long-term.
Sadly, pubsub won't fix this - it's only for the case where two
gadgets on the same iGoogle page want to communicate with each other.
You won't be able to communicate between two different users without
bouncing information off of your server.
I understand that polling isn't really a desirable solution for you.
There's been some talk on the spec list about getting some type of
real-time API up for gadgets - you probably found the Google Talk
implementation described here:
http://code.google.com/apis/talk/gadgets_realtime.html.
I think that's more along the lines of what you want from pubsub, but
I have no information about when this feature might potentially be on
iGoogle and whether "normal" gadgets would be able to use it.
I believe that a flash movie embedded in a gadget has the potential to
open a socket connection to your server and listen for information,
but I don't know if you have the infrastructure for that. That's
probably the least amount of overhead you need to worry about, though.
~Arne
>
> Regarding pubsub, I see how straightforward the interface is, but I
> still don't know what it's capabilities are. You say it won't allow
> us to pass data between different users, in which case I agree that it
> doesn't add much.
>
> So is there any way to pass data between users without polling on the
> receiver side? I found one example of a Talk application, but I don't
> want to run in a chat box.
>
> Thanks,
> Rob
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