> From: Marc Zitcer > Does anyone have experience using Osmosis to gui-ize > (not my word!) an older jBase application? Or any > other suggestions for a fairly competent basic coder > to use to bring an application up to current visual > standards.
Let's come back to the original request... Marc, I've used Osmosis, and was even a reseller for a while. While I thought it was a technically competent product, I had questions about where the product would be going in terms of ownership, support, and other business factors. So I terminated my reseller agreement for that product. I'm also fairly intimate with DesignBais. While that's also an excellent product, and I was also a reseller for that one, I also terminated my reseller relationship in large part because it's based on old technology, and there were similar questions about business and support matters. These fine products were created as conveniences for people who want to GUItize their apps, and I encourage everyone to look into both of them, and others. The target audiences for these products include BASIC programmers who don't know anything about other technologies, and companies that don't want to deal with mainstream development. If you and/or your company fit in that group then absolutely check into these excellent products and you won't be phased by the issues that bothered me. But your company needs to ask some broader questions. Osmosis is a bi-mode UI product: Character UI (which I call CUI) and thick-client. DesignBais is a "uni-mode" UI product: thin-client browser only. Another product called Nucleus (with which I'm not affiliated in any way except for knowing the author) is tri-mode: character, browser, and thick-client GUI. Your company needs to decide where it sees the future: thick, thin, or both. Frankly, in the last ten years I haven't had a single company ask me to create a thick-client GUI for their software. Everyone wants a think-client Browser UI (which I call BUI). As to CUI, I rarely recommend thick or thin to completely replace the existing CUI - advocate augmenting an existing CUI environment with a new GUI. The solution depends on the end-users who will be using the app. >From here you have a world full of Do-It-Yourself options, which require you or someone else at your company to know a different programming language. You have the same options as anyone else in the world, with PHP, Java, Ruby, .NET (C#, VB.NET), and you can use any stack or framework that seems right for the company. The difference is that you are no longer paying someone else for a framework, you are now paying someone to write custom UI code. The disadvantage to DIY is that you do indeed need to DIY - or someone needs to be hired or contracted. The advantages of DIY are that you own everything, can decide how you want it all to work, you can change how it works, you don't owe another company for licenses, and you are less subject to some other company's bugs and politics. Another option is to use the AccuTerm Terminal Emulator which has built-in GUI tools to give your CUI an attractive GUI Look and Feel (L&F) without added expense and without learning new languages. A product called Symbion is available, which wraps the ATGUI to allow BASIC developers to create a GUI without manual manipulation of controls. Like Osmosis, Symbion facilitates bi-mode: character and thick-client. My company provides development services for companies that prefer the DIY option. We kickstart development and then hand the projects over to our clients for subsequent maintenance, or we maintain the software as they wish. After using a bunch of tools that put a GUI wrapper around existing applications, I've chosen to avoid most of the tools that do things "for" me, and pull most of the control back into my own hands. YMMV on what you can do and what you want to do. I'll be happy to offer services and development tools to anyone here, and to help them kickstart their own development. (Consider that an ad.) But rather than recommending specific tools, I believe the right tools should be chosen for specific jobs, and I'll wait to hear from individuals before recommending anything. HTH Tony Gravagno Nebula Research and Development TG@ remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com Nebula R&D sells Pick/MultiValue products worldwide, and provides related development services remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com/blog Visit PickWiki.com! Contribute! http://Twitter.com/TonyGravagno -- Please read the posting guidelines at: http://groups.google.com/group/jBASE/web/Posting%20Guidelines IMPORTANT: Type T24: at the start of the subject line for questions specific to Globus/T24 To post, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jBASE?hl=en To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
