At 01:12 AM 6/26/2008, Khurram Samad wrote:
Hi David
Thanks for updating the list on Laszlo System's initiative for building Open
Lazlo IDE. We all believe this is the most desired feature for Open Laszlo,
especially in high-competitive market.
To avoid, redundant effort, can you please elaborate on "visual design
needs", something that's currently not in Eclipse-Plugin plans for Laszlo
Systems? This will help other focus on areas that's not covered in the
plugin.
I'd like to hear that too, with the addition of what features
Laszlo's tool is going to have that Spket doesn't. I ask
that because from what I saw in the announcement, the features
sound an awful lot like Spket:
Ecplise based
Color Coded
Drag and drop code snipets, but no visual drag and drop
Keyword expansion
Knowledge of the grammar (ie linking to syntax diagrams/documentation)
Code treeview
I know there have been 4 or 5 separate threads about IDE's in the
past two years or so, and I did say this before. To me, the
"visual needs" *are* the IDE. Although I use Spket now, and I
think it's a great thing for what it is, it's basically and
editor. It's not really an IDE. What Laszlo seems to be
working on (and it's not always easy to tell until you see
it for real) also *sounds* like an editor.
My fear is that this will turn out to just be another Spket,
ie. another editor. With a published grammer delivered
with the product, the forums have indicated there are also
multiple products out there that weren't Laszlo specific
but the editor can grab the grammar and produce something
not to far off from Spket. That's a fairly well covered
market. What the entire Laszlo product current lacks is
a true, visually based IDE - drag and drop of components,
coordinated code and preview screens. That particular part
of the development is exactly what distinguishes the
Flex, Silverlight, and Delphi for PHP products. Laszlo's
productivity is always going to be seen in the market
as a trade off between superior language vs. visual
development until a true IDE comes along.
Now I'd feel one whole heck of a lot better if
someone said to me that a non-visual environment
was required to get to that visual one. And this
non-visual product was just the first step, that
has to get out in the market and be solid before
the visual piece is added. Without that, Laszlo
is going to fall behind, even if its other multi-platform
and XML handling are way ahead on the language side.
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