I don't disagree with anything you say, I was just trying to bring new people up to speed on why we are where we are.
I'm hopeful this discussion may lead to something good! On 2010-03-03, at 12:31, [email protected] wrote: > That's one way to look at it. The other is: how many people have stopped > using OpenLaszlo since there are no better tools available. And then, how > many more people would use it and even buy Webtop if there was better tool > support for the platform. > > The "problem" is: if more companies would use OpenLaszlo how would Laszlo > financially profit from that? It looks like Laszlo isn't willing to invest > into an IDE to drive adoption of OpenLaszlo. > > I've been working on a Webtop project for a very large company in Europe in > the past months. They are already talking about replacing Webtop with a > technology which has a larger developer base: Flex or a combination of > Flash/Ajax. Maybe it's different in the US, but in Europe you'll have a hard > time selling OpenLaszlo based products with the tiny developer community we > have here. > > I believe it's a mistake to not spend the money on an IDE, with a visual > builder, without a visual builder I don't care. > > Look at mobile app development: iPhone, Android, Palm webOS: good tools and > IDEs everywhere. Xcode, Eclipse plug-ins, and even cool concept like the > complete browser based IDE Palm came up with. > > As cool as the LZX language and the OpenLaszlo compiler are, having to learn > a new language without good IDE support is something many developers and > project managers don't accept any more. At least step-through debugging is a > must-have, even for script languages. > > Raju > ------------------------ > > -----Original Message----- > From: "Ryan R. LaMothe" <[email protected]> > Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 08:02:49 > To: P T Withington<[email protected]> > Cc: <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Laszlo-user] Full-featured IDE for OpenLaszlo? > > What market research? > > -- > Ryan R. LaMothe > > On Mar 3, 2010, at 7:49 AM, P T Withington wrote: > >> On 2010-02-28, at 02:51, [email protected] wrote: >> >>> I've been using OpenLaszlo for about 6 months now, so I am >>> certainly not an expert. And I don't want to sound like a >>> complainer. But I must say, I am REALLY baffled at the lack of a >>> full-featured IDE (or plugin) for OpenLaszlo. I really like OL, >>> and I want to develop with it. But the lack of IDE support is >>> really a drawback, compared to other current development >>> environments . And I have seen this sentiment mentioned frequently >>> by others. With the seemingly-strong community out there, I would >>> expect a nice full-featured IDE available, sponsored by OL. >> >> OpenLaszlo is sponsored primarily by Laszlo Systems. Laszlo Systems >> uses OpenLaszlo as a platform for a number of commercial projects. >> I think Laszlo would create an IDE if it made business sense for >> them, but it seems it does not: Their own developers have not >> expressed a need for an IDE, and their market research indicates >> that they would not be able to recoup the cost of creating and IDE. >> There actually have been several efforts to create an IDE, but the >> previous two reasons have prevented anything from ever being >> completed. >> >> I'll also echo Norm's comment: visual layout editors are only one >> approach to the problem (and not clearly the best approach). Once >> you start thinking about your problem more abstractly, I think you >> will find that it is easy (and more robust) to express your layout >> in terms of constraints. We've all run across (unresizable) dialog >> boxes that looked great on the 640x480 screen they were visually >> "designed" on but are now unusably microscopic on today's high-pixel- >> count displays. > >
