On Nov 5, 2005, at 7:21 PM, Bill Stephenson wrote:
If there were a perl module that could let perl CGI scripts interact
with a native Mac OS X window, that displayed web formated content
like Safari (or perhaps a hacked FireFox), but also gave you access to
the "Main Menu", then any web programmer could port their work to a
native Mac OS X (like) application with little effort.
Now, if you consider the different aspects of current web apps and the
features that you can use now on OS X with the built-in Apache, like
MySQL, DHTML, CSS, AJAX, Graphics Libraries (GD), accessing local or
remote data for use in your application, you have a rich collection of
APIs that leverage a huge base of existing programmers skills to
create Native Mac OS X apps, for sale, or free. If they could just
package it.
It's just something that feels so close...
Hmm... Looks like Adobe is doing something very much like this now.
Check out Adobe's "Apollo".
"Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system runtime being
developed by Adobe that allows developers to leverage their existing
web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build
and deploy Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) to the desktop." (source:
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo:DeveloperFAQ)
It looks like a perl/cgi script might be used to provide local or
remote data and other files to Apollo applications but the API is not
yet complete (according to Adobe's web site) and I haven't had a chance
to read the docs in detail or play with the dev kit.
I think it's worth finding out more about how Apple's built-in perl
might interact with Apollo though. It sure brings up many interesting
(and even some "perfectly horrible" ;) possibilities.
Kindest Regards,
--
Bill Stephenson
