Hello everyone, I am new on this list but, judging by the glance I took at the archives of this mailing list, I'm going to feel right at home. I noticed, for instance, that my three buddies from "OPN" are very active on this list ; specifically Xavier Bury, David Bovill and Monte Goulding. What's shaking guys? What became of our MetaCard-based Jabber client? This is not just an off-hand question, BTW, because the lab I work for is desperately seeking a Web-based chat whose content is XML and, thereby, interoperable with other Web-based clients for other communication means, forming a cohesive whole where all the different components of a complete groupware solution interoperate seamlessly. All the better if this solution can also interoperate with other existing chats like Jabber does. You were dead-on, David, about the relevance of Jabber.
Things in the lab I work for are at a turning-point right now. One of our objectives is to create a communication, collaboration and E-learning platform where the components can be mixed-and-matched at will, forming whole systems ( value-added solutions ) whose components interoperate seemlessly. This objective is not the issue though. Nor is open-source versus closed-source the issue because we have definitely opted for OPEN source, adherence to as many open standards as possible, and multi-platform deployment. The turning-point I alluded to has to do with *HOW* we should go about achieving it. To make it multi-platform, many of my colleagues are arguing that we should make it entirely web-based. You know the drill : PHP, mySQL, and that sort of thing. Technologies that are indeed very mainstream these days among web developers. And most of them are open-source and free of charge. There is no denying that this is a "safe" and "rational" approach, but genuine breakthru innovation requires more than this. I have been doing this web stuff for about 7 years now, and I've tried countless pure-Web solutions, and still none of the Web stuff compares to the interactivity and performance that can be achieved with *real* software. Particularly software like MetaCard which is as multi-platform as any existing web-browser; for playback (like the Web) as well as authoring (unlike the Web); client-side as well as server-side (just like Java but incomparably simpler). Web pages, even with JavaScript in them, are severely limited in terms of client-side interactivity. You cannot easily allow the users to move things around, do drag-and-drop stuff, and so on. I could go on-and-on about the downsides of the Web versus MetaCard's upsides, but I don't want to turn this post into an essay. Besides it's a moot issue because MetaCard is web-savvy, e.g. it can do anything that a web-browser can in terms of accessing the Internet. The only web thing that MetaCard cannot do as well as web-browsers can is to render HTML (which I suggested to Scott many months ago, but he rejected this feature-request). The Java-based version of FreeCard, OTOH, will be able to do this when it's released, in which case what the Web offers becomes a subset of what our xCard can offer. On the development side of things, a scripted xCard is easier for most non-professionals to build on their own than all of the Web stuff based on PHP, let alone programming something multi-platform with a traditional programming language and development environment. Scripting with an xTalk instead of JavaScript or VBscript and/or one or more server-side languages. Precise WYSIWYG placement instead of the approximate layout suggested by a markup language. And so much more. The point of all of this is that I am trying to convince the lab I work for to opt for an xCard approach (breakthru) instead of the web-only approach (conformity & mediocrity) that so many are resorting to now. My presentations on this issue have had a definite impact on my colleagues, but they are still hesitating a bit because not-conforming to what everyone is doing is perceived as risky. I believe that providing them with a MC-based Jabber-client that is XML-compliant would put them over the top and, more generally, other Web-savvy MC-based solutions would also be persuasive and, ultimately, a large collection of existing stacks to demonstrate the versatility and usefulness of an xCard would be nice too ( IOW a "MetaCard Pantechnicon" ). Just so you know where my 'head' is at, Alain Farmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search new jobs daily now http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard