New on this list but not a newbie

[Alain Farmer]

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
farmer at ufp.uqam.ca

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