Web programming progress report

[Mark Lacy]

Everyone,

As so often in the past, this list has NOT disappointed. Thank you all for 
your expertise and thoughtful replies.

Dan's was the very first reply that I received and he clearly and directly 
laid out for me the basic approaches to web development. His over 
simplification put the topic at a level that I could (just barely) 
comprehend. I am grateful to him for that simplification. He also very 
correctly understood that my needs require a solution that one or two 
programmers can implement. At least within our working lifetimes :-).

Sadhu, seems to have read my thoughts in saying,  "I think the world's 
programming tools have pretty much *not* caught up yet to what you want to 
do." He also caught my business reality when he wrote, "the browser is a 
lousy UI, [but] the world has come to accept it, so, the client is aways 
right, eh?" As he has alluded, not always right, but often hard to argue 
with. Not that we don't try, eh?

In my un-trained ignorance of many of the details of the client-server 
environment what I think I really want is to develop an application in 
Metacard, upload my application to a server, and have people run my 
application "within a standard browser" just like my artists who use 
Macromedia's Flash for animations are doing. Consequently, I have looked at 
Flash but I hate to give up the card metaphor and the English-like 
scripting of Metacard for Flash's time-line metaphor and seemingly awkward 
Actionscript along with any other limitations it may have the I am not yet 
even knowledgeable enough to know .

Pierre, and most of the rest of you responding to my request for a web 
solution have encouraged me to examine another dimension of Metacard that 
so far I have only been vaguely aware. Since  I am a devoted fan of this 
great tool for its power and simplicity this immediately attracts my attention.

Andu offered a solution of: Apache + MC cgis + html templates + sqlite as 
database. He later wrote, "Bottom line is that all that is needed is a 
database, a processing and transport engine an a presentation tool. If the 
amount of data is not large and a browser is not demanded, metacard could 
do all 3 of them, otherwise a database and a web server need to be added. 
My general principle is to use as few components as possible to minimize 
the breaking points."

This helps put further perspective on my question since I am in total 
agreement with his philosophy of using as few components as possible. 
LetterPress has always kept its computer-based instructional applications 
as simple as possible technology-wise and focused on quality content and 
meaningful user interactions to support learning. Our amount of data 
generally is not large but our current challenge is that many new projects 
do demand a browser.

Andu further wrote, "Languages like PHP have the great advantage of being 
able to talk to several databases, work as Apache modules and be free, the 
great disadvantage is that you have to learn them, most of us didn't even 
finish with metatalk." Bingo, he has described me accurately, I don't 
really want to learn other languages, I haven't even finished mastering 
metatalk (though I have accomplished a lot with it through self-training 
and the help of this list. Again, a testament to the simplicity and power 
of Metacard.)

Monte endorsed Andu's solution and in his several responses tantalized me 
into thinking Metacard can be leveraged to do what I want. My personal 
concern is wether or not as an individual developer with my limited 
resources can I leverage Metacard to do this? Of, course I have to take 
responsibility to learn and study a great deal more on my own but, would 
someone be willing to elaborate a little more on how one goes about 
implementing the solution Andu and Monte have presented?

I have searched the archive and there are so many posts on Metacard CGI's 
that I haven't been able to sort out the ones that might orientate a web 
novice like myself on how to get started. Maybe someone remembers a 
previous discussion of this solution in the archives they could point me to 
or suggest some search terms for finding them?

Perhaps someone has developed a small sample application with some 
explanation of this Metacard web approach that could be studied as a 
example of this implementation?

With a bigger user base I would suggest the book title, "Web Programming in 
Metacard for Dummies," but until it's published I really  appreciate those 
of you with so much experience sharing your knowledge with users like 
myself who have a lot to learn and are eager to do so.

Thanks,

Mark


Mark Lacy
LetterPress Software, Inc.
1770 North Logan, UT 84341
(435) 755-5996
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