From: Chad Fowler <chad@...>
Date: 2004-04-03T02:36:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Borges - coupled to html interface?

On Sat, 3 Apr 2004, Its Me wrote:

# Why is Borges (or Seaside) coupled to an html/browser interface?
# 
# It seems that the Component model (composable logical 'panes' with
# application logic) and the modelessness and free 'Back' button
# functionality, could both be useful outside the context of an HTML browser.
# 
# It seems that Components, rather than generating HTML through a renderer,
# could generate some kind of logical 'Interactor' descriptions. Different
# Renderers could then map this differently:
# 
#   - HTML renderer:
#      - map to (a part of) an html page, or to some sequence of (part of)
# html page
#   - Other UI renderer:
#      - different mapping e.g. to native widgets
# 
# A little bit like XForms.
# 


I'm really only a Seaside dabbler (and one with a pretty bad memory, 
unfortunately), but I don't think that Seaside itself is hard-wired to 
HTML.  Conventionally, each component's #renderContentOn: method accepts a 
WAHTMLRenderer, but I don't know of a reason that you couldn't pass in 
some other kind of renderer of your own making.

I seem to remember someone (maybe it was Avi's RubyConf 2002 talk) 
demonstrating the same application working as a command line app and as a 
web app.  I might have made that up, though.

Chad