Jody Winston <jody@sccsi.com>, wrote:

I have a project which fits very well with Zope's view of the world, except for the client side GUI[1]. I need the ability to directly manipulate objects with a minimum amount of traffic going back to the server[2]. I'm currently leaning toward using Java applets that use a CORBA like protocol with Swing[3].

Suppose you write IDL for the "rich" interactions, and use Fnorb or ILU to build a server which implements those interactions using ZPublisher.Client; the client side would then be a CORBA-enabled Java applet. Would that fit your model? I have been considering a similar idea, at least in part to allow some of the "rich editing" that the WYSIWIG thread has been discussing.

The Java solution solves the interaction issues, but cuts out Zope as a method of getting data to the Java applet. The questions are: o Any other ideas besides Java to do the client side work? o If, I'm stuck using Java should I add a protocol such as NTTP-NG to Zope? o How well does Zope without Apache serve up applets?

Footnotes: [1] HTML isn't going to cut it.

[2] One example of this mode of interaction would be a plot. The user creates a plot and interacts by clicking and selecting the plotted objects. Another example is sweeping out a region with a mouse.

[3] It may be HTTP-NG or IIOP.

Jody Winston

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