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Everyone,<br><br>
As so often in the past, this list has NOT disappointed. Thank you all
for your expertise and thoughtful replies.<br><br>
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
:-).<br><br>
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?<br>
<br>
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 .<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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." <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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, <u>the great disadvantage is that you have to learn them, most of
us didn't even finish with metatalk</u>." 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.)<br><br>
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? <br><br>
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?<br><br>
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?<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Thanks,<br><br>
Mark<br><br>
<br>
Mark Lacy<br>
LetterPress Software, Inc.<br>
1770 North Logan, UT 84341<br>
(435) 755-5996 <br>
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