RevServer deployment on OSX Server

[J. Landman Gay]

On 2/18/11 3:10 AM, Keith Clarke wrote:
> Thanks for the clarification Jaque.
>
> So, my expectations for the shipping version weren't too far off - as
> it would allow development using stacks (as with the desktop apps)
> and upon deployment to the server, a standard browser would be able
> to interact with the UI-specific, stack pages on the server, without
> the need for the rev web plugin.

No, I'm afraid that's impossible unless you use revlets. Browsers don't 
know anything about how to display stacks or their components. They 
wouldn't know what to do with a stack, just as they don't know what to 
do with a Flash file. All a browser knows is that it should direct those 
files to a specified plugin. There is no native support for Flash files 
in a browser, just as there is no native support for LiveCode stacks. I 
think you are confusing client-side and server-side scripting.

Support of stacks in irev just means that you will be able to insert the 
script of a stack (and possibly other objects) into the message 
hierarchy so you can use its handlers in your iRev commands. I didn't 
know it before, but Bjoernke mentioned it might also allow you to 
reference and send images stored in the stack for use in the browser 
(browsers do know how to deal with images.) So that would allow you to 
store all your images in a single stack instead of offloading them 
separately to an images folder on the server.

The server product is much like PHP; it allows you to create dynamic web 
content by using scripts that create HTML on the fly. It does nothing at 
all with the browser display; it can't. The server can only send HTML 
back to the browser, and it is up to the browser to figure out what to 
do with that. If the browser doesn't recognize something, it looks for a 
plugin that can display it; if there is no plugin, you get an error. If 
the content is HTML or something else the browser does understand, it 
renders it and you see a web page.

The server product already does what it's supposed to, and it works 
well. We are missing the ability to insert a stack script as a library, 
but that is easily worked around by copying the script to a text file 
and including it that way. We are also required at present to load all 
images onto the server instead of storing them in a stack file, but that 
is the standard for web development anyway.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com