I feel that we should treat web apps as we do other forms of app; as
legacy systems we have to interoperate with.
Perhaps we should take a look at how we can provide the same
advantages as web-apps, without all of the nastyness. Core Object,
for example, should allow remote access so you can easily log into
your Étoilé desktop from any other Étoilé machine on the same
network. We should also allow this connection to work using SSL
client certificates (perhaps on a USB keychain), so the more paranoid
users can have two-factor authentication.
Of course, many of the machines we might want to use will not be
running Étoilé. In fact, a lot will be running Windows. Since
GNUstep now runs on Windows, it might be nice if we could have a full-
screen Étoilé workspace app that could run on a Windows box and
connect to a real Étoilé system. Another (complementary) option
might be to provide a LiveCD-like Xen image that could be run from a
flash drive and store a cache of the user's most recently /
frequently accessed objects.
As a last resort, we might consider providing a packaged Java VNC
client or X server so that people can use their desktop from a browser.
Since we get distributed objects for free, we have a considerable
advantage in terms of collaboration. With a good architecture, we
can have different views of the same data running on different
machines, which gives us the other key advantage of web apps.
It would also be nice if we could add the ability to 'throw' views of
objects (or copies of views) to other users displays. This is
something that is not really done well by classic or web apps. It
could be done quite simply by extending view permissions to another
user and then sending them an XMPP message (or email, or whatever)
with an etoile:// URL pointing at the object. The recipient would
then be asked if they wished to view the shared object, and have it
launch if the answer was yes.
Okay, I'm rambling, so I'm going to stop now.
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