On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 8:17 PM, David McNab <davidmcna...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree - Leo is probably way more than 100% feature-complete. It's also > been a tremendous comfort to me and my solo programming efforts over the > years. > Glad to hear it. However, Leo is still imprisoned in the > standalone-software-installed-on-desktop paradigm, and thus stuck in a > rapidly-disappearing era. > Yes, web-based services are increasingly important, but unless I am greatly mistaken most programmers still use laptop and desktop computers and Emacs, vim, Eclipse and the like. I don't see that changing anytime soon, and if it does change it will likely be the result of tools that don't yet exist. Furthermore, security problems are troubling with any web-based tool. The biggest problems I've had with Leo to date have been: > > - Gaps in backward incompatibility - serious corruption and data loss > issues when editing years-old Leo files, something which has tripped me up > many times > > The work around is to use the old versions of Leo to recover the data, then copy and paste to a newer version of Leo. I have no plans to retrofit any further backward compatibility code. > Incompatibility with team environments - inability for more than one > developer to work on files at once > I can't use Leo on my tablet or smartphone, unless I screenshare in to a > desktop running it. Unless the tablet is on a LAN near the desktop, and has > a 10" screen, this is unworkable. > Supporting tablets or smartphones requires support for Python and PyQt on those platforms. Iirc, Ville created a Leo reader for Android, but I could be mistaken > > *I would suggest that Leo's future lies in a complete rebuild, cloud from > the ground up. Firstly, a decent API into a cloud-based Leo engine. > Secondly, decent GUI clients on Web (Ember.JS? Pyjamas? AngularJS?) and > Android/iOS.* > What to say about this... Perhaps the best analogy for this kind of product is the split of IPython into the Jupyter project: https://jupyter.org/ The IPython/Jupyter project is one of the most successful Python project in existence. It has received millions of dollars of research funding over the years, including a large recent grant of over $6 million, iirc. There is a huge amount of engineering in this project--far beyond my ability. In particular, I call your attention to the security model. It's crucial for this project, and it's crucial that it be absolutely solid. I am not in a position to undertake any kind of security-related code. In theory, one could imaging forking IPython/Jupyter into a Leo-centric project, but forking other people's projects seldom ends well. And I don't have any energy for this. Alternatively, one could imagine trying to convince the Fernando Perez to add Leonine feature to Jupyter, but I would not be interested if I were he :-) There's too little overlap of purposes. The cloud-based paradigm, for me, would do away with the concept of a leo > "document". Instead, it would focus on a 'view', which may contain one or > more nodes. Nodes would exist outside of views, and be able to reference > other nodes recursively. > Not a bad idea, but I have no magic wand to make it happen. The APIs could then be supported by widgets in the main client-side > toolkits, to allow web apps to embed Leo editing widgets with ease. > > Files are where it gets tricky. Non-Leo-users absolutely detest the Leo > sentinels. But updating a node tree to reflect changes in a file outside > Leo is a programming task beyond merely painful. > And other people's files are what make security so important. Weren't you the one who pointed this out years ago? Or maybe it was Paul Patterson. > However, if Leo is > > made to be as team-friendly as Google Docs (where you can even see > teammates' cursors in different colours moving around the document), there > will be virtually no need to edit files from outside the Leo environment. > > Again - desktop is dying. Leo *has* to go cloud! > Desktops aren't dead yet, and won't likely fade away until well after I personally am gone. I will consider porting Leo in the cloud when easy to use tools for doing so exists. I don't believe I will long enough to move Leo to the cloud with the existing tools. Edward -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to leo-editor+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to leo-editor@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
