John Gage wrote:
>> http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/99/08/10/049200.shtml
>
>contains this quote, "Why should Slashdot and other DB driven sites rely
>on a servers processing power when the client machine is mostly idle? I
>think colaboration between client side and server side scripters in an
>OSS context could make things much more efficient."
It definitely can.
>This goes again to the issue of RAD. Most clients today have the power
>to operate the Defense Department, and they're only going to become more
>powerful. How do we take advantage of this easily and quickly?
Encode generic tools in library scripts separable from individual
applications.
>A phenomenally useful client task would be to take data off the server
>and display it graphically; however, this is exactly what Javascript
>cannot do, I think. Scalable vector graphics doesn't do it either: the
>data has already been processed on the server side. What is needed is a
>client that takes raw numbers off the server's database and folds them
>into a wizard graph. Very efficient.
I seem to recall answering this very question and others for you 6-10 months
ago, including an example of drawing a sine curve in javascript (I think it
might have even been animated). Bar charts, scatter plots, and many other
types of graphs can be easily done using positioned elements. Bar charts
don't even require that. They can be nicely done by simply adjusting the
dimensions of a series of images.
What limitations do you see with scalable vector graphics? You should be
able to do quite a lot with since you can use javascript to generate whole
series of web pages including any sort of components.
---------------------------------------
Jim Self
Manager and Chief Developer
VMTH Computer Services, UC Davis
(http://www.vmth.ucdavis.edu/us/jaself)
