Re: [PROPOSAL] Pivot
+1 (Non-binding) 2009/1/5 Greg Brown gkbr...@mac.com Hello all, The Pivot team would like to present the Pivot toolkit for consideration to the Apache Incubator. We are excited about the prospect of joining the Incubator and are looking forward to your feedback. Thanks, Greg Brown Abstract Pivot (http://pivot-toolkit.org) is an open-source platform for building rich internet applications in Java. Proposal Pivot combines the enhanced productivity and usability features of a modern RIA toolkit with the robustness of the Java platform. Pivot applications are written using a combination of Java and XML and can be run either as an applet or as a standalone, optionally offline, desktop application. Like other modern development platforms, Pivot provides a comprehensive set of foundation classes that together comprise a framework. These classes form the building blocks upon which more complex and sophisticated applications can be built. Pivot was designed to be familiar to web developers who have experience building AJAX applications using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. However, it provides a much richer set of standard widgets than HTML, and allows developers to create sophisticated user experiences much more quickly and easily. Pivot will also seem familiar to Swing developers, as both Swing and Pivot are based on Java2D and employ a model-view-controller (MVC) architecture to separate component data from presentation. However, Pivot includes additional features that make building modern GUI applications much easier, including declarative UI, data binding, effects and transitions, and web services integration. Background The web has become the defacto standard method for application delivery. However, functional requirements for web applications have begun to scale beyond the capabilities of the browser. Even with the addition of scripting support, dynamic element manipulation, and asynchronous server communication, it is difficult to create a user experience in HTML that is truly on par with that of a desktop application. Rich internet application (RIA) development platforms are a means of bridging the gap between the web and desktop experiences. Using browser plugins, these platforms allow developers to build applications that look and feel more like native desktop applications but are deployable via the web, like traditional, HTML-based web applications. RIAs also often incorporate visual effects intended to enhance the overall user experience, such as animations and other dynamic behavior. Adobe Flex (http://www.adobe.com/products/flex) and Microsoft Silverlight (http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight) are arguably the most high-profile of these platforms; others include OpenLaszlo (http://www.openlaszlo.org) and Curl (http://www.curl.com). Pivot itself falls into this category. Rationale Pivot was created for two primary reasons: 1) To provide a viable option for developers who want to build rich client applications in Java. Flex applications are written in ActionScript, an ECMAScript variant; Silverlight applications can be written in either C# or JavaScript; OpenLaszlo applications are written in JavaScript. Pivot allows developers to write rich internet applications in Java (or any other language that can run in a JVM). 2) Provide a freely-available, open source alternative for RIA developers. Flex, Silverlight, and Curl are all proprietary platforms. We believe that a large part of HTML's success was its due to its openness. While we certainly hope that developers will use Pivot to build revenue-generating products and applications, we believe that the platform itself should be free and driven by its technological merits, not by corporate objectives. - Comparision to Other Java-Based RIA Platforms Swing While it is technically feasible to build an RIA in Java using the Swing toolkit (http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing), Pivot offers a number of advantages that make it a more compelling, modern alternative: - Provides an XML markup language called WTKX for simplifying user interface construction. Flex, Silverlight, and OpenLaszlo all offer a similar feature; web developers are comfortable with the markup metaphor, and it can considerably reduce overall development time. - Components are not limited to an atomic preferred size; they are allowed to report a preferred size as constrained by either width or height - this facilitates such features as label wrapping, which Swing does not support. - Defines a consistent data model that is used throughout the entire framework; for example, JSON data returned from a REST service is serialized into the same data structures used by a table view component to present data. No additional translation is necessary, which can significantly improve performance. A common data model also reduces the learning curve for new developers. - Includes built-in support for
Re: [PROPOSAL] Pivot
Hi, On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 3:03 PM, Greg Brown gkbr...@mac.com wrote: ...Sponsors - Champion: Niclas Hedhman - Nominated Mentors: Niclas Hedhman - Sponsoring Entity: Incubator PMC... The proposal looks good to me but IMO needs at least one more mentor, preferably two more. -Bertrand BTW: proposal is at http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/PivotProposal - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [PROPOSAL] Pivot
On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Bertrand Delacretaz bdelacre...@apache.org wrote: The proposal looks good to me but IMO needs at least one more mentor, preferably two more. Totally Agree. Did I hear you volunteering?? ;-) Anybody else? Cheers Niclas - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [PROPOSAL] Pivot
On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Niclas Hedhman nic...@hedhman.org wrote: On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Bertrand Delacretaz bdelacre...@apache.org wrote: The proposal looks good to me but IMO needs at least one more mentor, preferably two more. Totally Agree. Did I hear you volunteering?? ;-) Who, me? Your ears must be over-sensitive to that kind of sounds ;-) I just started mentoring ESME, prefer to concentrate on that one for now. -Bertrand - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [PROPOSAL] Pivot
Count me in. Martijn On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Niclas Hedhman nic...@hedhman.org wrote: On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Bertrand Delacretaz bdelacre...@apache.org wrote: The proposal looks good to me but IMO needs at least one more mentor, preferably two more. Totally Agree. Did I hear you volunteering?? ;-) Anybody else? Cheers Niclas - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org -- Become a Wicket expert, learn from the best: http://wicketinaction.com Apache Wicket 1.3.4 is released Get it now: http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/wicket/1.3. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [PROPOSAL] Pivot
Thanks, Martijn. I've added you to the mentor list. Greg On Tuesday, January 06, 2009, at 08:02AM, Martijn Dashorst martijn.dasho...@gmail.com wrote: Count me in. Martijn On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Niclas Hedhman nic...@hedhman.org wrote: On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Bertrand Delacretaz bdelacre...@apache.org wrote: The proposal looks good to me but IMO needs at least one more mentor, preferably two more. Totally Agree. Did I hear you volunteering?? ;-) Anybody else? Cheers Niclas - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org -- Become a Wicket expert, learn from the best: http://wicketinaction.com Apache Wicket 1.3.4 is released Get it now: http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/wicket/1.3. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [PROPOSAL] Pivot
As expected, I think this project is really interesting and have a potential of succeeding, not because it is a standard, but because it is not... It is not killed by a committee and doesn't need to take into considerations from Sun, IBM and other power players, who are cautiously guarding their investments. The project has come a long way on its own, proving to survive both with and without company backing, and I think there is enough 'flaws' for people to step in a scratch, i.e. growing the developer community, yet it is in state of usefulness already Cheers Niclas On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 10:03 PM, Greg Brown gkbr...@mac.com wrote: Hello all, The Pivot team would like to present the Pivot toolkit for consideration to the Apache Incubator. We are excited about the prospect of joining the Incubator and are looking forward to your feedback. Thanks, Greg Brown Abstract Pivot (http://pivot-toolkit.org) is an open-source platform for building rich internet applications in Java. Proposal Pivot combines the enhanced productivity and usability features of a modern RIA toolkit with the robustness of the Java platform. Pivot applications are written using a combination of Java and XML and can be run either as an applet or as a standalone, optionally offline, desktop application. Like other modern development platforms, Pivot provides a comprehensive set of foundation classes that together comprise a framework. These classes form the building blocks upon which more complex and sophisticated applications can be built. Pivot was designed to be familiar to web developers who have experience building AJAX applications using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. However, it provides a much richer set of standard widgets than HTML, and allows developers to create sophisticated user experiences much more quickly and easily. Pivot will also seem familiar to Swing developers, as both Swing and Pivot are based on Java2D and employ a model-view-controller (MVC) architecture to separate component data from presentation. However, Pivot includes additional features that make building modern GUI applications much easier, including declarative UI, data binding, effects and transitions, and web services integration. Background The web has become the defacto standard method for application delivery. However, functional requirements for web applications have begun to scale beyond the capabilities of the browser. Even with the addition of scripting support, dynamic element manipulation, and asynchronous server communication, it is difficult to create a user experience in HTML that is truly on par with that of a desktop application. Rich internet application (RIA) development platforms are a means of bridging the gap between the web and desktop experiences. Using browser plugins, these platforms allow developers to build applications that look and feel more like native desktop applications but are deployable via the web, like traditional, HTML-based web applications. RIAs also often incorporate visual effects intended to enhance the overall user experience, such as animations and other dynamic behavior. Adobe Flex (http://www.adobe.com/products/flex) and Microsoft Silverlight (http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight) are arguably the most high-profile of these platforms; others include OpenLaszlo (http://www.openlaszlo.org) and Curl (http://www.curl.com). Pivot itself falls into this category. Rationale Pivot was created for two primary reasons: 1) To provide a viable option for developers who want to build rich client applications in Java. Flex applications are written in ActionScript, an ECMAScript variant; Silverlight applications can be written in either C# or JavaScript; OpenLaszlo applications are written in JavaScript. Pivot allows developers to write rich internet applications in Java (or any other language that can run in a JVM). 2) Provide a freely-available, open source alternative for RIA developers. Flex, Silverlight, and Curl are all proprietary platforms. We believe that a large part of HTML's success was its due to its openness. While we certainly hope that developers will use Pivot to build revenue-generating products and applications, we believe that the platform itself should be free and driven by its technological merits, not by corporate objectives. - Comparision to Other Java-Based RIA Platforms Swing While it is technically feasible to build an RIA in Java using the Swing toolkit (http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing), Pivot offers a number of advantages that make it a more compelling, modern alternative: - Provides an XML markup language called WTKX for simplifying user interface construction. Flex, Silverlight, and OpenLaszlo all offer a similar feature; web developers are comfortable with the markup metaphor, and it can considerably reduce overall development time. - Components are not limited to an atomic preferred size;
