On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 6:42 PM, Daniel Narvaez <dwnarv...@gmail.com> wrote: > I might not have yet made explicit what a web application provides on the > top of an html page loaded in a browser, which is what we get with 1. Taking > a look to the Chromium documentation is a good way to get an idea of it. > > http://developer.chrome.com/trunk/apps/api_index.html
Thanks, I was waiting for someone to succinctly explain the perceived benefit of using Chrome as a backend for this project, and this seems to be it. One way to think about this is that we are used to Python, which has a nice standard library. But javascript basically doesn't have that. And this Chrome API provides some kind of equivalent. For this discussion, we might divide the Chrome API into 2 different parts 1. General utility functions (e.g. i18n, events) 2. Integration with low level system functions (e.g. bluetooth) I would say we have multiple alternatives for #1. e.g. qooxdoo is one that I am familiar with. So the real benefit of the Chrome thing is the system integration? Is that something really needed for Sugar? It would be necessary if we were to port *all* Sugar activities to javascript, but I am not sure if that is our goal. There are certainly a lot of things that can be done without such system access. I also have some other concerns about using Chrome as a backend (please correct any inaccuracies): 1. We have to accept all constraints of Chrome - both present and future. We have found two already: the challenges of handling of multiple versions, and the challenges of making this system work without having chrome running in the background all the time. 2. From my limited understanding, Chrome/Chromium is technically an open source project, since code is made available, but does not fit under many more definitions of "open source project". It's not something that is developed in the open with decisions run past the community etc. That doesn't fit the Sugar model very well. 3. I see this project as a way of taking us closer to Sugar (in some sense) on Android. Can Chrome webapps work as first-class citizens on Android? > (Hopefully they will some day converge between browsers!). There is already convergence in the "utility function" part of such APIs - for example you can take qooxdoo and use all of its API on any browser. I think it is only a matter of time until some kind of system emerges that provides a browser-independent API to low level system functions as well. (or maybe we already have that: gobject-introspection, which can be used in javascript?) Daniel _______________________________________________ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel