HALManager idea ?

[Robert Welsh]

Guys,

I've been exchanging email with Ian all day and apart from getting me up
and running with xPL (finally got a couple of apps talking) I been
bouncing around the idea of "platform indepedance" for
xplHAL(Manager).

Ian has explained that you've got xHCP in place which means that so long
as a platform has accessed to an xplHAL then we can regard the
"manager"
(read GUI) piece independantly.

John B is working on a perl implementation of xplHAL meaning all the
Linux and MacOS bods out there will eventually have a script engine.
However they'll still be lacking the lovely front-end afforded to
Windows users in the form of xplHALManager.

There's a couple of ways this could be addressed - and I'm sounding out
some ideas from you guys.

We could write a browser based front end to it (maybe using PHP, though
I'd prefer JSP) - giving us a very lightweight GUI, with no client
install required - and remote access into the bargain. However, these
are never as slick as stand-alone GUI apps.

For a standalone GUI app, I was considering writing an application using
Java (Swing). This would then be runnable on Windows, MacOS and Linux.
It can also be "skinned" to make it look native to the running OS
or
Window Manager. Granted it'll never be as nippy as true native app, like
HALManager, but it would be a write-once solution.

Personally I quite like the latter idea - and in all honesty, I'm
looking for a little Java project anyway - but I'm open to discussion.

Cheers,
Rob