Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Frontier runtime

Author:Toby Watson
Posted:3/11/1999; 2:21:45 PM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 3/5/99
Msg #:3984 (In response to 3879)
Prev/Next:3983 / 3985

I kinda think of it differently, not as a Frontier runtime, but as a headless Frontier. One with no UI, or minimal (command line).

I agree with Oliver that not being able to deploy soley on Linux is limiting. I can think of quite a few cases where I would like to run Frontier for doing clever stuff alongside Apache on the same Linux machine. No NT or Mac used for deployment. I like Frontier and would like to use it for more things but right now I need an NT server to deploy it and that's often not on.

I think Linux serverFrontier would be attractive, in terms of the way it would affect Frontier's image. Currently it feels very desktop-y if you use a lot of Linux for serving.

Architecturally I think it would be more like ID's Quake. It is always a client-server system even when running on a desktop machine. Actually the Quake analogy is not quite right because the Quake client is so big. So is an X server. I imagine a small desktop client that talks to a full (but headless) Frontier running on a server (or local machine) via whatever protocol.

This is quite distinct from all the interoperability being currently persued. WebEdit and XML-RPC still require the Frontier server to be on NT/Mac.

I understand it's a lot of work, but for me it's definitely a wish.

There may be one attractive part to the clientUI <-> serverFrontier idea. The current Win/Mac product could be evolved to this architecture while still only supporting Win/Mac. Then the serverFrontier should be much more OS independent and could be more easily ported to Linux. This hopefully is more attractive than creating an XWindows version.

Like I said, 'It's a wish'.

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