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

Re: Hertzfeld on CGI and RPC

Author:Tom Fuerstner
Posted:7/12/2000; 3:23:30 AM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 7/10/2000
Msg #:18474 (In response to 18465)
Prev/Next:18473 / 18475

As a matter of fact General Magics Telescript is the reason i make my living now with Userland Frontier. Even though i know Frontier since version 2 my real involvement started with Aretha.

The same time Dave decided to make Frontier free available through the web i had to evaluate Telescript (at this time called Tabriz )for a big european TELCO. I remember it very clearly that i was some kind of shocked when i realized that Magic Cap and Telescript are more or less a further developed and networked Hypercard ported to Unix for scaling and performance reasons. After two weeks exploring the system under solaris it became obvious that the complete Telescript environment tried rebuilding the web as a closed global network. Although the system itself was brilliant and innovative it had to fail because it was simply the wrong thing at the wrong time. To many propriatary protocols in a time everyone else was tuned in on tcp/ip and http. Finally i recommended not to implement the system and its services.

Inspired by the system i started to build a Telescript mockup with Hypercard and Frontier using Frontier.root as Telescript-Places and Frontiers Agent and the NetEventsuite for sending small Usertalk-Code all around. and big surprise: it worked perfectly.

More or less the same way we do it today with xml-rpc, which works even better and is completely OS-agnostic. But i also know how complicate it is to communicate the power and possibilities of this system.

Never, never foreget how conservative computer engineers are. The reason is that the want to stay in control permanently what means a natural contradiction to beeing innovative. Here at the Center for Art and Media we are actually presenting our Frontier based projects up to two times every day for more than four months. Without any exception people are impressed and at the same time the are frightened. The efficiency and the elegance of the systems raises to many questions.

Why haven't i heard of this system before. Does it scale. How well does it work with Oracle. Can i also program it with Java or python. Why doesn't it run under Linux. When will there be a Unix-version. etc..... and finally the MEGA-META-QUESTION: when this system is that good, why hasn't it been bought by one of the big IT-companys ???

For many of this questions we have meanwhile the right answer. Especially since we consider Frontier as the perfect Add-On and extension to any Content-Management-System and to streamline digital workflows.

My personnel lesson from all this never to forget how easy it is to develop some kind of professional blindness. This also very true for SOAP. Most of the programmers and engineers i know have heard the the media hype about it and maybe even read the white peapers. but this is worth nothing if you haven't seen SOAP or xml-rpc in action. So many people are talking pro or contra SOAP without having the real idea about it.

With its very original Outline and Table-Metapher Frontier is more than other systems predestined to visualize the power of SOAP if it is shown to people in front of a computer running Frontier.

So instead of accusing someone of beeing ignorant about Frontier, XML-RPC and so on, maybe Dave you should try to optimise the way you communicate about it. Not everything can be delivered through a weblog. Real live human interaction ist still the most convincing thing.

By Tom

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