Re: [be] future bibledit

[Neil Mayhew]

On 2010-03-09 4:39 AM Dan Dennison wrote:
> Everyone has their own favorite toolkit, but for cross-platform 
> support with offline capability, the Google Web Toolkit fits the bill. 
> Something you may really like about GWT is its use of 
> Model-View-Controller-Presenter. That is, you can use a similar 
> structural methodology that you use now in GTK+ with a web application.

Take a look at Pyjamas, which is an implementation of GWT in Python. It 
even has Pyjamas-Desktop which allows you to run Pyjamas applications 
locally in a pure Python environment, without the compilation step to 
JavaScript. This is very helpful for debugging.

> GWT also has an Eclipse plugin, so you don't even have to leave your 
> current environment.

Yes, but you do have to program in Java. I think programming in Python 
would be a much shallower learning curve, and also more productive and 
compact.

> Finally, the biggest drawback to an HTTP-based Bible Editor without 
> offline capability is its local size requirements. Having to run a web 
> server, database server, and web browser is too much for our users 
> right now. They don't have laptops that are that powerful yet. That 
> said, they might in 5-10 years, and we'll be happy it exists then.

I would like to second this. Low-power computing on netbooks and 
smartphones is becoming very important for enabling local people to take 
on a major share of the translation work. Although some may be using a 
computer in an internet café, for which a web-based application would be 
ideal, many others will be working disconnected on their own, low-power 
hardware. I believe the availability of netbooks and tablets, especially 
in the $200 price range, with built-in cellular internet for email, will 
reduce the use of internet cafés considerably.

Therefore we need an editing environment that runs snappily on a machine 
with 512MB RAM and a 1GHz processor.

--Neil