Re: Web Wishes

On 01/07/2013 14:50 , François REMY wrote:
>> In other words, let people innovate in apps in small chunks, rather
>> than require someone take over a large project (or even find unlikely
>> extension points in an existing one). It's not just the technology
>> that should be extensible.
>
> Okay, this is quite interesting. I didn't see it in that way.
>
> I think this is not the exact same thing as web intents, which I really
> see as a way to launch a new app, but in fact a way to create a GAC
> (global assembly catalog) of Web Components with a standardized set of
> interaction contracts among them so that apps can simply rely on
> existings components instead of shipping their own. In a sense, it looks
> a lot like COM/ActiveX for web. This is indeed very innovative and
> interesting, and I can clearly see how this can fit in the spectrum of
> this CG.

No offence François, I really look forward to having a beer with you one 
of these days and all, but...

Bleeeuharghhhhh!

I don't think we want to have a WebGAC of WebCOM. I just want URLs 
corresponding to a service that can be discovered and then messaged with.

Yes, I realise that that's a *lot* like a high-level description of COM 
(or any variants). But the details can, IMHO, be an awful lot simpler. 
And starting from a simplified form of Intents (which on Android are 
meant to enable composable apps, at least up to a point) is IMHO more 
conducive to something implementable and usable than to even think about 
COM.

But maybe there's a simple side of COM that I have yet to discover :)

> The difficulty here is probably not so much defining the meta API
> (Wish/Intent/...) that handles the communication between the components,
> but probably the specific contracts because those contracts are really
> dependent on the specifics of the interaction expected from the web
> component. Even a text editor would probably surface rather complex
> contract with things like selection capabilities, getting the text back,
> context menu actions, tooltips...

Yes. And let a thousand grassroot standards bloom. I reckon this has 
something to do with what we're about :)

-- 
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ - @robinberjon

Received on Monday, 1 July 2013 13:16:17 UTC