[Lazarus] FCL-Web and new WebDesign packages

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, Bee Jay wrote:

>> I finally decided to bite the bullet, and to dump the idea of extpascal and
>> the likes for the moment. All these conversion tools have the same 
>> problems:
>> - Always behind the latest versions of the corresponding JS toolkits.
>> - They only do a subset of what the JS toolkits support natively.
>
> Yes! It happens to ExtPascal each time ExtJS releases a new version.
>
>> - For anything reasonably advanced, you need to write JavaScript anyway.
>
> It's sad but true. While I believe it can be avoided for any common purposes, 
> but in some advance optimization it just can't be. Just like the way we're 
> using assembler in pascal. But it should be 1-5 percents of all cases.

For ExtPascal, it was true for every page I wanted to make, so that is far
over 5% :(

>
>> I have the first server-side things ready, namely: the server-side
>> interface to ExtJS's data API. It's a breeze in FPC, and lightning fast.
>
> It would be better if the server side interface is plain and independent to 
> any JS framework API. The interface result then could be "translated" to any 
> client side API, or SOAP, or WST, or whatever is required format by the 
> client side framework using some kind of API dictionary or something similar.

That is how I am doing it. I'm just using ExtJS as a sample case for 1
implementation.

>> At a later stage the following will be added:
>> - Write the client in Pascal, but transformed to JS using a code converter.
>> (as Morfik or GWT does)
>
> This is my dream. It would be better if the converter is able to provide 
> library binding to any JS framework out there, at least the popular ones i.e. 
> ExtJS, jQueryUI, qooxdoo, etc. So we don't need to code on our own JS UI 
> widgets.

This is the idea.

> This is one of major flaw of Morfik. Though I knew what I want, I 
> have very limited time and skill to develop it by myself while the deadline 
> for the demanded application can't be delayed. That's why I have to satisfy 
> with any ready to use tools available for pascal now, which is ExtPascal. Now 
> come the new one: fcl-web.

fcl-web exists since a long time. It was never promoted or actively
developed, but that will change now.

>
>> I've contracted Mattias Gaertner to do the first step for the code
>> converter. Sources will be donated to and released with FPC.
>> I also wrote a JavaScript parser, which will be introduced in FPC's SVN
>> shortly.
>
> Many had tried it already i.e. Powtils, ExtPascal, but the development stucks 
> somewhere. I'm looking forward to test it! Thank you for the effort.

I'll try to make a sample application so everyone can see what can be done
with very little work.

Michael.