[Lazarus] The future of desktop

[Paul Breneman]

On 11/30/2013 02:08 AM, Martin Schreiber wrote:
> On Friday 29 November 2013 13:55:10 Michael Schnell wrote:
>>
>> MSEgui has a (supposedly not yet finished) extension called "ifi". Same
>> is supposed to provide a remote GUI via a Byte-pipe. Both the server and
>> the "user" end is a pascal program.
>>
> MSEifi-remote is still experimental because nobody made real applications up
> to now. Local inprocess MSEifi is used in production to separate user
> interface and business logic in MSEgui applications since years. IIRC I even
> made a MSEifi-remote demo-binary especially for you so that you could show
> the principle to your co-workers some years ago. ;-)
>
> How MSEifi-remote works:
>
> - Client is an application independent Free Pascal program with MSEgui/MSEifi-
> library. The client could be realized as browser plug-in (not done up to
> now).
> - Server is a Free Pascal program with the necessary MSEifi connection
> components. The server needs no GUI library elements.
> - The client joins the server by a byte stream connection, currently
> implemented are pipes and sockets.
> - The server sends *.mfm data (the MSEgui equivalent of Lazarus form files) to
> the client. The form data can contain Pascal Script snippets if necessary.
> - The client instantiates the forms/datamodules exactly the same as a normal
> MSEgui application would do -> look, feel and performance of the components
> are the same.
> - Client and server use MSEifi data- and event-components which are linked by
> the MSEifi-remote protocol.
>
> Example:
>
> A user button click triggers firing of an event in a taction component by the
> tbutton.action property, the event is transported over the wire, triggers
> tnoguiaction.onexecute in the server, the server sends a modal form to the
> client, the client shows the modal form, the user enters data which will be
> sent to the data components in the server, the user closes the modal entry
> form, the modalresult will be sent to the server.
>
> So for development of server, client or standalone applications the same
> MSEide+MSEgui RAD-approach can be used. While developping and debugging it is
> possible to run client and server in the same process with
> a "shortcut-connection".
>
> Martin

A *long* time ago I was involved a little with Genotechs in Phoenix and 
they had a (Delphi) program called AstroMark that sounds similar:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Networking/Do-You-Deploy-Thin-or-Thick-Web-Applications/