[Lazarus] Target Survey

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Wed, 20 Jul 2016, Michael Schnell wrote:

> On 07/20/2016 11:59 AM, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
>> I never really understood the need for that - but then I don't know 
>> MSEgui very well. What I mean is, X11 already natively supports 
>> running applications remotely. Also with the popularity of Remote 
>> Desktop, VNC, TeamViewer (which is absolutely brilliant and even does 
>> session recordings in unbelievable small file sizes), I think all 
>> based are already covered pretty well.
>
> All these options use an external complex graphics library in the remote 
> "embedded" target.
>
> The device is a thingy that nowadays in "new speak" is called and 
> "Internet of Things" node. Hence a potentially very small and needing to 
> be very cheap and extremely  energy efficiently running device. So it 
> does not feature any hardware allowing for displaying a GUI, and the OS 
> and library infrastructure does not support any GUI work. Microsoft 
> recently hopped on that bus by providing "Windows IoT" for free that in 
> fact is Windows 10 with all GUI stuff stripped off. (A Colleague of mine 
> was able to run Windows Services (that don't have a GUI) written in 
> Delphi on Win IoT running on an Intel CPU based "embedded" board.)
>
> So, my original (some 5 years old) motivation for the said enhancement 
> to the LCL was running Lazarus- (or having been Delphi-) projects on 
> such a board (usually called "embedded" at that time, the infrastructure 
> of which does not provide any support for a GUI), after developing them 
> on a PC in the "normal" RAD  way (i.e. porting them from existing 
> projects). Here having a Widget Type "remote GUI" would be extremely 
> helpful for testing/examining and occasionally configuring the device.

Why would you not do this with a HTML interface ?

The browsers are so powerful these days that your solution is hopelessly
outdated even before you started.

The added benefit is that no installation is needed. 
And you can control your device from anywhere: PC, tablet, smartphone. 
If you write your own GUI (client/server or not), you will need a 
'client' for each of these devices

In my line of work, a starting a new PC/Mac-based program is simply no longer 
an option. It's web-based or you're doomed.

Michael.