question, and Master Image
(* There are other similar frameworks for Java and mod_perl as well. *)
Do you mean similar to .NET, or to my "ideal" solution?
The general solution, I have come to tenatively conclude, is to maintain the "master image" (MI) of the interface (widgets, forms, widget content, etc.) on the server. You don't write to the client directly, but to the MI, and then echo the MI to the client as needed. For regular CGI-like flow, you probably have to echo the entire MI to the client each time, since HTML forms were not originally designed to be incrementally altered. However, in a more GUI-friendly approach, you only echo the parts of the MI that changed back to the client.
Whether the MI is stored (on server) via XML, objects, linked lists, or tables is a secondary issue. (The advantage of tables over objects is that if you are using a load/unload paradigm, like CGI, then the table stays there between calls, but you would have to recreate the object web {including instances} if using OOP to store the MI. Perhaps Smalltalk can pull it off, but in other OOPL's it is a bit more difficult.)
Conceptually, it is a lot like the Cytrix/PC-Anywhere approach where the master image (bitmap) is on the server, except that the "primatives" are GUI widgets specs and *not* image pixels. This avoids having to send every cursor movement back and forth between the client and the server.
I have been giving these issues a lot of thot lately.
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oop.ismad.com
