[Python-Dev] Google Wave as a developer communication tool

[David Bolen]

Aahz <aahz at pythoncraft.com> writes:

> It sounds like Wave requires a high-powered browser, similar to Google
> Maps.  That makes me -1 because I want to continue using Lynx.

I'm not sure - I think you can implement your own choices at different
points.

What's interesting to me so far is less the current UI/flashiness
(drag 'n drop photos, real-time keystrokes, etc...) they are showing,
than the openness of the protocol and implementation, opening the door
to all sorts of potential uses and/or integrations with existing
systems.  Other than convenience for interactive use, and as a
reference client, I'm not sure how critical a browser really is to the
system.

Fundamentally, wave seems to be rich, versioned (or at least time
tracked), content management system with well defined server to server
and server to client communication protocols, including conflict
resolution.  They even brought up VCS-like concepts (currently
unimplemented) of having waves branch and evolve independently, fold
changes back into a parent wave and then re-distribute down to the
other children over time, which points to a reasonable central data
structure.

For example, if you jump to about 1:08:13 in the presentation you can
see a more textual display implemented by an independent wave
server/client - almost newsreader like.  I presume such a client has
to make similar decisions as to display of non-textual data as Lynx
has to with the web.

Or if you embed the wave in a web page, it could still be handled by
text browsers (the blog integration at 20:43 for example) or perhaps
with RSS.

Server robots could help too - a robot participating in the wave could
produce a more text-friendly reader version, perhaps published
elsewhere on the web or in a different system.  They demoed, for
example, integrating with Google Code's bug tracking back end at
1:02:30 where comments in the wave were reflected into the bug
comments (though the reverse direction wasn't implemented yet), or
even the twitter integration at 57:53.

-- David