RoR like (was : SPE 0.8.1.b Python IDE...)

[Paul Boddie]

bruno at modulix wrote:
> Adrian, what you describe here is *exactly* what I call "no Ajax
> support": you have to handle the whole thing manually, the framework
>doesn't provide anything by itself.

I'm not going to argue whether Django supports "Ajax" or not, but I
will agree that for the desired effect applications do need to be able
to provide something usable for the client-side code to work with.
However, all the "something usable" needs to be, in my opinion, is a
fragment of an existing Web page which is accessible through a
well-defined Web-style API.

> And BTW, Ajax is not a client-side techno, it's a combination of client
> *and* server-side technos. TurboGears support Ajax (well, a variant of,
> since it's based on JSON, not XML) by having a pretty good, JSON aware
> javascript lib (mochikit) for the client side *and* an OOTB JSON
> serialization on the server side.

I personally don't believe very strongly in this server-side
serialisation of various non-displayable formats for potentially large
amounts of client-side code to unpack, process, stuff into different
places, and so on. As I said before, this is like reinventing
client/server all over again but with the deployment of client-side
code and the presentation technology standardised: you still end up
with maintenance issues, keeping the data model consistent at both ends
whilst dealing with different languages and toolkits. I'd rather have
such functionality controlled with mostly declarative constructs, and
with as few moving parts on the client as possible.

Paul