[Tutor] Starting a browser instance and passing a parameter to it.

[Kent Johnson]

Don Taylor wrote:
> Alan Gauld wrote:
> 
>> What are you using for the XML-RPC server? Doesn't that need to be a
>> web server of some sort anyhow? XML-RPC communicates using http...
>>
> 
> I am using simpleXMLRPCServer.  Yes, XML-RPC does use http as its 
> transport protocol, but it does not have to run in the context of a 
> web-server.  You can run XML-RPC 'under' CGI but that costs a lot in 
> performance (continual re-loads) and, more importantly, forces a REST 
> model on to the XML-RPC server.  I am treating XML-RPC as a socket 
> server that happens to use http for its transport.
> 
>> You seem to be making a fairly easy task very complicated.
>>
> 
> Yes, quite possibly.  Just for fun, I am experimenting with ways to 
> build portable desktop GUI applications - where portability includes 
> independence from window managers.  I am trying to use a browser as the 
> window manager for a (Python) application.

I can't decide if this is brilliant or crazy or both :-)

I guess what you get from XMLRPC is an almost-free way to expose 
functions to the browser. But it forces you to build the UI entirely in 
javascript.

I wonder if you wouldn't be better off starting with a simple web server 
such as CherryPy and building a standard web application on that...you 
would be swimming with the stream then, instead of across it.

 > I plan to use something like Google Web Toolkit for the browser-side
 > code.  GWT (and many others tools and libraries) abstracts away browser
 > differences.  I don't plan to manipulate the browser DOM directly.

GWT is targeted to Java developers, probably something like Dojo or YUI 
would be more appropriate.

Kent