From: Alan Horkan (horkana@maths.tcd.ie)
Date: Wed Feb 12 2003 - 08:20:35 EST
On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Colin Mattoon wrote:
> Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 22:41:25 -0800
> From: Colin Mattoon <cjm2@lewiston.com>
> To: abiword-user@abisource.com
> Subject: Web front end -- crazy?
>
> We hear a lot about web enabled applications. Has anyone investigated
> the concept of Abiword running as a web application on a LAN web
> server, accessed through an https login from a broswer?
For a school project i did setup a PHP based web frontend which used
Abiword to convert files to other formats, particularly html for viewing
online.
> It seems to me that this might be handy in heterogenous LANS,
> particularly when thin client computing is desired, but also when a
Abiword is very small, you can actually cram in on a floppy disk.
A think client would more likely run a normal copy of Abiword on the
server and use a remote display rather than messing about with making it a
web appliction.
You should probably take a look at AbiMoz (by Oeone), which turns abiword
into a mozilla plugin. http://abimoz.mozdev.org
> mix of Linux, Unix, Windows and Macs are used. Updating fonts on all
Abiword runs on almost all those platforms anyway, Hub is working on a Mac
port. Abiword win32 even runs reasonably well on Wine+linux. It really
does not make sense to try and beat a round peg into a square hole.
> the clients wouldn't be an issue, and font servers wouldn't have to
> run. A mix of X3 and X4 wouldn't matter. You could log in from any
> client running any OS provided it has a graphical browser and supports
> https.
Font issues are no longer much of an issue on the 1.1 branch.
> This probably isn't an issue for many users, but in networks where
> appliances, terminals, and many operating systems must co-exist, it
> could be useful. One server to maintain/upgrade, no concern about
> client compatibility.
> Any thoughts? Most likely it can't be done, but I'm curious.
I could be done, but it does not really make sense to do things the way
you suggest.
You really should think about what goal you are really trying to acheive
rather than all the ways you could do things.
Patches welcome, sponsor a developer, help write documentation ... etc.
Later
Alan.
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