lion_positive2

Hi, my name is Lion Kimbro, and I've been interested in this general idea for a while.

Website: http://www.speakeasy.org/~lion/

Blog: http://lion.taoriver.net/

Cell Phone: 206.427.2545

My own contribution is Local Names, which abstracts naming out from wiki.

Decomposing a Wiki

I like approaching problems materially, so my first approach to MicroApps was to ask myself, "How could I make a wiki out of parts?"

Some of the parts I can imagine (say) a wiki being taken apart into:

If you have these things, we may need a final component, that acts like a mask, (FacadePattern,) covering and orchestrating the other components, to produce a unified experience. But it's conceivable that this final component may even be unnecessary.

I described this a few years ago first in CommunityWiki:OneBigSoup.

Questions & Projects for MicroApps

Here are two questions I have about MicroApps.

Automatic Distribution

I would think it should be easy to say, "Hey, I like that!", and quickly get one set up and running on your computer, and possibly even multiple instances of the thing.

So, "How do you do this?"

If we're configuring httpd.conf or .htaccess files, we're not there yet.

Reply from AndersPearson

I don't have a good answer to this question yet. For the subset of microapps written in Python on WSGI compatible frameworks, microapps could easily be bundled and distributed together using PythonPaste and wsgi_intercept. There might be equivalent tools for other languages/platforms, but it's obviously not a satisfactory solution in general since language/platform independence is one of the key theoretical advantages to microapps.

Events

If you want your MicroApps to be generally reusable, I would want there to be some capability of easily getting event information out of them. "Let me know when X happens, within these constraints."

"How are requests for events communicated? Where is the intelligence?"

Reply from AndersPearson

I had the same question when I started. I built Pebble as a result. My thoughts on coordinating microapps have been heavily influenced by looking at Erlang/OTP's architecture.

Messages

If you leave a message here, I might not get it. It may be better to leave a message on http://communitywiki.org/en/LionKimbro .

E-mailing me at my publicly visible address is generally a bad idea. Much better to call me: 206.427.2545, for for some reason, Internet people are generally phone-phobic.

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LionKimbro (last edited 2007-08-14 03:39:43 by TyreeHendricksen)