So I’m thinking that I might prematurely release some code before the week is out, so anyone who’s interested can point and laugh at my PersonalWebProxy exploits – this time in Java.
One thing that disturbs me a bit about this thing so far is that, for what I have in mind, I’ll have built a mini-OS when all is said and done. It’ll have a web server, a web proxy, telnet-able shell, scripting languages, scheduler, full text search and index engine, persistence & metadata storage, and whatever else I can eventually think to toss in. There are just so many nice toys for Java, and most are a snap to glue together. But, I can’t really use any of the toys that come with the OS itself.
It’s something I’ve rambled on about before, as has Jon Udell in his old Byte column: Zope Lessons Learned. If this thing is to run on more than one platform, it can’t rely on the facilities of any particular platform. So, all these lovely things I like OS X for are somewhat off limits.
On the other hand, if I get tired of doing this thing in Java, I could always just finally embrace the platform and go straight for Cocoa. :) Yes, that would make for 3 environments tried, but hey – it’s still fun for me!
shortname=ooodoc
4 Comments
Really looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
Not wanting to suggest feature drift/bloat or anything, but a mail proxy would be nice too…
I need to rename this project and stop referring to it as a Personal Web Proxy, though that’s the first goal. I want it to be a personal agent platform when it grows up, so a mail proxy would fall under that.
But, for now, one protocol at a time for me :)
“If this thing is to run on more than one platform, it can’t rely on the facilities of any particular platform. So, all these lovely things I like OS X for are somewhat off limits.”
Well… not necessarily… Taking another “monster” as an example, ZOE interacts with core Mac OS X services even if it’s written in Java and cross-platform…
As somebody green famously said:
“Software are like onions.”
“Layers! Onions have layers. Software have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.”
– Shrek, 2001
ZOE integrates with Apple’s system services. It uses Rendezvous directly. Integrates with Apple’s Mail.app. And even the Finder itself.
So, not everything is lost ;-)
Z.
Why not used Twisted?