Re: Advice needed on developing app for linux

From: Elp (rockfamily_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 08/12/04 

Date: 12 Aug 2004 13:36:57 GMT

Hi Christophe,

Christopher Browne wrote:
> There is no exact equivalent to "ActiveX" on Linux, indeed, that
> particular facility is regarded as something of a pariah due to it
> being something of a "single stop to shop for security faults."

First, thanks for the quick answer. That's what i though, it won't be that
easy to do such an application under Linux. However, i have some comments
about your answer.

Regarding the security problems of ActiveX, i agree when they are used on
Web pages. However, i use them in desktop application. In this case, they
are just third party software components and i don't really see why they
would be more dangerous than any other form of third party components. And
the beauty with ActiveX is their incredible ease of use (at least for what i
need to do). I'm far from being an ActiveX expert though so i may be wrong
in my apreciation.

> If your present goal is to develop Flash-based applications,

It's not. If you have a few seconds, you can have a look at a screen shot of
the current version of our app here:
http://letstry.esmartdesign.com/screen.jpg

> By having chosen a set of technology that weds you intimately to both
> Microsoft and Macromedia at the same time, well, you've clearly made
> your bed. Getting out of it, to options with the potential to be more
> interoperable, will be a change that mandates a MAJOR rearchitecting
> of your systems.

It seems that moving to Linux will require major changes indeed. But we
didn't choose those tools just to be linked to Microsoft and Macromedia.
On the screen capture, you can see a remote desktop component on the top
left. Doing it ourself would have required a huge investment of time and
money to have something as reliable, fast and secure as existing components.
On the top right, there is a Flash file that allow us to wire various
electronic components and retrieve the wiring done. We could have done a
framework allowing us to design circuits like that ourselves. This would
have required a huge investment of time and money to have something as easy
to develop and reuse as Flash and that looks as good.
On the bottom left you can see a Labview component allowing remote control
of electronic instruments. We could have developped a component for remote
instrumentation control ourselves. This would have required a huge
investment of time and money to have something as reliable, fast and
powerfull as Labview and with such a good and intuitive UI.
On the bottom right you can see a video file playing. Again, developping our
own video player embeddable in an application would have been overkill.

So my question is: do we have to redo everything by hand if we want all that
working under Linux (ie reinvent the wheel)? Note that Flash runs under
Linux, Labview runs under Linux, there are plenty a video player under
Linux, there are plenty of remote desktop control tools under Linux. But how
do people integrate all that within a single, good looking, easy-to-use
desktop application?

Thanks

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