Re: Using Browser as Front End

Hi Carlo,

I am glad you find the idea interesting!

The kind of work flow I am trying to get is inspired by the skewer-mode
https://github.com/skeeto/skewer-mode See the video demo for what it can do
http://youtu.be/4tyTgyzUJqM Hope you find it interesting as well.

Haitao

On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 1:41 AM, Carlo Capelli <[email protected]>wrote:

>
>
>
> 2013/12/14 Haitao Zhang <[email protected]>
>
>> I know using browser as a front end is not a new idea but I found out
>> recently that WebSocket makes pushing data to browser very easy to do.
>>
>> My personal interest is to use the javascript libraries supported by
>> browsers (D3 in my case) for visualization, while retaining control in a
>> Prolog console -- so I don't have to write a web server. This turns out
>> fairly straightforward. I know that SWI does not yet support WebSocket,
>> but
>> one can write a simple man-in-the-middle server easily in anything that
>> supports WS. My first try was with nodejs. Then I tried with Emacs/Elisp
>> since I access SWI from Emacs with ediprolog. Both worked out well in my
>> simple use case, where it is just one way traffic from Prolog to the
>> browser. But as a proof of concept I see it as a good sign for more
>> ambitious undertakings.
>>
>> My setup is like this: start servers (WS and TCP) in the host platform. I
>> use emacs but nodejs also works with little coding. Connect the browser to
>> the WS server (through embedded javascript in a local html file). Connect
>> Prolog to the TCP server. The host platform then simply copies any data
>> coming in through the TCP socket over to the outgoing WebSocket. As I said
>> I only implemented the half duplex part for my personal use, but servers
>> should be neutral on the direction of flow. I would have to set up my
>> Prolog client to handle async data and have not got around to it as I am
>> happy with running things from my ediprolog console, which runs
>> synchronously. Above the data layer I wrote some js client code to display
>> data, and I then send over data from Prolog (encoded in json with embedded
>> dispatching information) and have the data rendered in the browser. I also
>> use the same websocket to update my js client code whenever I have a need
>> to (like after creating a new display function). So the REPL is complete
>> for both js and Prolog.
>>
>> My primary intention is just to share the idea and hopefully someone will
>> find it helpful.
>>
>>
> Very interesting, thanks for sharing.
>
>
>> On a more tentative note, Carlo Capelli  has recently ported the Prolog
>> console to Qt. Is there an interest in creating a javascript based
>> frontend
>> for SWI? There are a lot of UI and graphics libraries available through
>> js.
>> With Websocket async two way communication is easy as well.
>>
>
>
> I'm a bit ashamed I didn't know about WebSocket, but after some read, I'd
> like to try to implement a WS REPL.
>
> I guess that building WS in SWI-Prolog should be the preferred way,
> but to start with something I'm comfortable, I've got some support from Qt
> community -
> both QWebSocket <https://github.com/gustavosbarreto/qwebsocket> and
> QtWebsocket <https://github.com/ant-lafarge/QtWebsocket> are available.
> QWebSocket has less requirements, I'll begin with this one.
>
> Server side, just bridging IO should work...
>
> Client side, I find QtWebKit functional, for instance getting offline
> plDoc (F1 help on cursor) it's banal.
> Pack(webconsole) then it's the first choice, but - i think - will need
> some change to run a console 'stream mode'.
> I'd like to see it integrated with CodeMirror, should be nice and
> functional, just classify the HTML input area could work.
>
> Anyway, pqConsole currently doesn't depend on QtWebKit (~30Mb spare),
> but since it outputs HTML (with Prolog controlled links - visible
> 'commands')
> could be an interesting 'intermediate point'.
>
> bye Carlo
>
>
>  Just a thought,
>>
>> Haitao Zhang
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