[Pipet Devel] more on Eazel

[J.W. Bizzaro]

Brad Chapman wrote:
> 
> The article is kind of scary. This project is pretty hard
> core--they've got lots of really good designers working on it, they
> appear to be pretty buddy/buddy with the Gnome people, and they have a
> whole room full of cubicles set up for it (oh no!).

The article says Gnome and Eazel were at one time going to become a single
team, but they weren't agreeing on a number of issues.  It says instead Gnome
will concentrate on the 'middleware', while Eazel concentrates on the GUI. 
(HelixCode will work on the office suite.)

>     I don't think Loci has much to worry about from the
> bioinformatics standpoint, but it is really worrysome if we would want
> to imagine Loci as an "alternative" Gnome desktop. I don't think a few
> part time coders have much chance of competing with a powerful thing
> like this Eazel project, at least not if we are gunning for the same
> goals.

I'm just wondering if they'll pick up on the 'connect-the-dots' paradigm.  But
I read how Eazel wants to make Linux easier to use for the compu-phobic than
Windows and even the Mac.  Do you think Loci will be simpler than the Mac?  I
don't think so.

I believe there may be some connect-the-dots in Eazel, but not to the extent of
Loci.  Loci will be more difficult because it will be very flexible and
powerful.  But then again, flexibility and power can be layered.

>     Personally, I'd like to see Loci drop back off trying to be an all
> purpose desktop and focus more on bioinformatics specific stuff. It is
> just awfully intimidating for me to think about all of the code that
> will have to be churned out before Loci could be workable as a
> general workspace. Just focusing on bioinformatics stuff seems as
> least a little more imaginable.

Well, I was thinking about Loci working as a desktop when I heard that Havoc
might use the Gnome canvas (what Loci's gi is based on) as the root window for
Gnome.  It goes without saying the possibilities that would open for Loci.

But, as you say, we don't have the resources to compete with other desktop
projects, and we probably wouldn't even get the cooperation of the Gnome team.

>     My vote (if we are voting :-) would be to have Loci be a corbafied
> GUI for lots of bioinformatics programs. I think if we focus on this
> we could get a lot of functionality quickly by interfacing with
> Bioperl/python/java through their new idl, could use the Sever half of
> AppLab for wrapping programs (for now) and could also look at the
> millions of corba interfaces being developed at EBI. This would give
> us something useful quicker, and then we could step back to look at
> other goals. Just my two cents on this...

Talks with Gary (for those who don't know, Gary and I met in person over a
week's time to hash out some design issues) led me to start calling Loci a
'connectivity broker'.  This means that Loci will be agnostic to the
communications protocol used by the back-end program.  CORBA, HTTP, COM, UNIX
pipes, XML_RPC, etc. can all be supported if the support is 'plugged in' to
Loci.  Why?

    BECAUSE MANY, MANY PROGRAMS HAVE THEIR COMMUNICATIONS
    PROTOCOL BUILT-IN (e.g, Apache), AND FORCING THESE PROGRAMS
    TO CHANGE PROTOCOLS WOULD BE A MESS AND JUST PLAIN WRONG(TM).
    AND LOCI WOULD OTHERWISE BECOME LIMITED TO WORKING ONLY WITH
    PROGRAMS THAT ARE COMPATIBLE WITH...CORBA, OR WHATEVER.

But, you're right that the first programs to make work under Loci should be
bioinformatics apps.  We're bioinformaticists, right?  However, I still want
non-bioinformaticists to see the capabilities here.  Non-bioinformatics
programmers outnumber us, how many to one?  10, 100, 1000?  If you get these
guys excited about Loci, it'll really take off!

Cheers.
Jeff
-- 
                      +----------------------------------+
                      |           J.W. Bizzaro           |
                      |                                  |
                      | http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff/ |
                      |                                  |
                      |        BIOINFORMATICS.ORG        |
                      |           The Open Lab           |
                      |                                  |
                      |    http://bioinformatics.org/    |
                      +----------------------------------+