make the non-DOM things work with node.js

RandomEtc commented 13 years ago

Might be nice to have a package.json and npm availability too.

e.g. https://github.com/documentcloud/underscore/blob/master/package.json

Here's how underscore handles being attached to either window or loaded via require():

  // Establish the root object, `window` in the browser, or `global` on the server.
  var root = this;

  // (skip a bit)

  // Create a safe reference to the Underscore object for use below.
  var _ = function(obj) { return new wrapper(obj); };

  // Export the Underscore object for **CommonJS**, with backwards-compatibility
  // for the old `require()` API. If we're not in CommonJS, add `_` to the
  // global object.
  if (typeof module !== 'undefined' && module.exports) {
    module.exports = _;
    _._ = _;
  } else {
    root._ = _;
  }

Should be quick and simple to add something similar for us, and allow use of Locations, Coordinates, Points etc on the server side. Later we can figure out how to render static images, perhaps using https://github.com/learnBoost/node-canvas/

migurski commented 13 years ago

Do you think npm is the right way to consume package.json, or is the format well-described enough that we could use something else if we wanted? Like, if we wanted to write some minimal Python thing to consume those description files and prepare releases, could we? The "sudo sh" part of installing npm and what you're described of their fractious relationship with brew is making me a bit uncomfortable, and I think that Python might be a more universally-usable approach here.

Also ". = _;" is just sad panda.

RandomEtc commented 13 years ago

npm would only be required for distributing with npm. We can use whatever we like to read package.json and post releases elsewhere. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with npm, I think the author(s) know exactly what they're doing ( I don't think brew is perfect either).