search

vk6flab / contest-logger

Cross platform amateur radio contest logging tool.
https://vk6flab.github.io/contest-logger/
GNU General Public License v3.0
8 stars 1 forks source link

Multi platform? #5

Closed mgiugliano closed 1 year ago

mgiugliano commented 1 year ago

Ideally it should be based on "electron" (https://electronjs.org/) although many consider it bloated.

A client-server web application would be a remedy to that but requiring internet connectivity, maintaining a server (or have a local web server as in the jupyter project (https://jupyter.org/).

73 de IV3IFZ and thank you for your podcast

vk6flab commented 1 year ago

Thank you for your submission. The second stated design requirement, after "Open Source", is "Cross Platform", so multi platform is absolutely going to be the case.

At the moment I'm working towards implementing this as a progressive web app. As I see it, this gives us access to the largest range of platforms and so far I've not discovered limitations that prevent the implementation of a contest logging platform. It's possible that there are things I'm unaware of.

Why are you recommending that I use Electron to implement this?

mgiugliano commented 1 year ago

While I have no skill on web (app) development (i.e. HTML-CSS-JavaScript), I am witnessing the success - and have been a user - of projects like Zettlr (a text editor) or VSCode (an extensible IDE and text editor), based on Electron. I am or have been using also Obsidian and LogSeq (Personal Knowledge Management), also based on Electron. They all leverage the reported ease of deployment across platforms, while benefitting from standard web tools (node.js and web technology) but the form of a stand-alone executable.

Going to iOS or Android would require something else, but I heard of "Capacitor" (https://capacitorjs.com) that promises to be the Electron equivalent on "mobile".

I am personally attracted by minimalism and grew up with command line interfaces rather than GUI, so I am biased but trying to remain objective. While I would love using a super-simple CLI app written in bash (and using Curses for a TUI). I realise it may not be practical for all of OMs.

I like a lot your podcast and have great esteem of you. I would offer to help but I am hesitant as I am only a beginner in Javascript and realised it is a bit "crappy" as a language (compared to C/C++, Python, bash...). Your "long-lasting" and "maintainability" criteria depend inversely from the ease of development and programming simplicity IMHO.

vk6flab commented 1 year ago

Thank you for your thoughts. Having written software since the mid-1980's and built websites since 1992, I'm comfortable with my choice for JavaScript as the language for the current minimum viable product.

In my opinion, this gives the project access to the largest possible audience, since it essentially presents as a website that's available for offline use and from a download perspective, it means that it will load quickly and won't need an installer and matching uninstaller.

I'll close this issue at this point.

If there are aspects of this issue that need revisiting, please feel free to reopen it.

On a personal note, thank you for your kind words on my podcast, much appreciated.

73 de Onno VK6FLAB