Re: Client Side Scripting with REXX

On Jul 26, 8:29 pm, rony <Rony.Flatsc...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Just found the URL of the student's project, including presentations, the code and interesting links
(including a project wiki at <http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=BSFWebScripting>):

     <http://bsfws.berlios.de/>

---rony

rony wrote:

LesK wrote:
Perhaps BSF4Rexx would help? Just guessing! Rony's quite busy, so search
for RONY to get some pointers. He or someone else more knowledgeable
than me might be able to help.

Indeed, am currently very much "land under water" almost drowning, working on a particular
functionality for the version of BSF4Rexx that is meant to match the upcoming ooRexx 4.0.

A couple of years ago (March 2004) a student of mine at the University of Augsburg (Tobias Specht:
"BWS - Using Web-Browsers as Application Platform", Diploma Thesis), was able to create a proof of
concept for using Rexx as a scripting language for MSIE but also Netscape.

He basically used Javascript and the onload event to analyze the HTML file that was in the process
of being loaded. He then changed on the fly script tags having mime-information denoting the target
scripting language and allowed the scripts to be dispatched using the Java interface of Javascript
to address BSF4Rexx (which is derived from Apache's BSF and contains all Apache scripting engines ).

He had even implemented the "this" argument in event tags.

-------- example.html ------------
<html>
 <head>
  <title>
   BWSExamplaryDocument
  </title>
  <script id="readFile" type="bws/rexx" src="readFileScript.rex">
  </script>
 </head>

 <body>
  File to open: <input type="text" id="filename" />
  <input type="button" onclick="bws:value=readFile(filename,output)" value="Open!" />
  <div id="output">
  </div>

 </body>

</html>
-------- example.html ------------

The above HTML-file would allow the user to enter a filename (text input with an id of "filename"),
which then would be read and written to the "output" area.

It was a proof of concept and he got it to run (MSIE, Netscape). Unfortunately, some of the
infrastructures he used have changed such that his solution cannot be deployed anymore.

If you are interested in this nevertheless you might want to research his PDF diploma thesis on the net.

---

Personally, I have been hoping that the browser creators will eventually allow any "javax.script"
language (a.k.a. ASF BSF 3.0) to be used as a sripting language. It seems however, that they are not
 aware of this and are not targeting such an extension (which would be very simple for them, the
moment they allow Java to be deployed for applets; it may be that they are not aware of how easy
that support could be supplied to the world).

kelta wrote:
I would like to develop a web application that uses the browser
interface as the GUI on a Windows platform.  I am aware that I could
run Apache and use CGI or modRexx, but this is not an ideal solution
for delivery to clients.

 Existing browsers provide for client side scripting via embedded or
loaded plug-ins support for languages such as Javascript /JScript &
VBScript.  Does anyone know of a plug-in (ideally for FF) that would
allow for Rexx to be interpreted in a similar fashion?

Currently, using ooRexx 3.2, you could deploy Rexx in the MSIE (MS Internet Explorer) just like
Javascript or VBScript, and also on the server side (IIS).

However, the upcoming new version of ooRexx 4.0 does not have the necessary infrastructure on board
of the Windows version to do that (because the kernel of ooRexx 4.0 was totally rewritten and the
previous ActiveX support seemed to have been quite some hack in the gory details). As a result all
such applications will not run with the upcoming ooRexx 4.0.

HTH,

---rony



Wow...Thanx for the fast response guys.

I will go and research.

Regards

Kim
.

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