[OpenFontLibrary] Phone conversation with Ed Trager

[Ed Trager]

Hi, everyone,

On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 9:18 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine
<alexandre.prokoudine at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/8/10, Dave Crossland wrote:
>
>>>> Ed thinks about replacing ccHost with a custom webapp.
>>>

To set the record straight, like many of you I've been wondering all
these months what the holdup was with the cchost prototype?  I
contributed a bunch of code to that, and naturally would like to see
the fruits of my labor --as well as the fruits of the labors of so
many others-- realized.

So this puzzlement was really the genesis of my conversation with
Dave.  And my suspicion going into the conversation was: is cchost
part of the problem?

Also, I was thinking is cchost the right platform for what we want to do?

So, I was thinking, let's explore an alternative pathway:  What do we
want to do?  Write that down as an outline.  If the most important
parts of what we want to do are simple and straightforward, then let's
just write a custom web app to do it.

But note that such a custom web app would still capitalize on stuff
that we already collectively know how to do well anyway: i.e., PHP
with MySQL and, on the Javascript side, jQuery.

Also, for the login and security aspects I was thinking about using
OpenId (OpenId.net).

Also, I've been working on a bunch of jQuery-based code for web
applications in my day job, and have also been thinking of using
OpenId for some web apps in my day job.  So I was visualizing how I
might be able to apply and reuse some of what I have been doing in my
paid work toward the OFLB project.

Now if Aiki is a really good solution to the problems, then I won't
argue against it.  But is it a really good solution or not?  I don't
yet know, because I only heard about it yesterday when talking with
Dave, and I don't yet know anything else about it.

In the end, I only argue for using the right tool(s) for the job.  So
that could be Aiki or something else.  But it looks more and more like
cchost was really not the right tool, and from what I understand,
modifying and customizing cchost was very laborious and frought with
bugs.

>>> Ed suggests just talking about OFLB v2 again for the 4th time at LGM?
>>

Umm ... I wasn't even at LGM in the last couple of years ...

>> Ed is offering to cut the code for this, so, don't be mean to him. :-)
>
> What's the point of being mean when I can be nasty? :)
>

It's OK, Alexandre,  I'll take it if you agree to let me dish it out too :-)

> Alexandre
>

- Ed