[mapguide-users] RE: Desktop implementation of MapGuide

[Attila Csipa]

On Tuesday 12 June 2007 10:41, Kneo wrote:
> Give me some examples of features that you can think of for a desktop
> application. Something which cannot be done  (or maybe with a lot of
> difficulty) in a web browser.

Use of local libraries/executables. Pre-seeding data. Realtime operations 
(realtime as in knowing the precise timings of incoming/outgoing data or 
command execution). Vendor compatibility. Parallel execution of code. Vector 
operations, 3D+textures in particular. Yes, there are solutions that address 
these problems, but they are cumbersome, non-portable and come down to having 
a desktop application which is then shoehorned into a browser (flash, Java 
applets, ActiveX are the prime examples for this, they could very well be 
standalone applications/libs, you just have the browser as an additional 
integrating layer of software). And let's not mix HTTP (as in protocol) and 
browser (as in HTML/JS visualizer). You can have a desktop app that uses HTTP 
for comms and a browser that works for a particular application without a 
TCP/IP stack. But then again, there are a myriad desktop GIS applications, 
and the web based approach was embraced by many exactly because these were 
not available on every machine, not because browsers are all that practical.