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Re: anyone else writing Linux (or cross-system) applications in PHP? [message #180299 is a reply to message #180278] Mon, 04 February 2013 09:32 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
crankypuss is currently offline  crankypuss
Messages: 147
Registered: March 2011
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On 02/03/2013 12:00 PM, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
> crankypuss wrote:
>> On 02/03/2013 08:17 AM, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>>> I don't think so. Since its original name was "Personal Home Page Tools"
>>> for scripts to facilitate created personal webpages on a server speaks
>>> to its origins. How an application interacts in with the user from a
>>> webserver is very different from that of a desktop application.
>>
>> It's okay if we disagree on this, you're allowed to be incorrect. <G>
>
> Not sure even if a smile can change history though.
>
>>
>> As for how users interact with applications, if you think it's different
>> on the web vs on the desktop, I would claim that you haven't finished
>> generalizing your view of it. In either case the application presents
>> something, the user responds, rinse-and-repeat. The main difference
>> between a web-app and a desktop-app is the level of precision provided
>> by the interface and the amount of latency. I've built web-apps that
>> run equally well on the desktop. If you aren't aware of it, there is
>> (or, was) a guy in the Windows world who sells a shareware product to
>> facilitate writing desktop applications in PHP.
>
> But how it "runs" is different. A desktop app starts and has a message
> loop that checks for user interaction. Responds and continues until
> either program, user, or system terminates the processes. With the web
> the php script receives its input via the web server, script runs and
> does its stuff, creates the web page and terminates.
>

I guess you never worked much with state-driven applications, not
everyone has. What we think of as a "desktop app" just sits there with
its state-data in memory, and a "web app" reloads its state-data when
another request comes in from the same user. Once the state data is
re-established the internal processing is basically the same except for
what subroutines are used to draw the "screen". In fact a "desktop app"
doesn't keep its state-data in memory except conceptually unless the
system is so lightly loaded that there's no thread-switching or swapping
going on. Conceptually it generalizes to pretty much the same thing in
either case.

The "message loop" you speak of really isn't any different between a
web-app and a desktop-app. For a desktop-app it looks like this,

1. application is entered on initiation
2. application presents initial display
4. application waits for input and is swapped out
5. user does something to cause an interrupt
6. application gets rescheduled as ready-to-run, swapped in
7. application scratches head, presents output
8. application goes back to (4) and gets "swapped out" again

For a web-app it looks like this,

1. server starts up and eventually reaches idle state
2. a message comes in (analogous to 5 above)
3. application's state data gets reloaded as it's "swapped in"
4. application scratches head, presents output
5. application gets swapped out (state saved)

It's pretty much the same thing, except that some websites don't do
squat about saving state-data for an individual user. Some use PHP
"session" stuff to do that, where a session identifier is a token coming
in on each http request that allows that user's state-data to be
reloaded for the request.

The loop is basically the same except that its "top" gets rolled around
to the middle and given a different name. For a desktop-app the "top"
is the guy hitting the enter key or clicking the mouse or whatever,
that's the top of the "message loop". For a web-app the browser
recognizes a link-click and sends an http request. It's the same thing
unless you get fixated on the details to the point where you can't see
the forest. Look an X Windows application in enough detail and you'll
see the same basic process with a different protocol used between the
client and the server. Steak or hamburger, it's all beef.
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