[CWB] CQPWeb Custom GUII

[Hardie, Andrew]

hi Stevie,

> Is this something that will change in new builds of the software?
No.

> If it isn't on the roadmap at the moment is it something you would consider?
No.

The rationale for the above is that given limited development time, and a huge TODO list of requested improvements/additional analysis functions (see the website), I will be focused on functionality and not on appearance. A full redesign of the HTML structure is therefore not on the cards.

> Will there be any further development of the PHP, to make further use of object-oriented code, for example?
No. 

(1) The PHP code certainly will *change* but only as a consequence of improving functionality, as per above. 
(2) I personally prefer function-oriented design to object-oriented for nearly all purposes (the interfaces to child processes are an exception). I am a C programmer at heart!

If you want to use a substantially different GUI (or GUIs), and/or to structure the software according to different design principles, then I would suggest that your best option is to write a separate piece of front-end software and use vanilla CQPweb as the back-end engine. 

Currently, this is not very easy since the front-end needs to parse the HTML generated by CQPweb. However, among the many high-priority things on the TODO list is the creation of an API for programmatic access via HTTP to CQPweb that would allow clients in any language, on a server or in a browser, to access the system. Once this is in place you could write a front-end GUI around it to meet your precise requirements pretty easily.

(I'd also be interested to know - anyone feel free to chip in here - for this programmatic access, what data format is best these days? My instinct is for plain-text, but XML and JSON are also options).

best

Andrew.

-----Original Message-----
From: cwb-bounces at sslmit.unibo.it [mailto:cwb-bounces at sslmit.unibo.it] On Behalf Of Stephen Barrett
Sent: 09 May 2013 11:22
To: cwb at sslmit.unibo.it
Subject: [CWB] CQPWeb Custom GUII

Hi,

We've been experimenting with CQPWeb for use with our corpora and find it a really powerful solution. 

What we would like to do is customise the GUI quite heavily to provide for an interface for different user groups while at the same time allowing for any further upgrades to the code that might come along in the future. Given the code that we're running at the moment (3.0) we have a couple of questions:

The HTML output uses tables and ideally we would like to make extensive use of CSS, ideally with divs, etc. Is this something that will change in new builds of the software? If it isn't on the roadmap at the moment is it something you would consider? 

Will there be any further development of the PHP, to make further use of object-oriented code, for example?

We are very happy to work on making the above changes but would like them to benefit the community at large where possible while also retaining compatibility with any further developments.

Thanks

Stevie



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