Platform For Information Applications

An OpenSource framework for rapidly developing flexible and easy to maintain web-based applications. [1]

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A very powerful model using ExtensibleMarkupLanguage tagsets for scripting and active content. Given that the next generation of browsers is potentially able to read and act on this sort of thing natively this or something very much like it should be the NextBigThing.

Imagine an ActiveWiki? where you could instantiate a vote object that worked. Or embed a single equation calculator.

http://RIsource.org/PIA/Doc/tagsets.html

the above link is a good technical starting point.

It's by Ricoh Usa. plaudits

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Could you make a WikiWikiWeb out of it? --PhlIp yes but since the backend is java it might be kinda pokey

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This approach has a little drawback : nobody who has programmed for a while would like to write scripts in the way PIA wants you to do it. Too much characters and too unconventional. But for very short scripts it may be applicable. I'm just working on a similar scripting language, which has a very limited set of tags (mostly dataflow : if, while, for ) and one Tag for code. a simple script would look like this :

 <%#     
&myQuery = new  SQLQuery ("JDBC1");
&myQuery.setStatement("select * from customer");
&myQuery.open();
$count = &myQuery.getCount();
print "the table has " | FloatToStr?($count) | " rows."
 #%>
 <%for $i = 0 to $count - 1 %>
 <tr>
<%for $j = 0 to &myQuery.getColCount() %>
<td>
<%#
$cellValue = &myQuery.getCellValue($i, $j) 
#%>
<%if IsFloat?($cellValue) #%>
<%#
print formatFloat($cellValue, 3, 4);
#%>
<%else /%>
<%#
print $cellValue;
#%>
<%/if%>
</td>
<%/for%>
 </tr>
 <%/for%>

all complex actions should take place in functions and java objects. any comments are highly appreciated --ManfredSchaefer

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Looks pretty impressive, pages that might help in developing something useful would be DeclarativeGuiLanguage, PatternPrimitives ExtensibleMarkupLanguage and LanguageUsability.

The one thing I'd be most interested in is something like an ActiveWiki? where end users could declare objects and invoke methods with arguments.

give me a example, why would this be a great thing ?

Well for one thing you could have semi-reliable vote tallies. Or included simulations illustrating the topic at hand. Or include segments of live datastreams.

Active content could also be highly annoying, but it would be fun to try.

The security model seems like it might be a problem.

Maybe it could be done by limiting the functionality available, possibly providing a limited set of base objects I/O streams with character filters, persistence services with size quotas and some way of automatically detecting and disabling misbehaving processes.--LarryPrice