[Mailman-Developers] Javascript Client for Mailman

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Florian Fuchs writes:
 > The intended audience are folks who use JS, so I'd rather not have
 > a client that runs on node but looks like Python. :-)

+1

 > > 2. I'd also like to make part of the project, a node.js application
 > > that uses the Mailman Javascript client and offers all the
 > > functionality Postorious does. Is that a good idea?

Florian addressed "attainability", but I'd like to say that I don't
see that we need another Postorius.  If you want to go in that
direction, you'd have to address the question "why does this
application want to (mostly) run disconnected?"

I think the answer is that it doesn't.  It's quite reasonable for all
of the logic in Postorius to be server-side.  That's not to say that
having it client-side wouldn't work just as well or maybe even a
little bit better, but we already have Postorius.  An alternative set
of functionality *not* in Postorius (the user dashboard might be a
good one) would be better, and an application that "needs" to run
client-side to be sufficiently responsive would be the best showcase
for your "javascript.client".

 > What you could do though is add an *optional* task to your timeline,
 > building a *very small* and stripped down web ui proof of concept,
 > with only a small handful of features that you can use to demonstrate
 > how to integrate the client. But that shouldn't be worked on before
 > anything else has been finished.

I understand what Florian is saying and I don't disagree, but let me
offer an alternative perspective for discussion.  Build the small
app's UI first, and use that as a testbed use case for the javascript
side API that you're building.  APIs need use cases (consider how
TCP/IP "rough consensus and running code" beat OSI's "a priori design
and engineering" for internetworking).  I don't know that this is a
practical approach.  Just sayin'.