in-client web server

[David Montgomery]

Hi,

I am working on a thick-client application that serves
a lot of content as locally generated and modified
web pages.

I'm beginning to look at serving (and updating, via AJAX)
these pages from a web server running within the client
(mostly to provide a more natural and powerful way of
interacting with the browser control).

For a first cut I imagine just starting a web server within
the client and serving the pages from localhost:<someport>.

I have a couple questions for anyone with experience with
this sort of architecture:

 * First, are there any existing open source libraries that
   exemplify this approach?  I have a vague recollection that
   TurboGears started out based on a project with this kind
   of architecture, but I haven't been able to find anything
   so far.

 * Second, are there any gotchas you would point out?  In
   particular I'm wondering if even this localhost connection
   will be a problem with many users' firewalls.

In case it matters, the application is being developed in python
2.5.x with wxPython 2.8.x, aimed first at a Windows platform,
but intended to be portable to Linux and Mac ASAP.

Thanks for any pointers,
David