[Ur] A direction for Ur/Web

[Adam Chlipala]

Marc Weber wrote:
> a) I talked to Adam in the past about whether its worth adding a
> configuration file containing database setup.
>
> See
> http://www.impredicative.com/mantis/view.php?id=26
>    

I think it's important to stress that Ur/Web already supports 
"configuration files" governing database access; they're just read at 
compile time rather than run time.  For security reasons, this should 
usually be preferable.

>    Do you want to write type safe template engines .. ?
>    If you want to precompile them - does this fit urweb current design
>    well? Don't think urweb is good at handling global state ?
>    (I have to reread docs - so I may be wrong about this.)
>    

I don't understand which hypothetical design structure of an Ur/Web 
library you are considering here.  What do you want to do and what do 
you think would go wrong?

>> Ur/Web, thus having a low-level entry point for Ur/Web _users_. Being
>> able to create themes for standard websites would be a plus.
>>      
> The low entry point can only be achieved by
> - teaching its theory (eg give hints about which books to read)
> - write many tutorials.
>    Although I've seen several .net languages, HaXe, Python, Ruby VimL,
>    Java, JS, little Ocaml, Bash, Haskell ... I still feel I don't understand Ur
>    at all. That's why I'm trying to read up more about its theory in my
>    freetime.
>
> However it'll still take a lot of time until I can say I understand the
> most important concepts - and the particular "ur" implementation in
> depth.
>
> So urweb will never be as mainstream as PHP is.
>    

I'm sure many people use WordPress without being prepared to write any 
PHP code from scratch.  To me, it doesn't seem crazy that a similar 
situation could be created for an Ur/Web library, especially when 
equipped with a GUI for configuration.