With any luck this will be an important area of this web site. We've talked in vague generalities about writing some stuff together but there is a lot more to be said. I'm just going to throw out a few languages I'm interested in. It's a good starting point I guess. -Ben

Comments, Ideas, Suggestions

One thing, I'd like to throw in here, is that while we have been working on this website, we have already sort of started our own Web API. For example, on my site, there is a tree navigation system that is in the works. Also, we have lists on a number of pages now. The links page has a format under development for a program that will be written for link management. As more content is added, I'm going to start writing some web API jank to help editing our own site easier. -Russ 8/15/05 8:46pm

Yeah, I've noticed that you've started to do something things in this area... particularly with the links page as you mentioned. What I would like to see is some discussion and agreement on a standard for web development, at least as far as root lastholdout.com pages are concerned. I think the idea of a standard link submission format is great idea and I would really like to work towards making adding content to this site as automated as possible. I think we agree that designing a great web page can be fun but not when you have to do it over and over for every slight modification that is added to the site. But we need to talk about how we're going to program this type of web application. I'm slightly concerned about each one of us taking off in a different direction programming applications for things like link management without any standards - that could produce some ugly results. -Ben 8/19/05 4:52pm

I agree 100%. Most of the what's been going on so far is content accumulation. Despite the fact that we don't have much content, it already seems like the site is getting out of control. Web APIs will allow us to, as you say, automate the process through simple server side scripts. Here's an idea of where to start. I say we start by defining the kinds of objects on these pages as XML Objects, then we write scripts to access a content database and create the XML Objects in an XML Document. The XML Documents themselves will have an HTML stylesheet referenced in them that will render them into HTML (based on object templates). I think we should start with one particular part of the web page (links would be a great place since it is relatively simple) and then branch out from there. For the record, I've never done anything quite this extensive, though I have done a few rudimentary like it in the past. Let me know what you think. Also, for reference, I added the w3schools XSLT section below in the Web APIs section. -Russ 8/22/05 11:03pm

Tools

• Ruby (w/ "on Rails" framework??) - Heard "chatter" about this language very recently, nothing more.
• Web Objects - Developed by NExT/Apple - Supposed to be powerful...probably no way for us to implement it
• PHP - Most prominent language used on the web?
• Python - Everybody seems to love it, again, I'm ignorant
• Tapestry J2EE Framework - Open Source Java based web application framework
• XSLT - A component use for building XML based APIs (particularly Web). Translates XML docs to other formats.