Meta - StoneyJackson/quilt GitHub Wiki

High-level, project guiding discussions.

Other topics

• Motivation

  • Presentation (style and layout) should be separate from content

    • Diagram

  • CSS separates style, not content

    • Example

  • Quilt separates layout

    • Or quilt separates content

• Overview

  • Write a layout

  • Write a quilt to stitch content into layout

  • Example

• Users

  • Website developers (primary)

  • Webserver administrators (secondary)

  • Web consumers (tertiary)

• Requirements

  • Easy to learn

  • Easy to deploy

  • Easy to configure

  • Easy to maintain

  • Overlay seamlessly with existing technology

    • Browsers

    • Servers

    • Frameworks

    • Basic technology (html, css, http, javascript)

  • Provide added value to existing sites

  • High-performance

  • Common cases are easy

  • Rarer cases are possible

• Design decisions

  • Where should stitching take place?

    • Client-side

    • Middle-side

    • Server-side

  • How specifically should it be implemented?

    • Client

      • Ajax

      • Browser plugin

    • Middle

      • Proxy server

    • Server

      • Server plugin/handler

      • CGI running on server

    • Compiled core implementation?

  • Syntax and semantics of Quilt (DSL: domain specific language)

    • Base languages: XML, JSON, or Custom

    • Capabilities

• Open questions

  • How do we prevent infinite recursion caused by url() and cgi()?

    • Especially in the presence of an advisory

  • How do we generalize quilts so they can be reused?

  • If quilt hijacks requests, can quilt play nice with frameworks that also like to hijack requests?

    • More generally: can two url hijacking frameworks coexist?