Zanas.pm is a RAD platform for WEB GUIs with rich DHTML widget set.
Zanas.pm is a set of naming conventions, utility functions, and a basic Apache request handler that help to quickly build robust, efficient and good-looking Web interfaces with standard design. The last doesn't mean that you can't alter hardcoded HTML fragments at all. But building public Web sites with original graphics and layout is not the primary goal of Zanas development. Zanas is good for developing client database editing GUIs ('thin clients') and is conditionnally comparable to Windows API and java Swing.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
There is a whole a lot of univesal web application platforms. So, why develop another one instead of using some mature product? 'Cause we've already tried many of this and have'nt found a good one.
When developing Zanas, we use the following principles:
no OO
HTTP is nothing else than evaluting string functions with sets of named parameters. Request handler must do nothing else than decompose the top function to some more primitive functions. So, Zanas is purely procedure-oriented framework.
content/presentation separation
Request handler reduce the top function f (x) to a superposition of a content and a presentation function: c (x) and p (c, x), where c (x) can't produce any HTML fragment in its result and p (c, x) can't use any info stored in the database.
f (x) = p (c (x), x).
URL discipline and strict callback naming
Content and presentation functions can be reduced to swithes between some elementary callback functions, where the switch is directly governed by known CGI parameters. Say, for url='/?type=users' c == select_users and p == draw_users.
no ASP or like
Perl is ideal for implementing templating languages. That's why people love to implement new templating languages in Perl. But most of them ignore the fact that Perl is already a templating language. Heredoc syntax is much more usable than any ASP-like. And it doesn't require any additional processing: everything is done by the Perl interpreter.
no XML
Nested Perl datastructures like list-of-hashes and more complex offer the same functionnality as the XML DOM model. And it doesn't require any external libraries: everything is done by the Perl interpreter.
no XSLT
It would be very strange to use XSLT without XML, but we must underline here that there was one more reason to not use XSLT. Its syntax is even much crappier and less flexible than ASP-like.
Product's homepage
Here are some key features of "Zanas.pm":
· GUI base
· ALC support
· sessions
· js alerting
· logging
· fake records/garbage collection
Requirements:
· Perl
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