X or Mosaic in future Interface Design?

[Reinhard Doelz]

[Discussion is whether a command-line driven program package (example: 
Genetics Computer Group, GCG Inc, Madison) is evolving correctly into 
an X-based Graphical User Interface or whether Mosaic can be used]. 

[the earlier thread on this can be reviewed using the following URL: 
<a href=gopher://gopher.bio.net/77/.wais-sources/biosci?mosaic+and+przemko+not+merck> X-GCG  </a>]

micha at amber.biophys.uni-duesseldorf.de wrote:
: Przemko (przemko at reks.uia.ac.be) wrote:
: : Or (just dreamin') a Mosaic access...

[...]
One very important argument why MOSAIC _cannot_ be used is that the client 
by definition does not implement 'conditional input' - i.e. the evaluation
of parameters depending on other input. 
	example: 
	sequence DNA : wordsize 6
	sequence Protein: wordsize 2
Even worse, input which requests the 'read' of earlier data fails entirely:
	example: 
	sequence: test.seq
	From? To? 

As the FORMS evaluation takes place as 'batch' you need to specify all and
everything before you even start and, thus, have very little chance to 
be realistically implemented in a one-shot page. We have been successful 
to create a stateful WWW server (reference below), but this is only useful
for synchronous queries, as the client 'hangs' and waits for an answer. 
The subsequent presentation of pages, in particular FORMS pages, might be 
not performing as well as you would like to see, due to the time required
for computation and transmission of the page. 

Sequence searching, in particular, is not suited for synchronous requests.
Apologies to all who do not read this thread for the sake of Mosaic, 
the discussion should be rethreaded to bionet.software.www. A couple of 
URL's follow. 


Regards
Reinhard 

 

<p>
<h2> Paper on stateful WWW server (preliminary copy, final still pending:</H2>
<EM>Keywords:</EM> applications, biology, indexing, databases<BR>
<EM>Title:</EM><B> The use of WWW in Biological research</B><BR>
<EM>Author:</EM> R.Doelz &lt;doelz at comp.bioz.unibas.ch&gt;<BR>
<EM>Institute:</EM> Biocomputing Basel, CH<BR>
<EM>Author:</EM> T.Etzold &lt;etzold at embl-heidelberg.de&gt;<BR>
<EM>Institute:</EM> EMBL Heidelberg, DE<BR>
<A HREF="http://www1.cern.ch/PapersWWW94/doelz.ps">PostScript</A>, 
<A HREF="http://beta.embnet.unibas.ch/conference/paper.html"> HTML document </a>
<p> <h2>Conference workshop: Use of WWW in Biology</h2>
There is an 
<a href="http://beta.embnet.unibas.ch/conference/welcome.html">
extensive list of topics and a discussion group </a> which you are 
invited to read.  <p> <h4>The workshop final report is available from
<a href="http://www.embnet.unibas.ch/bio-www/www-bio.html">Biozentrum der
    Universitaet Basel</a> and
<a href= "http://cui_www.unige.ch/WWW94/Workshops/Biology.report.html">CUI</a>
    (also in 
<a href= "http://cui_www.unige.ch/WWW94/Workshops/Biology.report.ps">
    Postscript</a>).
</h4>





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