How to bring PHP to the desktop? (GUI) / no browser?

Hi,

I am currently looking into ways to use PHP as my engine, but without a
browser.
So far I found the TCL/TK interface. It seems able to do the job, but I
thought I get in some opinions first before diving futher into it.

What other options do I have?

Does anybody has experience/advise?
How did you approach it?
Pitfalls?
Good packages?
etc.

All advise welcome. :-)

Thanks for your time.

Regards,
Erwin Moller

Re: How to bring PHP to the desktop? (GUI) / no browser?

Erwin Moller wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am currently looking into ways to use PHP as my engine, but without a
> browser.
> So far I found the TCL/TK interface. It seems able to do the job, but I
> thought I get in some opinions first before diving futher into it.
>
> What other options do I have?
>
> Does anybody has experience/advise?
> How did you approach it?
> Pitfalls?
> Good packages?
> etc.
>
> All advise welcome. :-)
>
> Thanks for your time.
>
> Regards,
> Erwin Moller

Forgot to say: I aim at W$ desktop primarly, but a general approach that
works on *nix too would be better. (eg: TCL/TK works on both)

Re: How to bring PHP to the desktop? (GUI) / no browser?

Erwin Moller wrote:

> I am currently looking into ways to use PHP as my engine, but without a
> browser.
> So far I found the TCL/TK interface. It seems able to do the job, but I
> thought I get in some opinions first before diving futher into it.

PHP-GTK is good for playing a bit. But not usable for real applications.
There is no IDE or something else to build easy an fast youre
applications. All you need will be written piece by piece.

If you have a lot of time, OK. But time is money. Better to use a
Language, designed for your wishes and fast to code it. (eg. Java, ...)

So long, Ulf

--
_,
_(_p> Ulf [Kado] Kadner
\<_)
^^

Re: How to bring PHP to the desktop? (GUI) / no browser?

Ulf Kadner wrote:
> Erwin Moller wrote:
>
>> I am currently looking into ways to use PHP as my engine, but without
>> a browser.
>> So far I found the TCL/TK interface. It seems able to do the job, but
>> I thought I get in some opinions first before diving futher into it.
>
> PHP-GTK is good for playing a bit. But not usable for real applications.
> There is no IDE or something else to build easy an fast youre
> applications. All you need will be written piece by piece.
>
> If you have a lot of time, OK. But time is money. Better to use a
> Language, designed for your wishes and fast to code it. (eg. Java, ...)
>
> So long, Ulf
>


Umm no, PHP-GTK is a fine choice. There is Glade for building gui's.
But, i'd use the language that does what you need it to do.

Norm

Re: How to bring PHP to the desktop? (GUI) / no browser?

Norman Peelman wrote:

> Umm no, PHP-GTK is a fine choice.

A bad choice... ;-)

> There is Glade for building gui's.

usually glade works only on unixiodes. So i can not test it, cause i
develope PHP-Apps only under win32. (my failure) :-(

> But, i'd use the language that does what you need it to do.

ACK.

So long, Ulf

Re: How to bring PHP to the desktop? (GUI) / no browser?

Norman Peelman wrote:
> Ulf Kadner wrote:
>> Erwin Moller wrote:
>>
>>> I am currently looking into ways to use PHP as my engine, but without
>>> a browser.
>>> So far I found the TCL/TK interface. It seems able to do the job, but
>>> I thought I get in some opinions first before diving futher into it.
>>
>> PHP-GTK is good for playing a bit. But not usable for real
>> applications. There is no IDE or something else to build easy an fast
>> youre applications. All you need will be written piece by piece.
>>
>> If you have a lot of time, OK. But time is money. Better to use a
>> Language, designed for your wishes and fast to code it. (eg. Java, ...)
>>
>> So long, Ulf
>>
>
>
> Umm no, PHP-GTK is a fine choice. There is Glade for building gui's.
> But, i'd use the language that does what you need it to do.
>
> Norm

Thanks Norm and Ulf,

Firstly, I agree that Java would be a better choice to build GUI, but I
like PHP a lot more these days.

I checked out the Glade website.
Looks like a nice GUI designer. :)

Could you guide me a little futher?
As I understand it I can run Glade on my *nix box, and let it generate a
XML file that contains the instructions for TCL/TK to build the GUI.

Could I use that XML file to recreate the UI on any machine that runs
PHP with TCL/TK?
I guess I have to add names of PHP-functions to events then.

Is that correct?
If so, it sounds like a feasible approach.

Thanks.
Regards,
Erwin Moller

Re: How to bring PHP to the desktop? (GUI) / no browser?

Hi Erwin,

In article <46c19cc5$0$233$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>, Erwin Moller wrote:
> Firstly, I agree that Java would be a better choice to build GUI, but I
> like PHP a lot more these days.

I'm not hugely au fait with things, but PHP+browser isn't a bad way of
working on the desktop, an Apache web server is free and easy to install.
You can use PHP from the command line, but that's not particularly nice.

I don't think PHP is the best though, as it is (or just seems) mostly tuned
to the web. A viable, and (apparently) not too difficult, alternative is
Python, which runs web apps as well as being available to be a (cross
platform) desktop solution. The message colume in comp.lang.python suggests
to me it's a happening language. Dabo is a framework for Python...

Regards
Mark

Re: How to bring PHP to the desktop? (GUI) / no browser?

On Aug 14, 1:38 pm, Erwin Moller
wrote:
> I am currently looking into ways to use PHP as my engine, but without a
> browser.


PHP4App or php4delphi? But, pure Delphi is still preferable, IMHO.

--

Email: rrjanbiah-at-Y!com Blog: http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.com/

Re: How to bring PHP to the desktop? (GUI) / no browser?

Erwin Moller wrote:
> Norman Peelman wrote:
>> Ulf Kadner wrote:
>>> Erwin Moller wrote:
>>>
>>>> I am currently looking into ways to use PHP as my engine, but
>>>> without a browser.
>>>> So far I found the TCL/TK interface. It seems able to do the job,
>>>> but I thought I get in some opinions first before diving futher into
>>>> it.
>>>
>>> PHP-GTK is good for playing a bit. But not usable for real
>>> applications. There is no IDE or something else to build easy an fast
>>> youre applications. All you need will be written piece by piece.
>>>
>>> If you have a lot of time, OK. But time is money. Better to use a
>>> Language, designed for your wishes and fast to code it. (eg. Java, ...)
>>>
>>> So long, Ulf
>>>
>>
>>
>> Umm no, PHP-GTK is a fine choice. There is Glade for building gui's.
>> But, i'd use the language that does what you need it to do.
>>
>> Norm
>
> Thanks Norm and Ulf,
>
> Firstly, I agree that Java would be a better choice to build GUI, but I
> like PHP a lot more these days.
>
> I checked out the Glade website.
> Looks like a nice GUI designer. :)
>
> Could you guide me a little futher?
> As I understand it I can run Glade on my *nix box, and let it generate a
> XML file that contains the instructions for TCL/TK to build the GUI.
>
> Could I use that XML file to recreate the UI on any machine that runs
> PHP with TCL/TK?
> I guess I have to add names of PHP-functions to events then.
>
> Is that correct?
> If so, it sounds like a feasible approach.
>
> Thanks.
> Regards,
> Erwin Moller

First let me re-state that PHP may not provide you with the solution
for your particular problem. It all depends on what you need to
accomplish. That being said, you should notice that Glade will output
many different types of files (PHP, C, Python, Java, etc). So you have
many options. I know that in PHP you can load the entire GUI with a
function call. I imagine it's the same for the other languages as well.
I had no problem creating GUI apps with scrolling lists, images, etc.
I've not done it for awhile (and nothing with GTK2). I also had no
problem throwing PHP/GTK/ environment on a CD and running it from there.
And the files should be cross platform as PHP is and Glade is. Best
thing to do is install it and pour over the examples.

Norm