RE: more ex-Screen Scraper?

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: trevor perry
>
> Joe,
>
> I think you may have misunderstood my message. I certainly appreciate your
> concern for me "stacking the deck" and that you would like to get
> into some
> comparison of the tools, but I believe this is not the forum for that.

Not comparing tools, Trevor.  You made a statement that you provided a GUI
for 600 panels in four weeks, and implied that it was good-looking, cheap
and easy to maintain.  You compared a tool (yours, implied) to what was
obviously a poorly run project.  This was the "stacked deck" I talked about.
As to the comments about look, cost and maintainability, no product is
perfect, mine included.  I just said these issues should be reviewed. You're
the one comparing newlook and PSC/400.  PSC/400 is not a GUI, either, it's a
web enabling product with GUI capabilities.  In it's 5250 emulation mode,
PSC/400 would have web enabled those 600 programs overnight.  They would
have looked like the old screens:

http://www.plutabrothers.com/images/sp-5.gif


> One final note - from your remarks, it does appear that you do not
> understand how newlook works. newlook already is "a UI generator that is
> customizable".

Again, I wasn't comparing newlook directly to PSC/400, since newlook doesn't
even compete in the same space as PSC/400.  It's a thick client in a
browser, and it's automatic conversion mode is far from pretty:

http://www.looksoftware.com/samp1.htm

Of course, you can make it pretty, but that takes intervention.  But with
intervention, you can make PSC/400 as pretty as you want, and it can be done
by HTML designers, using the tool of their choice:

http://www.plutabrothers.com/images/sp-3.gif
http://www.plutabrothers.com/images/sp-4.gif
http://www.plutabrothers.com/images/sp-2-1.gif

Not only that, it's quite easy to have all three of these versions (and
more) available at one time.  Not sure how newlook handles that.

And again, this is not a comparison just of newlook and PSC/400.  Brad's
e-RPG approach, Nathan's relation-web, and even Net.Data all can provide
much the same results, because they're all based on the open standards of
HTML, as opposed to the proprietary ActiveX component of newlook.  And
because they're HTML based, these solutions are much easier to integrate
into an overall look and feel.

Joe Pluta
http://www.plutabrothers.com