[Laszlo-dev] A fun little project

[P T Withington]

Here's a fun little project I'd like to suggest.  If someone wants to  
take on the whole thing, fine, but I think it would go faster if  
people picked off pieces they were interested in:

The New Laszlo Debugger:

1) Make a teeny laszlo application that is the 'client' end (in the X- 
window sense) of the debugger console.  This code can be lifted from  
the LFC debugger/platform/FlashRemote.as code.  The app will use the  
Flash LocalConnection to talk to the debug 'server' (i.e., console).   
It has to be a swf app to use that.  This app will be automatically  
loaded by embed.js, independent of the runtime of the actual app, and  
embed.js will set it up so that the actual app debugger can call out  
to the app to talk to the console.  I call this application the debug  
'transponder'.  It's only job is to use the Flash LocalConnection to  
relay from the in-application debugger to a remote console.

2) Make the exising debug console component into another laszlo  
application, but replace its current debugger communication protocol  
with the Flash LocalConnection (this code can be stolen from the  
console debugger app).  I call this application the debug 'server'

3) Add some more UI to the debug server and some more protocol to the  
transponder/server rendezvous so that when you launch the debug server  
it will figure out if there is more than one application running, if  
only one, connect to that, otherwise, offer up a list of applications  
to connect to.  When there are multiple applications using the comm  
channel, the debug server should have some way to signal that an  
application is trying to get it's attention.

4) For bonus points, make the transponder smart enough to figure out  
if the debug server is running or not when it has something to say,  
and if not, open a new browser window with the debug server in it.

Okay.  That's my daydream for today...