I am looking for a GUI technology for the Knitting simulation software I have been working on. Currently the GUI is written in Java, but I don't want to deploy such an unwieldy beast. I was thinking of writing the finished version in JavaScript with the canvas tag, or perhaps Flash.

The backend is Common Lisp + Sqlite exposed through HTTP.

Those Bruce Eckles ads allover the net have been giving me heart-burn. Aftering reading about all of the open source efforts at Adobe, I thought, what the heck, give Apollo a shot.

After reading their marketing material, which make many of the promises that Java originally ( and still does ) make, I found this:

Does Apollo support Linux

Apollo 1.0 will not be available on Linux. We plan to release Linux support shortly after the 1.0. release.

While we had originally planned to support Linux in the 1.0 timeframe, we have had to wait on the core Flash Player's support for Linux to be finalized.

Macromedia and Adobe have never supported open, cross platform development. It sounds like they will have as much trouble getting it right as Sun has.

The Squeak browser plugin is a real honest to God cross platform plugin. Why? Because the don't hand write the virtual machine for each platform, they use a code generator to generate it so that it is bit for bit compatible across platforms. Browser penetration of this plugin is probably smaller than than G W B's Iraq approval ratings, but it is an example of how to do cross platform runtimes.

Another attractive option is to build the ReST backend, build one superb frontend, say in Cocoa for Mac OS X, and then hope that others copy your frontend into Win32 and GTK, etc.

All technologies are flawed, but I am really disapointed that Adobe/Macromedia is continuing their misteps. GPLing is a good first step, but isn't SWF still proprietary? Why didn't you release the Actionscript compiler? Why aren't you launching all platforms simultaneously? Why won't this technology make my bed for me in the morning?