I thought I would post up a progress report should anyone pass by and give a few details of what the alternatives are for QKSite at the moment.
Which Scripting Technology?
This has been my biggest headache and the tempation to just pull in the old VBScript modules have been very tempting. The main reason for this is that it is the simplest form of scripting that I can see without going into the world of 3D/2D visual representations – and I am really tempted I can tell you. A lot of the old ideas have been haunting me and if I had more time I definitely would have dived in – the idea of having a scripting process so simple to use that a child could do it has always had an appeal to me and I certainly would love to spend the time seeing what others may have done in this area.
Well the alternatives seem to favour going for JavaScript, mainly because of the strong and tremendous work that has gone in behind GreaseMonkey and Userscripts.org. Add to that that JavaScript tends to be favoured by Google Scripts too. The down side of course maintaining simplicity.
For a while I thought maybe PHP may be a way to go allowing the crossover from scripts run locally and on the server.
The courts still out and I am jumping back occasionally to research it further. If it takes too long I might as well include all of them, but the down side will be the confusion it might cause and maintaining the application. I need some expert opinions in this I think… The worst thing for time and effort is to change it during development, but it may need to happen because really I want this application back up and working for me as soon as possible.
Absolute Uniqueness Algorithms
This has been an area where I have deliberately spent extra time. I figured that the output from the spinning functions need to be as unique as possible including the ability to create, recreate, stop and start the process anywhere. So I have come up with a few algorithms for maximising uniqueness. The only problem I have at the moment is deciding on how to measure it – there are so many applications out there that widely differ in this and I want the best definition of it that I can find.
Also I have pushed to be as modular as possible with any functions here. To be able to spin text or any document possible to files, zips or clipboard (almost mentioned DDE – that’s a sign of age) is part of the idea and I must leave the hooks there to be able to plugin any inputs and outputs that I can think of. I want to leave it completely open and available for anyone to add modules whenever needed. I have even looked at some of the video creation ideas that exist out there – so keeping each function in its own domain is a must.
Long term too I want to create assembly for the main routines, although at the moment I have succumbed to the ease of .NET handling I still have proper flowcharts in my mind as to what is going on and its got to be as fast as possible using the least resources. At the moment resources get used with no regard so the first versions of this will just focus on function not efficiency.
The Eventual Purpose of QKSite
Need to remind myself that the spinning that exists there has to migrate into a plugin of QKSite. It is not of itself meant to be a article spinning application, this was done just so I could use it soon myself. The spinning functionality will disappear into a module or plugin of some kind, depending on the final architecture and be brought into any scripts or language only when it is required. The main purpose of QKSite is to manage it and allow automation to be created, shared, controlled, scheduled and visibly manipulated as kinds of projects. For me, for now I see it visually ending up as a kind of dashboard of all the things going on, with the most effective summary views of any activity being shown immediately and constantly. The ability to see what events are happening and to react to them immediately is important, then being able to either deal with them from the dashboard or drill down into the information, to manipulate or query it at any level right down to source.
In a specific visual idea of this, I want to see what is happening on all my sites, all my social and communication points at any time and just control it all from one place. Yes, sounds a bit like a horrendous task, but I am in no hurry at the moment. Other things like keeping the wolf from the door are enought to occupy me for the time being…