mORMot Open Source

DKA

Member

Registered: 2016-07-05

Posts: 39

With or Without SmartMobileStudio?

Hi.
Assuming that we want to use mORMot framework in a new mobile app build from scratch. Of course we would like also some basic cool UI components.
The app target some countries where internet connection is expensive and app will be often disconnected. So we need to (re)load the app very often.
Dealing with Websockets/callbacks in asynchronus way match exactly our client/Server needs.
We are also "old" Delphi developer without enought knowledge in HTML/JS/CSS. If we have to deal a little bit with HTML or CSS, it can be OK, but we really want to avoid JS.
The point is to find a way to use some tools + Mormot to build strong and nice UI App with Pascal skills. We need to write once and deploy anywhere.
We exclude Firemonkey because compiling and testing with Virtual Machine is very slow (on Delphi XE6). Yes we use XE6 and don't plan to buy new version.

So I used my best friend Google and finally I found 2 options:
1 - Morfik for Client and Mormot for server (but not sure for the moment we can use WebSockets/CallBack with mormot throught a web service. Not sure about the bandwith also. Not tried yet)
2 - SMS + Mormot

We downloaded Mormot + SMS , try some examples and was very excited about it. Because :
  We do not have to deal with JS.
  Bandwith is very good.
  Testing with SMS is fast.

But reading the previous messages about SMS make us a little bit afraid.  AB helped to build the first version and now is quite puzzled about the policy of SMS. Wrong?
We readed also the main SMS developer didn't work on the tool for 2 years.
There is (if I'm not wrong) 1 developer and the source is closed. It can be a support issue if this developer cannot help (for some reason). In this case, it would be possible to involve some HTML/JS skills and fix some issues. Right?

So our questions are : 
1 - Is it still a good choice to use SMS with Mormot?
2 - Is is risky for the future (5 next years)?
3 - Does exist some doc or tutorial about integrating cool UI components from other framework (something like the example from Wayre Alex about using UI from F7)? This question was already asked about ionic (and the answer is "not yet") but maybe someone used another framework or another tool.

Some other advices? Alternatives?

Thanks.

igors233

Member

Registered: 2012-09-10

Posts: 241

Re: With or Without SmartMobileStudio?

> We readed also the main SMS developer didn't work on the tool for 2 years.

They worked but not exclusively, right now they're working on RTL changes and similar.

> There is (if I'm not wrong) 1 developer and the source is closed. It can be a support issue if this developer cannot help (for some reason). In this
> case, it would be possible to involve some HTML/JS skills and fix some issues. Right?

You receive source code of all (I think) SMS RTL and components, and compiler (pascal -> JS) itself is DWScript, which should be available (but I'm not sure if everything is).

> So our questions are : 
> 1 - Is it still a good choice to use SMS with Mormot?

Yes.

>  2 - Is is risky for the future (5 next years)?

It's hard to say, I would say no.

> 3 - Does exist some doc or tutorial about integrating cool UI components from other framework (something like the example
> from Wayre Alex about using UI from F7)? This question was already asked about ionic (and the answer is "not yet") but
> maybe someone used another framework or another tool.

I don't think there's anything about it, there are some posts in SMS forum (http://forums.smartmobilestudio.com/) so you should check it out.

> Some other advices? Alternatives?

SMS has a high learning curve and many things (controls) do not exists, for example I had problem with displaying large number of data in a table and had to work directly with html5 table and lost a lot of time in customizing it to work across desktop and mobile browsers.
So probably a good advice is to try and use some existing framework and components (it shouldn't be hard) since you'll avoid most of issues if you need something specific. As for language and performance I'm satisfied, it's really good and offers some nice additions to Pascal.

For other alternatives check out ElevateWebBuilder and unigui.

DKA

Member

Registered: 2016-07-05

Posts: 39

Re: With or Without SmartMobileStudio?

Thanks. It helps me a lot.