[Mono-list] Re: Running .NET

[Bob Smith]

I have not looked much into XSP. I'll have a look.
What I was planing on doing is a mod_mono for allowing server extentions
written with mono. The rest of ASP.NET was designed to be in a class lib
and not to depend on a webserver, so that project can be seperate from
mod_mono. mod_mono can be shared between an ASP.NET implementation, and an
XSP implementation. Another thing that might help to get XSP on mono would
be to create a java compiler like Microsoft is doing with their new
j++.net project. Create a java class lib that wrap the .net ones. It then
would be posible to compile java programs for use with mono without code
changes.

Bob

On Wed, 14 Nov 2001, Robert Deviasse wrote:

> > > If we have developed a couple of asp.net applications with microsofts
> >visual studio.net ...
> > > is it then possible to run these applications under linux? (In the
> >future?)
>
> >A few of us are working on ASP.NET for Mono+Apache. So, in the future it
> >should be posible.
>
> Have you looked at XSP?
>    http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/02/22/jsp_servlets.html
>    http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/xsp.html
>    http://www.plenix.org/xsp/doc/xsp-primer.html
>
> I've looked at both ASP.NET and XSP, and superficially, I can see only
> four key differences.
> 1) While both JVM and ASP.NET support multiple languages, ASP.NET
>    supports them through the CLR while XSP supports them through
>    through the Bean Scripting Framework:
>       http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/projects/bsf
>    and through the Windows scripting interface (if you're on Windows).
>
> 2) The reference implementation of XSP, Cocoon, doesn't seem to allow
>    compiled web pages like ASP.NET does. XSP pages should thus be
>    slower.
>
> 3) XSP is undergoing W3 standardization whereas ASP.NET get's enhanced
>    at Microsoft's whim.
>
> 4) Through Visual Studio.NET, ASP.NET implements a really nice drag and
>    drop tool for creating ASP.NET pages. No such tool exists for XSP.
>
> In all other ways, each seems to have features that available in the
> other.
>
> Let's go through these items one at a time.
> 1) This seems to be a limitation of the current reference
>    implementation, Cocoon. There's no reason Cocoon couldn't be
>    rewritten for the CLR. Since Java an C# are so similar,
>    reimplementing Cocoon in the C# will be a lot easier than
>    reverse engineering ASP.NET. I know that OpenASP was created
>    once, but I can't find any source code to it now, so
>    there's little code or design that can be reused to reimplement
>    ASP.NET.
>
> 2) This seems to be a limitation of the current reference
>    implementation. The Apache group is working on Cocoon2 that gets
>    rid of many of the limitations of XSP, but I don't think they've
>    fixed this. Personally, I don't see why it's impossible to create
>    XSLT transformations on XSP to translate XSP pages into CLR code.
>    Even if XSLT can't handle the job, GSP (http://gsp.sourceforge.net)
>    is proof of concept that precompiling HTML (and thus XML) pages to
>    any language as either CGI or an Apache/IIS extension is possible.
>
> 3) This means XSP is easier to implement than ASP.NET. My fear is that
>    ASP.NET for Mono developers would be in a Samba-like/WINE-like
>    situation of chasing moving target that's not under the control of
>    free software or at least some standards body. MonoBasic, Gtk#, and
>    ECMA C# & CLR aren't exposed as much to these problems because the
>    success of these projects isn't determined by one a single company's
>    whims.
>
> 4) This is a tough one. It should be possible to write an ASP.NET to XSP
>    translator so XSP pages could indirectly be made in Visual
>    Studio.NET, but this is clearly a big kludge. The real solution to
>    enhance SharpDevelop so it handles XSP pages.
>
> I have been planning to work on some sort of C# support for XSP (using
> the GSP approach), but unfortunately because of unforseen
> circumstances, I won't be able to do much beyond research before next
> February.
>
> Please take a look at XSP. If you need any more information, let me know.
>
>
>
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