Cabal web brainstorming doc

[cblgh]

cabal web

2021-03-26

brainstorming by

• khubo
• nick
• cblgh

Strands of collaboration:

• cabal web backend
  • prior research: caballo, link
  • requires hyperswarm-web proxies
  • allows communicating between browser, desktop & cli
  • the cabal guts for receiving & dispatching events (?)
• react-cabal
  • prior art: react-earthstar
• cabal desktop-nouveau
  • a new cabal desktop client, written from scratch with hard-won experience, blood, tears & scars
  • provides a basis of ui components to use for the cabal web client
• cabal web client

Web client requirements

• People can change the proxy servers used (add new ones/remove default ones) inside interface

Web client good to haves

• interface doesn't freeze up when syncing a gazillion messages (use web workers, wip)

Interesting things:

• web clients gossiping hyperswarm-web server being used (posting message to log?)

Known unknowns:

• Need to try talking between a browser peer and a cli peer, verifying that hyperswarm-web proxies hyperswarm messages from cli all the way to the browser
• cabal-core has yet to be browserified (unknown if there are issues)
• displaying online status in browser might be tricky

Cabal-Desktop nouveau good to haves:

• interface doesn't freeze when loading many messages
• uses hooks
• builds on https://electron-react-boilerplate.js.org

things to build:

• cabal-core certified browserproof <3
• cabal-client but works in a browser
• react-cabal-client: react hooks library
• react-cabal-ui: frontend of react components
  • react-cabal-client + rendering components
  • react-native-web
• cabal-desktop-nouveau: the new desktop client
  • react-cabal-ui + relevant changes for electron env
  • uses electron-react-boilerplate
• cabal-web: the web client
  • react-cabal-ui + relevant changes for web env