Web Meets Console

Since breaking up with RT I've been ruminating on a way to unify the web with the command-line features and profiling functions of The Goo. Can I find a web-based system for handling tasks/people/events/bugs/ideas/pain etc that can be easily unified with the rest of The Goo? I need the web-based interface for the rest of my team - this is a must have - but I don't want to go to the bother of creating the interface twice.

Ideally I want to blaze a trail from the higher order Things (e.g., pain: bugs are bad -> task: reporting system is failing -> bug: cronjob fails at the start of the month) to the lower order Things (line 618 CronJobManager.pm) and back again while staying in the one 'environment'. I don't want to do a heavy context switch from browser to command line. I also want to record *everything* in a trail.

The great news is I've found a solution! Elinks. A console-based browser derived from Lynx. It renders forms, tables and colours, but most importantly it executes local CGI scripts. This means we can call local Goo actions based on links in the interface. There was one slight hiccup with calling external editors like vi and nano but one of the project maintainers has coded a patch in the latest unstable release.

Here are some screenshots of this new hybrid console/web Goo in action:

• console version of the Care-O-Meter
• web version of the Care-O-Meter
• console version of Edit a Thing
• web version of Edit a Thing

I'm really excited about the future of The Goo now it has two environments to thrive in.