As I understand it Gramps uses GTk3 and I have, some time ago as an experiment when it became available, separated the front end from the database using Postgresql as a back end. I connected them by SSH It worked quite well and was only marginally slower than the the conventional setup. But you know that genealogy is a process which does not depend heavily on speed. Robustness and reliability are the main properties we seek.
I recently discovered the Broadway project here which supposedly allows a web page to display the GTk+ GUI of an app.
It occurred to me that the private cloud environment (Nextcloud) I use for general non-genealogy stuff, file management, photo management, email, groupware document, spreadsheet, chat, conferencing etc uses Postgresql already and with an additional virtualhost under Apache I might be able to host such a Broadway-based web-front-end on my web server which would be connected over a socket to the Postgresql server already there for my Nextcloud. That might remove any slowness I experienced before with the ssh connection.
There might be a security concern with a wide open web page with Gramps not yet having user management itself but using the LDAP user management already in place with Nextcloud might mitigate it significantly.
Not that this would allow multiple simultaneous access because it wouldn’t, however it might turn my already existing and quite well supported private cloud into a portable genealogy workstation with all the additional cloud features available too. Without local storage. Another interesting feature of Nextcloud and its ancestor Opencloud is their ability to ‘federate’, creating a community with some serious privacy and security built in. Think genetic genealogy in such an environment! Think hosting your BAM file! and being able to share it within a controlled community of interest.
Before I embark on this latest windmill-tilting quest, this Don Quixote would like to know if anyone knows of a serious Gramps based technical impediment to the project?
Brian
