The future of Krpano

    Hi,
    It's been a while since I last was here. But I'm about to update some panorama's I once implemented for someone that made think of some technical questions.

    1. As you might know Flash has been in decline since 2010 and will be fully deprecated in 2020. Does this mean an upcoming new major version for Krpano?

    2. Are there any plans for Krpano to be converted to the module pattern? Which which would make it easier to use es6 imports like `import 'embedpano' from `krpano`.

    3. In lieu of the latter, will you be publishing the embed Javascript to NPM? I've seen at least one instance of a faulty unmaintained copy here: https://www.npmjs.com/package/krpano

    4. Will Krpano ever divert from its current XML-based configuration? Maybe JSON or a Javascript API?


    kind regards,

    Ron

    Hi,

    Quote from Sjeiti

    1. As you might know Flash has been in decline since 2010 and will be fully deprecated in 2020. Does this mean an upcoming new major version for Krpano?

    krpano doesn't need Flash in any way. The Flash viewer is already only a fallback viewer for very old systems and don't need to be used or added. But Flash support will be removed soon or later of course.

    Quote from Sjeiti

    2. Are there any plans for Krpano to be converted to the module pattern? Which which would make it easier to use es6 imports like `import 'embedpano' from `krpano`.

    Currently not.

    Quote from Sjeiti

    3. In lieu of the latter, will you be publishing the embed Javascript to NPM? I've seen at least one instance of a faulty unmaintained copy here: https://www.npmjs.com/package/krpano

    Why and what would be the usage case?

    Quote from Sjeiti

    4. Will Krpano ever divert from its current XML-based configuration? Maybe JSON or a Javascript API?

    krpano is already fully usable by JS-only (and will also get several improvements here) but I know that there is no dedicated documentation and examples about this and I'm planing to improve that of course.

    About XML/JSON - it would be possible to add another storage format, technically that wouldn't make any difference.
    But for user-editing I think XML is more comfortable, e.g. in JSON you can't redefine elements to add attributes, there are no comments possible, no CDATA, all same typed elements must be put into arrays, the order in which elements can be defined will be more restricted and maybe some other things more.

    Best regards,
    Klaus

    Hi,


    Yes you are probably right about the XML format being better suited.

    The use case for Krpano to be published on NPM would be to adjust to the modern workflow. It is just an easy way to manage your dependencies.


    While it is perfectly possible to add local files to you package.json dependencies, it is much easier if it is already published on NPM.


    This also makes it easier to use in modern build systems (like Webpack).


    But also: a lot of developers are less inclined to use something if it is not on NPM. That might sound like a non-argument. But while Krpano is one of the better (if not the best) panorama software, it doesn't really show when you search for it.

    Oh wait, never mind all that. Didn't know yet the 1.17 version had license changes. Embedding the license makes publishing to NPM quite useless.

    gr

    Ron

    Edited once, last by Sjeiti (January 29, 2019 at 9:55 PM).

    Ron, Klaus,

    Quote from klaus.krpano

    krpano doesn't need Flash in any way. The Flash viewer is already only a fallback viewer for very old systems and don't need to be used or added. But Flash support will be removed soon or later of course.


    Seems that to keep compatibility HTML5 AND Flash for the new plugins is just waste of time.
    Thank you for letting me know.
    Pavel

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