DOCS & FAQ: Architecture

[tiblu]

First of all - thanks a lot for open sourcing Hackpad.

It would be nice if someone with deep insight would contribute architectural documentation of the Hackpad in the Wiki. Most of the questions I get when browsing the source are probably actually related to the AppJet engine, but the info is hard to find.

It would be nice if it answered following questions:

• What components (libraries, technologies...) are involved and how they talk to each other?
• How to extend the functionality? The in depth view how "task list" functionality comes together with all the FE and BE parts.
• Architectural decisions:
  • Why is Hackpad built on top of Etherpad not for example Etherpad Lite? It might be as easy, as Etherpad Lite did not exists at the time. The problem with building on top of Etherpad which is on top of AppJet, which open source development seems to be discontinued and there are no resources available.
  • Is there any edge in using AppJet to plain (Node).JS solution like Etherpad Lite? From what I see AppJet is Java/Scala framework that runs the JavaScript code inside JVM using Rhino engine. Seems like a very fat stack. What are the benefits of the stack? More of a AppJet engine question, but the info is very hard to find.

If this should be discussed somewhere else, please let me know.