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laying out the dream

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#+title: nitinol #+title: Nitinol
Nitinol is a framework for building malleable web applications. Nitinol is a framework for building user-malleable web applications and tools, specifically PWAs, built on top of [[https://mithril.js.org/index.html][Mithril.js]] and [[https://lips.js.org/][LIPS scheme]].
It provides all the tools necessary to make a full application stack that the user is easily able to modify; both for themselves or others, and ephemerally or persistently.
:naming:
Nitinol is an alloy of Nickel and Titanium that has shape memory and superelasticity.
:end:
* Design Philosophy
Nitinol is heavily inspired by Emacs in terms of extensibility and self-documentation.
Instead of treating the application as a standalone application, it should be treated as a construction on top of a powerful Lisp core.
This core can then be modified by the user in real time --- allowing them to almost entirely change application behaviour --- or inspected to easily understand the inner workings.
A number of approaches already exist on the web for achieving malleability, but they are nothing compared to the power of a proper scripting engine.
- Settings only allow the user to modify the application in ways made legal by the original developer.
- Plugins also have limits in their ability to modify aspects of the application, while also generally being difficult to develop.
- Extensions can inject CSS or HTML but cannot modify server-side behaviour, and can also be annoying to develop and share.
- Open source projects typically lack sufficient internal documentation for non-developers to modify the internals, and often require additional (possible painful) setup steps.
Nitinol seeks to address all these problems by providing a Scheme environment in the web browser, and tools for building full applications.
- A live REPL allows the user to modify the application in real time.
- REPL inputs can be saved to a cached configuration file, which can be shared to other users of the application.
- Code is self-documenting via doc string macros and source code links, allowing easy introspection.
- Both the front-end and back-end can be modified (within security and access control constraints).