[Munkee]

Let’s not let some of the requests here to get lost in translation.

There is a big difference in the following:

- Rebuilding PA from scratch in what may or may not be in perl again
- Building a “mobile app”, which in nature sounds like you are discussing a native app here. This does not require a complete re-write of your back end, just the addition of an API layer
- Rebuilding your front end views into something that is “mobile friendly” hence my suggestion of bootstrap etc. Allowing for all your legacy code to still be used and only looking at the presentation layer which is really what 90% of the moaning seems to be about when it comes to mobile.

I think it is a big ask to suggest that we should contemplate or even fund a complete rebuild of PA from scratch. In essence, thats what all these other PA clones have been including Spinners latest work. That stuff doesn’t cost 5k, add a 0 and treble it and you might get close to the funding input required.

I think PA would benefit greatly from offering up some further data to the community. The PA Dumps have been relied upon heavily by many alliances over the years and has allowed for lots of great web apps to be built off the back of them. If more data was offered out, the community would just build things itself (FOR FREE). Then if the PA team (or a third party) were to get more serious and offer up full API services I think you would once again find the community would build things bigger and better (FOR FREE!). I think this is a medium to long term goal for the PA team and anyone who would like to help. You do not need to switch away from perl or your legacy code, we just need to make it more accessible which is very easy in the modern world to do!

The biggest benefit though, isn’t a native mobile app. It’s a waste of investment and locks you into a world where your web content has to match your mobile content. So instead of pushing updates to one place its now in 2 places (or several if you wanted 100% native code and targeted android + iOS). It’s a resource drain. This is precisely why I would look to just fixing your presentation layer. Make the front end of PA more mobile friendly and everyone is happy. I’m not fussed if this is bootstrap or something else it doesn’t matter theres a million front end frameworks I could recommend but the point here is that a cross browser, cross device front end framework will satisfy the majority of the whine when it comes to “PA needs a mobile app to survive”. It also requires the least amount of investment.

So if we are discussing funding options, I would be more than happy to throw money at a UI refresh. Utilising all the same data PA makes available today in its lovely MVC pattern, all I want is to be able to navigate the bloody site on mobile.