FAQ

Why Vorpal?

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky

Life Goals:

• Build a popular framework based on the Jabberwocky poem.

What is an "immersive" CLI app?

Node.js has a ton of really useful CLI applications. These are usually exposed through a single command, and often accompanied by subcommands. After the application is called from the CLI, the process executes the command and exits (the git command is an example).

Immersive CLI applications don't exit after your first command. They enter you into an isolated CLI environment independent of your underlying terminal, with a record of its own state and its own suite of commands.

From this foundation, you can build applications with suites of commands and utilities for handling one particular thing very well.

Uh, wasn't this called Vantage?

Vantage was built upon what you now see as Vorpal. As Vantage evolved, it became apparent that its CLI base had great potential for use as a broader framework, and this did not need a lot of the overhead behind Vantage's client / server interaction. As a result, the CLI functionality was extracted out and Vorpal was born. Vorpal was made as slim as possible: 1/5th of Vantage's size.

Vantage is now an extension of Vorpal and inherits all of its functionality, while building in rich client / server features. In other word's, it's Vorpal with wings.