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Application Environment
As the tool is not terminal-based, but is operated through a GUI, during the designing phase, there was a crucial dilemma about its running environment.
On one hand, we have the online/web approach: the application would be available to everyone with internet access, it would not require download and installation, it would be platform-independent and it would be easier to develop, maintain and update. Additionally, it would operate on a server and, thus, it would not use the user's computational power and resources.
However, the application would require a fast and reliable internet connection from the users' part, in order to upload the texts to be processed, that could be hundreds of MB. From the developers’ part, a powerful server would be necessary).
On the other hand, we have the native approach, in which the pros and cons are inverted; namely, the application would be available locally forever after an initial download and installation and it would be easy to quickly read big chunks of text data, but its performance would be dependent on running machine's power and it would harder to fix issues and bugs.
Finally, after taking into consideration the above pros and cons and the fact that the primary target group, i.e. students and researchers, is still accustomed to using desktop programs, it was decided to make the app run locally.
However, in order to be able to easily migrate to the web in the future, a hybrid approach was used; the application was developed with electron, a software framework which allows the use of web technologies (HTML, ReactJS, CSS) for application development.