[Glade-devel] XUL and Glade - Some more ideas and links

[james daa com au (James Henstridge)]

Gerald Bauer wrote:

> > What benefit would this give?  There is a pretty
> > huge impedance mismatch 
> > between the two languages.
> >    
>
>  I suggest offering an "official" alternative compact
> XML UI format in addition to your current
> super-verbose XML UI format. If you have a
> super-compact XML UI format in the HTML-style
> tradition you get lots of benefits.
>  
I think you are confused about the purpose of the glade file format.  It 
is used to describe a tree of GTK widgets, along with information about 
how to connect up the callbacks.

Given that XUL does not describe a tree of GTK widgets (it describes a 
tree of XUL widgets), how is it any better than a Qt designer file?

Could you be more specific about the benefits of using a UI description 
format that makes fundamentally different decisions about things like 
geometry management?

>  First, you can handcode your XML UI if you want to.
> Using your super-compact XML UI formats locks you into
> Glade. Or you can use server-side scripts such as
> XSL/T, PHP, Velocity and so on to create XML UIs.
>  
Well, glade files can be edited directly.  I'm not sure what your other 
examples have to do with creation of GTK interfaces.

>  Second, by treating the XML UI format as first-class
> citizen in the REST-style tradition you open the door
> for new tools such as as alternative designers,
> browsers, doctools and so on. Just witness everything
> that is build around the HTML format.
>  
Could you try rephrasing this with less buzzwords?  I'm sure that such a 
generic UI description language might be useful, but it doesn't fulfill 
the same role as the glade file format.  What would you suggest people 
use to describe things that GTK can do that the generic UI language 
can't describe?

I'm also not quite sure why you think that the UI description language 
called XUL is any more important than others.  Many of the specs it is 
built on don't map to toolkits such as GTK or Qt.

>  I agree the prototype is completely useless.
> However, it let's you use the Glade designer to create
> forms that run with different toolkits such as Java
> Swing, Mozilla and so on. 
>  
That is another way you might want to use Glade, but isn't really 
relevant to building GTK applications.

>  Again, if you want to lock-in your users into using
> Glade and Gtk+ or Qt/Designer and Qt than using a
> super-verbose XML UI format is the way to go. 
>  
Remember that people using glade have already decided to write a GTK app 
(similarly, Qt designer users have chosen to use Qt).  Choosing XUL as a 
UI description language is no better, since it means you will be using 
the XUL toolkit.

>  Well, I guess you somehow missed out on the HTML
> success story. Why not repeat it?
>  
I'm not quite sure what you are on about here.  What does this have to 
do with glade?

James.

-- 
Email: james daa com au
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/