Re: Not key themes anymore

[David Freeman <freeman earthling net>]

(This probably belongs in gnome-gui@gnome.org)

How about letting the user modify the dialog/GUI.  By pressing an
Edit... command, the user is put into a visual dialog editor, with the
current dialog in it.  The user can then move, replace, rotate, and
switch elements of the dialog.  An original backup copy would be kept,
of course, and a user would be able to rollback changes.  The author of
the dialog can set a read/write switch.

When the user edits the interface, they should also be able to view and
edit the scripts and actions underlying the interface.

There have been other projects that have constructed an editable user
interface, among them HyperLook. 
(http://catalog.com/hopkins/hyperlook/index.html)

It'd definitely be cool to be able to do _anything_ to my system that I
wanted to.

allen rouse wrote:
> 
> Apologies to all and to Jim and Russel if I have misunderstood the
> subject of this thread!
> 
> Jim Pick wrote:
> >
> > Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com> writes:
> >

[snip]

> (this is my own take on things)
> This "old" idea has NOTHING to do with web browsers.
> Forget the (mistaken) idea that XML is tied to the WWW and browsers for
> just a millisecond.
> 
> Imagine that you got sick (or didn't have time)  of writing C or
> whatever lang you use to define a gui for your program. You decide
> instead to write a gui using some CGI+HTML+browser combo. Now look at
> what you have done. Whatever you don't like you can easily go back and
> change. And you don't have to recompile. And you don't have to write
> what is essentially the SAME code yet again.
> 
> You see what was done? Inside the browser you have built a gui for your
> program.
> 
> Now imagine a program/library/window manager that will read an XML file
> and build & display a gui for you ON YOUR DESKTOP.
> 
> > This isn't really all that different from a conventional approach, ie.
> > using an interpreter or compiler:
> >
> >  Scheme Source -> Guile Interpreter + Libraries -> User
> >  C Source -> C Compiler & Linker + Libraries -> User
> >
> > The only real difference is that you call the HTML or XML a
> > "document", whereas you call Scheme or C "source code".  That's all
> > just semantics, really.  If you called Scheme source a "Scheme Markup
> > Language document", and Guile a "Scheme Browser" - it doesn't look
> > any different than the XML or HTML approach.
> 
> Wrong!
> XML source can be checked to verify that it conforms to spec. Yes, I
> know that you can do the same for Scheme and C. The difference is that
> the XML will still DISPLAY. Valid, linted C code can still just dump
> core on execution.
> 
> besides, with the approach that you call the conventional one, can
> someone change the very layout & look of the gui WITHOUT having to muck
> around with the C/Guile/binary of the app at all?
> 
> In fact I think it may be possible to go further and mix and match parts
> of different applications (the buttons, menus, etc are all just a kind
> of "url" anyway) to make a hybrid app.
> 
> >
> > This does raise security issues.  If you implement an XML browser that
> > has code-executing qualities, you either want to limit it to local
> > files, or implement a security scheme like ActiveX, Java or Penguin.
> 
> This is not about browsing the web! It's about building a gui for your
> programs!
> 
>    App = <program binary> + <XML gui specification>.
> 
> > Cheers,
> >
> >  - Jim
> >
> 
> Cheers dude.
> 
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"Win32 sucks so hard it could pull matter out of a Black Hole." 
        -- Pohl Longsine