Q's: Animation & GTK Markup Language

[Phil Dawes <philipd parallax co uk>]

I've had a quick hunt through the gtk list archives, but couldn't come
up with the answer to these questions:

1) Is anybody working on a programming-language-neutral metalanguage to
describe gtk user interfaces? I think this would be very useful for the
basis for static gui builders seeing as we now have so many languages to
cater for.
e.g. GUI builder drops the description file, then back-end parsers can
either translate the description into native sourcecode for the various
languages, or interpret the description at runtime and provide hooks
back to the client program (ala visual basic.)
Perhaps a markup language written in XML could be a good idea?


2) I've noticed that the new windoze gui controls are becoming more
'animated' (seems to be since IE4 and the active-desktop patches). Key
examples are the html scrolling (which glides smoothly (50fps) in
blocks) and the tree control which 'falls' open as if under the
influence of
gravity. Is there any base-class support for this kind of widget-level
animation in gtk? Perhaps it could be hacked using timeout signals
etc..?

Cheers,

Phil.
-- 
_______________________________________________________________________
 Phil Dawes                               |   My opinions are my own
 WWW:    err.. temporarily non-existant   |   and nothing to do with
 Email:  philipd@parallax.co.uk           |      my employer.