[proposal] GTK Markup Language Specification

["Timothy M. Shead" <tshead sheaddataproc com>]

Folks:

Well, this may be old news or not - I haven't figured out how to get at the
list archive, so what the heck.  As my first-ever contribution to the
open-source community, I'd like to share some of my GTK-related libraries,
tied together with a proposal for a new standard - tentatively called the
"GTK Markup Language" (GTKML).  The purpose of GTKML would be to create an
XML document format for defining GTK-based user interfaces.  The benefits of
such a standard would be many-fold:

* Any GTKML-compliant language binding / framework could be used with any
GTKML-compliant visual editor / IDE - developers would no longer be "tied"
to a framework by their favorite editor.
* Rapid application development - changes to an application's user-interface
can be accomplished without recompiles.
* User choice - end-users of an application can edit / alter / extend the
user-interface without altering code: either by hand, or with
GTKML-compliant editors.
* Localization - end-users can easily create language-translations of GTKML
documents and share them with others.
* Flexibility - because XML documents are text documents, they can be
shipped as separate files to allow user editing, or embedded in code or
database tables as strings.
* Variety - GTKML documents could become an equivalent to "skins" for
applications ... each application could maintain an archive of popular
interface configurations.

Sound exciting?  There's more!  A preliminary discussion of what GTKML might
look like is at:

http://www.k-3d.com/index_gtkml.html.

Show me the code, Tim!  It all compiles under Linux and Win32, and it's at:

http://www.k-3d.com/index_kgtk.html     -- a set of C++ wrappers for GTK
that support GTKML.
http://www.k-3d.com/index_kxml.html     -- a naive C++ XML parser.
http://www.k-3d.com/index_ktypes.html   -- C++ support classes for the
above.

As a side note, I recently found out (by accident) that Glade has some type
of XML output ... unfortunately, I haven't seen it, so it's entirely
possible I've reinvented the wheel :)  On the other hand, maybe it's an idea
whose time has come ...

I welcome your feedback,

Timothy M. Shead