Re: high level application frameworkl

[Jaap Karssenberg <j g karssenberg student utwente nl>]

Hi,

In my opinion there are two issues here

1) you want an api to bind data to a form

2) you want an api to quickly create new forms

I think glade can be used very well for issue #2, but you can just as 
well write your own xml-2-gui module in no time. As other pointed out in 
this discussion, as long as you use the standard widget for input fields 
gtk will figure out the focussing etc. pretty good, the only thing you 
need to to is to use the gtk api to specify the number, type and 
position of the input fields. The gtk api is very xml friendly, all 
containers like hbox, vbox, table etc. just do the right thing when it 
comes to scaling, padding etc. you do not need to calculate coordinates 
yourself.

As for issue #1, once you have the form set up you can hash all the 
input fields by name and use the get/set functions to interact with the 
form. Of course this can easily be put in a custom module which does the 
right thing for your data.

So I think you should stop looking for a ready-for-use solution but 
write one yourself that fits your needs. The gtk api is a medium to high 
level interface already that does a lot of stuff automatically. Writing 
a module to translate for example a xml definition of a data set into a 
form should be one day work or so once you are familiar the gtk api and 
perl. Of course when you just start with gtk you might need to invest a 
bit more time. Also using data types that can not be put into the 
standard input widgets would complicate things enormously.

No-one else can read your mind and write exactly the module you need, 
but the high-level apis are there already.
Some examples of modules other wrote for their own needs can be found on 
CPAN, like the DBI and the Forms modules mentioned already.

Good luck,

-- Jaap <pardus cpan org>