RE: [Setup-tool-hackers] Re: XML front-end ideas

[David Joham <djoham criadvantage com>]

<<Well both KDE and GNOME already have XML-based dialogs.  Most of the
work would be in implementing the original XML language and then finding
some XSLT to convert to the KDE (Qt Designer?) and GNOME (GLADE?)
formats.  Alternatively, the backend could load a module which has a
common API for generating the GUI XML which spits out the required
formats directly.>>

I'm still a little unclear about how the whole idea of an XML GUI would
work. If I understand the idea correctly, the thought would be that the
back-end told the front-end how it needs to be rendered. That's all well and
good, but how does the back end tell the front-end what happens for example
when "buttonWidget1" is pressed. That logic needs to be in the front-end GUI
somewhere or we won't have a very impressive application :)

My question to the XML proponents is this: since the logic of how the GUI
interacts with itself needs to be known to the front-end, where is this
logic going to be stored? If it is stored on the back-end with the GUI
definition, how do you propose to propagate that information to the
front-end client? How will it then be executed? If it is stored on the front
end client, what is the real advantage of having the GUI defined in XML when
its behavior is already pre-defined in the code?

Best regards,

David