Re: XML based UI? (was: Re: Platform Independent vs. Platform Specific Behavior (was: Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?))
The more I look at the source code for vcl, the more I am beginning to
dislike it And I'm looking at some of the other XML-based UI languages
available and none of them really seem adequate to describe any kind of a
major UI overhaul that would keep LibreOffice up to date with other office
suites
So here's just a general idea I've had on XML layouts for quite a while -
let me know what you think!
Essentially, there would be three basic types of UI elements: layouts,
widgets, and references. Layouts determine how whatever is inside them
'flows'. Widgets are the actual parts that are interactive or informative
and may be defined by other xml files. Finally, references just include
other defined pieces of the XML code. Any programmatic interaction is done
by accepting clicks, etc. from the widgets.
So a sample of an OK dialog might be:
layout:vertical id=promptdialog title=Prompt For OK flow=fill
layout:vertical id=textcontainer flow=top left
widget:text id=promptvalueClick OK here!/widget:text
/layout:vertical
layout:horizontal flow=right
widget:button value=OK id=okbutton /
widget:button value=Cancel id=cancelbutton /
/layout:horizontal
layout:vertical
and in the compiled code, one might see:
Dialog promptdialog = new Dialog(promptdialog.xml);
((ButtonWidget) promptdialog.getById(okbutton)).onClick() = new
function(){
/** Handle clicks here **/
};
and that would basically be it. Any thoughts?
Yours Truly,
Scott R. Pledger
On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 10:11, Christoph Noack christ...@dogmatux.comwrote:
Hi Kohei, hi Scott!
Kohei, thanks for the helpful information here ... great that you're
listening here (especially since I know your workload...)!
Am Freitag, den 29.04.2011, 10:25 -0400 schrieb Kohei Yoshida:
On Thu, 2011-04-28 at 23:15 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote:
Is there any chance of implementing any kind of an XML-based UI
template?
Something similar to XUL may be a good place to start...
We don't have any concrete vision of what the VCL replacement should
look like, but making UI definition files XML-based is surely a sane
approach. In fact, when we attempted to replace it at one point, we did
use an XML-based UI definition format. Some of these files are still
around in the code base though we are on their way out.
So, yeah, XML-based UI definition format is very likely.
As far as I know, there have been several attempts to solve this issue.
For example, at the OOoCon 2010 I attended a presentation related to XML
based UI declaration ...
http://www.ooocon.org/index.php/ooocon/2010/paper/view/199
(see also the presentation download)
Sun/Oracle also thought about that ... during my visit in Hamburg early
2010, we discussed how e.g. toolpanes might ideally behave - some
improvements about what we have today. Here, ideally mainly refers to
its technical behavior to detach/attach them anywhere. In this
discussion, XML based UI stuff was mentioned as well. Here is the blog
post - no technical relevance, but maybe interesting:
http://uxopenofficeorg.blogspot.com/2010/01/ux-meeting-in-hamburg-day-two.html
Cheers,
Christoph
PS: You may have noticed that my availability is a bit bad at the
moment ... so sorry for not commenting the other threads at the moment
in time.
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Re: XML based UI? (was: Re: Platform Independent vs. Platform Specific Behavior (was: Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?))
On Fri, 2011-04-29 at 13:18 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote: Any thoughts? Before we go overboard with this, I'd like to point out that a lot of us developers have already gone through quite a lot of brainstorming and trials and errors, and I don't want us to discuss this over here on the design list as if none of the prior discussions and prototypes ever happened. Plus, the input we get on this list from other stake holders and potential implementers are very limited. So, if you are interested in discussing what the implementation should be like, let's discuss this on the developer list. Kohei -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: XML based UI? (was: Re: Platform Independent vs. Platform Specific Behavior (was: Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?))
On Fri, 2011-04-29 at 18:11 +0200, Christoph Noack wrote: Hi Kohei, hi Scott! Kohei, thanks for the helpful information here ... great that you're listening here (especially since I know your workload...)! No problem. I decided to jump in because we (the developers) have been discussing this matter to death. So, this is not just a concern for the UI designers alone. Am Freitag, den 29.04.2011, 10:25 -0400 schrieb Kohei Yoshida: On Thu, 2011-04-28 at 23:15 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote: Is there any chance of implementing any kind of an XML-based UI template? Something similar to XUL may be a good place to start... We don't have any concrete vision of what the VCL replacement should look like, but making UI definition files XML-based is surely a sane approach. In fact, when we attempted to replace it at one point, we did use an XML-based UI definition format. Some of these files are still around in the code base though we are on their way out. So, yeah, XML-based UI definition format is very likely. As far as I know, there have been several attempts to solve this issue. For example, at the OOoCon 2010 I attended a presentation related to XML based UI declaration ... http://www.ooocon.org/index.php/ooocon/2010/paper/view/199 (see also the presentation download) Sun/Oracle also thought about that ... during my visit in Hamburg early 2010, we discussed how e.g. toolpanes might ideally behave - some improvements about what we have today. Here, ideally mainly refers to its technical behavior to detach/attach them anywhere. In this discussion, XML based UI stuff was mentioned as well. Here is the blog post - no technical relevance, but maybe interesting: http://uxopenofficeorg.blogspot.com/2010/01/ux-meeting-in-hamburg-day-two.html Thanks for the info. FYI we (the Go-OO team) had worked on introducing the new UI layout engine as well. Though that attempt didn't really materialize, we are very much interested in giving it another go. So this is very important to all of us, and many of us have been scratching our heads trying to figure out what best to do to bring it forward. We've looked through pretty much all existing frameworks but none of them fit our need without making major compromise somewhere. And to be honest replacing one cross-platform framework (VCL) with another one may not solve the issue, no matter how good some people believe the replacement is. Kohei -- Kohei Yoshida, LibreOffice hacker, Calc kyosh...@novell.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
