Re: [xul-talk] Is XML UI language a dirty word?

[Pierre Morel]

Hi, Gerald Bauer wrote: Hello, It looks like Amy Fowler (Sun) goes to great length to distance the JDNC markup language from the XUL family. e.g. Amy writes: JDNC Markup Language is not a user interface markup language, but an extensible configuration language for UI and non-UI components alike. XML UI language is too restrictive when the platform allows to extends with any Java classes. In our platform, we have 'user preferences save/retrieve', 'audio', 'capture graphics regions', 'soap client', 'jdbc connection/rowset' that are tags with no relations to User Interface. So we call it XPML for Extensible Programming Markup Language. Sun call it JDNC, and it is not restricted to UI. So a 'extensible configuration language' seems appropriated. But then again Amy writes in the JDNC project page: JDNC leverages the power of J2SE and Swing while providing a higher level API, as well as an optional XML markup language, which enables common user-interface functionality to be constructed more quickly, without requiring extensive Swing or GUI programming skill. And in the blog story titled "The JDNC project debuts" Amy calls Sun's new XUL format a XML configuration language. Now what do you think about Amy's hairsplitting? What do you call Sun's new JDNC XML UI language? Is it a XUL format or not? I think you interchange the term XUL and XML. There are a lot of XML language used to define User Interface and programs behavior. For me, there is only one XUL, ie. the Mozilla XUL. Many languages that you call XUL are XUL look alike and many are not XUL at all. I have started on the idea of creating UI by using XML file in 1999 with a project called Proto http://www.pierlou.com/prototype, long before (in computer time) XUL came out in 2001. So in a way, all UI languages should be called 'Proto' languages. But no, because the Mozilla team put functionnalities in their language that was not in mine at that time. I started over and create a new language that is geared toward Java programmers. So my tags looks familiar for them (jpanel, jtoolbar, etc...). And then not being fully compliant to the Mozilla XUL language, I don't see our language as a XUL language. http://www.ultrid.com Pierre Morel