[Glade-devel] REST-Style XML UI Formats and Glade

[Gerald Bauer]

> Well, glade files can be edited directly.

  Sure. But the Glade XML UI format is so verbose that
it's not practical to hand-code your UIs. It's only
practical to open existing XML UI files and change a
thing or two.


> Could you try rephrasing this with less buzzwords? 
> I'm sure that such a 
> generic UI description language might be useful, but
> it doesn't fulfill 
> the same role as the glade file format.  What would
> you suggest people 
> use to describe things that GTK can do that the
> generic UI language 
> can't describe?

  I don't suggest a generic XML UI language. I suggest
a more compact alternative XML UI format.

  For example, let's look a the following Glade XML UI
format snippet:

<widget>
  <class>GtkWindow</class>
  <name>window1</name>
  <title>window1</title>
  <type>GTK_WINDOW_TOPLEVEL</type>
  <position>GTK_WIN_POS_NONE</position>
  <modal>False</modal>
  <allow_shrink>False</allow_shrink>
  <allow_grow>True</allow_grow>
  <auto_shrink>False</auto_shrink>
<widget>
    <class>GtkVBox</class>
    <name>vbox1</name>
    <homogeneous>False</homogeneous>
    <spacing>0</spacing>
    <widget>
      <class>GtkLabel</class>
      <name>label1</name>
      <label>Luxor Rocks</label>
      <justify>GTK_JUSTIFY_CENTER</justify>
      <wrap>False</wrap>
      <xalign>0.5</xalign>
      <yalign>0.5</yalign>
      <xpad>0</xpad>
      <ypad>0</ypad>

   Now how can you make it more compact and easier to
hand-code? How about the following:

 <window
   name="window1"
   title="window1"
   type="TOPLEVEL"
   position="NONE"
   modal="false"
   allow_shrink="false"
   allow_grow="true"
   auto_shrink="false">
   <vbox
     name="vbox1"
     homogeneous="false"
     spacing="0">
     <label
       name="label1"
       label="Luxor Rocks"
       justify="CENTER"
       wrap="false"
       xalign="0.5"
       yalign="0.5"
       xpad="0"
       ypad="0">

  Do you see the difference? Do you care? REST-style
means that you care about your XML format. Another
good example of a REST-style XML format besides HTML
is RSS for example. 

> Choosing XUL as a 
> UI description language is no better, since it means
> you will be using 
> the XUL toolkit.

 First to clarify by XUL I mean the generic term XML
UI language not for example Mozilla XUL. Anyway, if
you use a compact XML UI format it's much easier to
switch to a different toolkit. The harder the XML UI
format is to read the greater is the lock-in to the UI
toolkit and the UI designer. 

>>  Well, I guess you somehow missed out on the HTML
>> success story. Why not repeat it?

> I'm not quite sure what you are on about here.  What
> does this have to do with glade?

  It's simple. If you use a much more compact XML UI
format that you can repeat the HTML success story with
your very own browser using markup for Gtk widgets,
for example.

  - Gerald 

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