From: Ned Konz <ned@...>
Date: 2002-07-25T00:19:46+09:00
Subject: Re: GUI's and the Rouge, Part III (yes, finally) 1/2

On Wednesday 24 July 2002 04:11 am, Tom Sawyer wrote:
> > functionality, such as financial algorithms or
> > encryption or whatever, without reference to the GUI.
> > But the kind of GUI people expect these days is just
> > not the kind you can attach as an
> > afterthought--especially as the GUI is perhaps one of
> > the most structured parts of the application (you may
> > be able to write your core functionality in a very
> > linear way, but your GUI will always involve
> > asynchronous communication).
>
> well, certainly it depends to what you writing, but i would
> guesstimate that 90%+ of all apps could be written this way. it not
> like you don't have some idea about the gui from the get go, but
> the core functionality does not have to be, nay should not be
> dependent on that.

I disagree. Unless you're willing to make a horribly modal or limited 
UI, or are aware from the start that events will be triggering 
behavior asynchronously, you will probably find that sequencing and 
ordering assumptions made in the underlying code will cause problems 
in the UI.

Some simple single-view dialogs may work OK, but multiple views with 
concurrent updates probably won't.

One of the notable hard parts is connecting exception handling with 
user notification and intervention.

-- 
Ned Konz
http://bike-nomad.com
GPG key ID: BEEA7EFE