From: Albert Wagner Date: 2002-07-25T22:13:41+09:00 Subject: Re: GUI's and the Rouge, Part III (yes, finally) 1/2 On Thursday 25 July 2002 12:48 am, Clifford Heath wrote: > Albert Wagner wrote: > > OpenUI sounds fantastic. But, it was known beforehand that OpenUI would > > be the UI. Could the same Oracle code be connected to another UI without > > modification? Or was it unique to OpenUI? > > Any UI platform - Windows, Motif, Mac, OS/2 and character terminals, and > almost any Unix or Windows server platform. But OpenUI provided more than > just a UI toolkit, so perhaps not. The point is that you could have built > any UI using OpenUI and it would still work - in fact we sometimes > completely redid a UI without even recompiling the backend code. > > In particular the client/server communications were built around async > messaging with particular delivery methods and expectations, and the UI > was animated by code running in the VM. A replacement UI would have to > mimic those characteristics. I did write a Java version of the server side > of the messaging protocol once, it was about 2,500 lines of code, so not > too hard - the client side is almost identical. The message delivery > algorithms were based on highly optimised data structures, but otherwise > were unremarkable. Add those features to the XP GUI toolkit, wrap the whole > thing in a VB-like drag-drop IDE and interactive symbolic debugger both > written in OpenUI, and you have the whole package. For the toolkit, we > chose the path of wrapping the native widgets on Motif, Windows, Mac, > OS/2 and a curses-style windowing package for terminals. In retrospect > that was a mistake, I think Qt's emulation path is better. The native APIs > are too buggy. Just a shame that Java came along and cruelled the pitch > for us. Still, you had to have learned an awful lot in that process. And ultimately, that background and education are our only real profits. Maybe, Tom can pull it off. I remain sceptical. The project is surely desirable and you've convinced me that it may be doable. But it is simply to too large and complex. Enthuisiasm can get you started, but only grit and persistence will finish it. This is a project that can easily become a life's work.