From: James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@...>
Date: 2003-10-31T13:58:12+09:00
Subject: Re: [Q] Ruby and XUL?

Daniel Carrera wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I just read a neat article at IBM DeveloperWorks:
> 
> http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-appmozx/?ca=dgr-lnxw02MozillaXMLApplets
> 

<snip/>

> But over-all, I think I like the idea of using XML for the GUI structure 
> and a programming language for the behaviour.  This strikes me as a good 
> combination (but then again, I am not a very experienced programmer).

You may want to scope out the discussion about XUL and XAML (Microsoft's 
XML-GUI language) on the xml-dev mailing list [0].

I found these comments particularly interesting:

"Hmm. To me it looks like XAML is considerably better designed than XUL. 
This is very much like the difference between SVG and XSL-FO that I 
wrote about in Item 11 of Effective XML, Make structure explicit through 
markup. XUL is using a double syntax with embedded CSS. The syntax 
should be XML, even if the semantics come from CSS. XAML and XSL-FO get 
this right. XUL and SVG get this wrong. I've now put that chapter 
online: http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml/chapters/11.html"
   -- Elliotte Rusty Harold


"I expect to see XML based languages like perhaps XUL to
be included in gnome or KDE. However, if Gnome and KDE use the same 
language as Microsoft, the impact would even be greater and would 
probably put some W3C technologies out of the picture. Strategically, 
both KDE and Gnome should also 'embrace and expand' to gain some market 
share. I doubt they will do it since the will to win is less strong than 
the will to 'be against the devil empire'. Nonetheless, if by some luck, 
leaders of these communities learned some strategic tricks and want to 
win some market share, the 'embrace and expand' strategy can potentially 
transform the web as we know it. "
   -- Didier PH Martin


James Britt


[0] http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200310/msg00801.html