From: Conrad Schneiker <schneik@...>
Date: 2001-01-20T09:35:52+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:9579] Re: glade-ruby

Can I ask an indirectly self-referential meta-rhetorical presumptive 
question?� 

Dave Thomas wrote:

# Jens Luedicke <jens@irs-net.com> writes:
# 
# > 
# > > If we were doing this work, is there any way of putting an 
additional
# > > layer of abstraction on top of this, so we could use the same .xml
# > > files, but use them to drive different toolkits (such as FOX or Qt)?
# > 
# > Qt has it's own GUI Builder: Qt Designer
# > It produces XML files as well 
# 
# But wouldn't it be nice to have one representation that could be used 
# across multipe graphics libraries?

Yes, but I think that is likely to entail unexpected complications in
practice (due to property lists, different ways of specifying dynamic
stuff, etc.), and would likely be too much work to attempt
unilaterally. 

However, since this is still a great idea, it might be useful to
propose a GUI-ML, along the lines of the recently W3C Proposed
Recommendation of MathML, and seek collaboration from the Perl,
Python, Gnome, wxBuilder, Qt Designer, Swing, Tk, etc., communities on
this. That way, rather than adding another layer with all the
attendant translation (and so on) issues between incompatible
protocols, this could become a common standard.

Footnote: 
�  Don't you think that other people's footnotes are also cool?
�  Just think of all the people who would encounter references to
   Ruby during this process, as the originator of this idea.�
�  There is another potential common interest here, namely a common
   .Net alternative to what presently appears to be a non-open
   GUI.Net piece of .Net.


Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)