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Re: [eclipse-incubator-e4-dev] Fw: Declarative UI roundup? 
Hi Tom,

Layered approach sounds good :
On the bottom side of the global figure, we have SWT & SWT extensions like Nebula Project set of widgets, MigLayout, eRCP and even Swing (and many others...) 
On the top side we have the wish of a declarative UI modeling language.
Why constraining our approach with compatibilities with existing MLs (XAML, XUL, Flex ...) since it will be possible to design a façade, even dynamic, with any lower level MLs ?
However, if SWT is targeted as base of the ML, it could be interesting to evaluate the split of the model into abstract and concrete parts. 
That would keep open the possibility of replacing the concrete part by one.
Olivier




Tom Schindl a écrit :

Ed and Angelo,

a) I'd like us to see the biggest spectrum of available technologies
b) Ed is right I think we need a more strongly typed / constrainted
   description language.

As I have understood TK-UI so far it uses XUL to described the UI so
Angelo has a constrainted description language it only misses an
Ecore-Description [1,2].

I don't want to sound like a lawyer but what is the license of XAML, is
it opensource at least it is controled by M$, right?

What I often thought about is that we could have a layered approach here:

XAML    XUL     MXML    MySpecialML
|        |        |          |
------------------------------
             |
             | Transform (XSLT, ....)
             |
           SwtXL => EMF-Modeled SWT-API
             |
       SWT-Application

This is the concept I currently have in mind for my UFaceKit-Project the
only thing I replace there is SWT through UFaceKit and SwtXL through
UFaceKitXL.

I've already tested this approach in a project I had named EXSWT the
only thing missig there was the Ecore-Model for EXSWT [3].

Tom

[1]http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/xul.html
[2]http://xulmaker.mozdev.org/xpath-evaluator/no_wrap/xul.xsd
[3]http://tom-eclipse-dev.blogspot.com/2007/06/im-perflexed.html

Ed Merks schrieb:

Angelo,

I was trying to find an XML Schema for XAML.  Is there one?  DOM is very
unconstrained so building a DOM that's well-formed XAML seems important...

Are you aware of http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/sldt/?

It's interesting to see some of the Oslo developments.  It makes you
wonder if Microsoft will build a DSL for XAML. :-)

    http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/Oslo/

XML continues to strike me as a poor man's excuse for human readable
syntax that's primarily driven by a desire to avoid having to write
lexers and parsers.  It's great for interchange, but not so great for
humans.

Cheers,
Ed


Angelo zerr wrote:

Hi Kevin,

The subject is very interesting but I believe that Eclipse E4 have
intention to use EMF.
I would like call about TK-UI for declarative UI but TK-UI use DOM and
it seems that people prefer EMF than DOM.
I would like just say too, that I'm refactoring TK-UI to use UFace <http://code.google.com/p/uface/>(where I'm contributing) which 
propose this project to Eclipse
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse/Incubator/UFacekit

I think that UFace is very interesting for declarative UI because :

* it provide universal API to render it to SWT, Swing, QT, GWT...
(UIElement )
* manage binding with JFace Databinding. So you can bind properties of
widget (visible, text...), layout properties (orientation, with...)
  with anything. Into TK-UI it's easy to bind DOM element, attributes
with tje UIElement. Each properties (ex : setVisible) notify listeners. * manage Databinding with UIForm. It's easy to manage master detail 
and into TK-UI I'm using to manage Databinding Expression  Language
(like XAML binding epression).

Regards Angelo



2008/11/5 Kevin McGuire <Kevin_McGuire@xxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:Kevin_McGuire@xxxxxxxxxx>>


    Thanks all who responded to my previous note.  As we did for the
    styling roundup, it'd be great if people could fill in a bit of
    information about a proposed technology as prep for us all for a
    call.

    At your earliest convenience, please take a moment to fill in an
    entry in the following table:
    http://wiki.eclipse.org/E4/DeclarativeUI/Declarative_Construction_Roundup


    You'll notice a striking resemblance to the styling one we did,
    about midway down
    http://wiki.eclipse.org/E4/DeclarativeUI/Styling_Roundup.

    The idea here is that providing the information shouldn't be
    laborious on the part of the presenter, but enough for everyone to
    get started investigating.  We'll then have a bakeoff call, post
    slides and notes back to the wiki.

    We should aim to have the call in a few weeks.

    Best Regards,
    Kevin

    ----- Forwarded by Kevin McGuire/Ottawa/IBM on 11/04/2008 06:16 PM
    -----
    *Kevin McGuire/Ottawa/IBM*

    10/14/2008 05:49 PM

    	
    To
    	"E4 developer list"
    cc
    	
    Subject
    	Declarative UI roundup?



    	




    Hi gang,

    As you may recall, in August we had a Styling roundup to look at
    the different available skinning technologies.  While organizing
    it, we discussed also wanting to do one for declarative UIs.

    There was a lot of interest at the time, and there's been lots of
    discussion on this list lately about different declarative UI
    technologies/approaches.  I think the Styling one went well so I
    was wondering if folks wanted to do one for declarative UIs?
     Seehttp://wiki.eclipse.org/E4/DeclarativeUI/Styling_Roundup
    <http://wiki.eclipse.org/E4/DeclarativeUI/Styling_Roundup> for an
    idea.

    This would involve some people volunteering to do a short
    presentation on a particular technology, either their own (e.g.
    XSWT) or one they are familiar with (e.g. XUL).  There'd be some
    prep in putting a small amount of information on the e4 wiki, then
    a call with presentations.  The idea is to have some decent
    content to discuss but not create a big presentation job for
    folks, so the emphasis would be on short presentations (and also
    out of the interest of keeping the call to say 1.5 hours which
    will be a challenge I think).

    The goals of the call would include but not be limited to:

    1) All getting on the "same page" with respect to the different
    technology choices available to us.
    2) Open discussion of pros/cons of different approaches.
    3) What problems we believe it will solve in the e4 context.
    4) Hopefully come away with a small number of "most promising"
    technologies which the community could focus on in e4.

    Any interest?  Note that this is community driven content, so
    "yes" would mean "yes I'll sign up to provide some content".

    Regards,
    Kevin
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