RE: [platform-swt-dev] possible XML SWT markup language?

[public@xxxxxxxxx]

are you suggesting that we build SWT bindings into Jython?  Jython already
has a gui widget set, does it not?
I agree that there are some types of (usually dynamic) screens that can't
be represented by a tree data set (XML), and can only be represented by a
programming language of some sort.  But we already have Java for that -
why introduce another language?

-- Derek Anderson
Senior Software Engineer
Computer Sciences Corp.
http://www.csc.com


> Dave,
>
> No problem. Obviously Jython is a scripting language whereas XML is a
> markup language, so why did I mention Jython? It really has to do with
> application. Some of the time that you would want to use XML to create
> UIs with SWT, Jython, a full powered scripting language might be a
> better choice. Im not suggesting that XML stuff shouldnt go on, but
> sometimes a scripting language might be better.
>
> Lets get practical and talk some scenarios. You can define a SWT screen
> in XML. Cool. Then you have to have a controller of some kind to
> process the XML and create the SWT components at run time. That can be
> useful for static screens. But say you want to do something dynamic?
> You can build functionality into a controller, but every time you want
> to do something new you have to add new functionality into the
> controller. Thats because XML is essentially a huge datastructure-
> defining hierarchical data. But it is not a programming language. So
> you cant do anything dynamic really in the XML.
>
> With a scripting language on the other hand you can create programmatic
> constructs to do things like create a button or page for every item in
> (array|list|hashtable|etc). Not to say that you always want to do this
> but there are some advantages.
>
> Basically, there are some advantages to using a scripting language. If
> you want to get away from writing SWT code, you can reduce it by about
> half using a scripting language while not sacrificing functionality. I
> believe this is as interesting and useful as XML markup and should be
> considered in parallel.
>
> Thoughts?
> -jonathan
>