Hello, Jon Udell wrote-up an article for the strategic developer series titled "A tale of two cultures" that outlines how XML messages mixed with XML documents might unite the GUI crowd with CLI fans.
Jon writes: The GUI that Windows appropriated and made dominant in the early 1990s proved, a few years later, to be ill-adapted to the Web. The HTML browser showed us that a GUI driven by declarative markup was good enough for many purposes. But HTML isn't XML. Its expressive power markup leaves a lot to be desired. Hence the plan to drive Longhorn's GUI using XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language). It's clear that that the future of the Unix-style pipeline lies with Web services. When the XML messages flowing through that pipeline are also XML documents that users interact with directly, we'll really start to cook with gas. But a GUI doesn't just present documents, it also enables us to interact with them. >From Mozilla's XUL (XML User Interface Language) to Macromedia's Flex to Microsoft's XAML, we're trending toward XML dialects that define those interactions. Where this might lead is not so clear, but the recently published WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portals) specification may provide a clue. WSRP, as do the Java portal systems it abstracts, delivers markup fragments that are nominally HTML, but could potentially be XUL, Flex, or XAML. It's scary to think about combinations of these, so I'm praying for convergence. But I like the trend. XML messages in the pipeline, XML documents carrying data to users, XML definitions of application behavior. If we're going to blend the two cultures, this is the right set of ingredients. Any thoughts? Any comments? Full story @ http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/12/31/01OPstrategic_1.html and http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2004/01/01.html - Gerald ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials. Become an expert in LINUX or just sharpen your skills. Sign up for IBM's Free Linux Tutorials. Learn everything from the bash shell to sys admin. Click now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1278&alloc_id=3371&op=click _______________________________________________ xul-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xul-talk
