[Zope-Moz] Re: Re. mozillation project?

[Shalabh Chaturvedi]

Jerry Spicklemire wrote:
> Shalabh Chaturvedi wrote:
> >Could you elaborate on this? How different would these widgets be from the
> >usual GUI widgets (buttons, editboxes etc)? Why is a high-level declarative
> >lanugage needed?
>
> An ease of use feature, something like:
>
> at top center create title with text = name
>
> at next line left create dropdown with options type = "file"
>
> at next line center create input validate with list_users

ooooh! This is like the user interaction description language I've been wishing
for. I thought of it in a different context actually. If any the interface of
an application is described in an 'user-interaction' language rather than bound
to a specific 'user-interface' language - its interface can be implemented in
using different user-interface bindings. The 'interaction' language would
describe the semantics of the interaction rather than the exact ui-widgets in a
particular interface language.

For example if Zope products described their interface using such a language
rather than html, they would be directly portable to using the mozilla
framework too. It wouldn't require any changes to the product, only bindings
from the language to xul and js would be required. However I don't think it is
a small task to create such a language. In fact I think it is huge. There will
be a lot of things will pop up when someone gets down to it. So I don't even
know if it is practical.

Also the creator looses control over exact presentation when he describes the
'user-interaction' of his app and not the exact 'user-interface'. This might be
very important to the creator.

As for ZopeStudio providing facilities for creating apps like this - I'm not
sure it would something to aim for for the first version. It also means
changing the paradigm of working with Zope, maybe changes to Zope itself. It is
certainly a thing I would keep at the back of my mind, though - since it will
spring new and interesting ideas.

Shalabh