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Introduction To XAML
prostoalex writes "It was recently reported that Microsoft will integrate its own XML-based language for application programming into the next edition of Windows (codename Longhorn). This Introduction to XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) provides an insight into how it's possible to build a Windows application with Microsoft's brand-new XAML language."
'Less I'm mistaken, this means that people will be able to develop fully functional simple Windows executables by writing a few lines of script in XAML? I think that's a good idea. Sure we still need stuff like C for large projects, but why waste your time coding in C when all you want to develop is something like a simple caculator?
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
This is basically Microsofts answer to Mozillas XUL. What a suprise that they have such an original idea. Of course what they probably haven't realized is that this means that creating GUI interface that are cross platform becomes easier and it then becomes easier to move away from thier OS. If they publish the dtd for the XML then an interpreter for other OS's that can render the XML is all that is needed. Then using .net framework or web services, your applicaiton could run anywhere and work anywhere.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
You've been modded "funny" as I write this but really you have an interesting point.
The answer is that to date, all of our wheels have been spikey and sharp, tending to work poorly and often killing, crushing, and destorying things in its path, rather then working as designed.
My pet example of this is "Object Oriented Programming". I think OOP is a significant advance, but it took 20 years to start to get implementations of it that were really useful, in C++, in Python, in a couple of other languages. (I take a broad view here. C# probably qualifies, but I haven't used it. Perl does for wizards only; technically the capabilities exist but they're damned hard to really get right. Java is getting there but still borderline, unless you augment it with other tools. Most other implementations tend to hit complexity walls too early to be useful, such as pre-template C++.) Think "design patterns", and the subsequent work being done based on that.
Finding the best way to do one thing is easy. Finding the best way to do a million things is harder. Iterators or Observers? MVC or something else? Pervasive persistence or request only? (These are of course only sample questions, not meant to be answered or considered as exhaustive.) The only way to answer these questions on a large scale is to try them on a large scale. That takes time, and a lot of what seems like re-invention, as some new combination is tried out with a few subtly different answers from last time.
The sheer staggering multiplicity of answers on so many dimensions is really unprecendented in any other Engineering field, since they all tend to be able to use "physical locality" to isolate the complexities of their system. Consider the almost uniformity of mainstream CPU design, for instance; is it really so inconceivable that a little 'reinvention of the wheel', i.e., a complete re-thinking of PC architecture, isn't called for?
Right now, we really don't know as much as Language X bigots ("Language X is the one true way!") would have you think. There's still a lot of room for experimentation. And the only true way to experiment is by building a slightly different wheel, and seeing if it maims its users slightly less then before in a wide variety of situations.
In this sense, "software engineering" almost approaches a true experimental science, albeit with very engineering-oriented experiments.
Have we learned nothing? Are XUL and XAML just for the default layout and values?
What do these do to make adding/changing/reading user input any easier? Can you assign an independent name/number/resourceid to buttons and such? Did MSFT learn nothing from ripping off Java and the pitiful AWT checking by name that was sooooo fragile? How well does that work with i18n?
Isn't SVG supposed to do all that graphics stuff?
Why did they have to reinvent the wheel, and make it a 1980's HTML 2.0 wheel at that? How many people think tables are 'the way' to do layout? Didn't HTML 4.0 change all that with <div> to break free of table layout hell?
Maybe I can't see the forest through the trees, but it seems like an idea full of compromises. XAML looks like something that needs to be split into two pieces a resource palette and a layout document. Not merged together ala HTML.
---- Smokin' another sig.
If you're an XML nut, you could have XSLT that converts XAML to whatever XML dialect glade uses and just get GTK interfaces directly. :-)
May we never see th
I'm sorry , but I shudder at the thought of having to "code" in this unholy mess of a "language". SGML and HTML upon which XML are based were meant to
be typesetting/dexcription languages , they were NEVER meant to be coding languages as as such their syntax is not geared towards that use. To try
and shoehorn coding concepts into XML simple because its the current flavour of the month in marketdroids and other gullible types on the fringes of IT
does NOT mean it should be used for this. And how exactly is this an advance over other supposed 4GLs anyway? What does it do that they do not? Nothing as far as I can
see apart from giving the coder a headache. The only possible use I can see for it is all those 3rd raters in the web industry who learnt HTML and suddenly thought they could code
and now heres a language to try and convince them they're right. Well sorry guys , you're not coders and you never will be until you learn a proper programming language.