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Intro blog comment from André [message #542864] Sat, 26 June 2010 17:07 Go to next message
Eclipse UserFriend
wow, very cool stuff, I'm impressed. These kind of UI abstractions for SWT arose many times already but most of them didn't get very mature nor wide spread. Hope this will change with saphire. We really lack this commodity in SWT.
The only thing that catched my eyes is that you use XML. I think that there are better/simpler markups (less clutter). Glimmer (for example) came with an interesting grammar with that looked similar to YAML. Any thoughts?
Re: Intro blog comment from André [message #542866 is a reply to message #542864] Sat, 26 June 2010 17:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Eclipse UserFriend
I agree completely about the clutter of XML. The Sapphire UI framework is architected around a UI definition model rather than a specific syntax. The syntax is currently XML partly because it is extensible (third parties contributing new UI parts) and partly because there happens to be very good model-to-XML binding support available in Sapphire and partly because Eclipse has an XML editor.

I would like to explore an alternative syntax at some point. With tools like Xtext, the cost of inventing a new language is dropping, which undermines the advantage of using XML.

The other way that we intend to further simplify authoring of UI definitions is by building an editor that frees the user from manipulating the definitions at text level. Initially this editor will be form-based, but I can see it evolving into a graphical WYSIWYG editor at some point in the future.

In any case, thanks for your interest and I hope you follow the Sapphire project as it gets off the ground and maybe join the party.

- Konstantin
Re: Intro blog comment from André [message #561017 is a reply to message #542864] Sat, 26 June 2010 17:25 Go to previous message
Eclipse UserFriend
I agree completely about the clutter of XML. The Sapphire UI framework is architected around a UI definition model rather than a specific syntax. The syntax is currently XML partly because it is extensible (third parties contributing new UI parts) and partly because there happens to be very good model-to-XML binding support available in Sapphire and partly because Eclipse has an XML editor.

I would like to explore an alternative syntax at some point. With tools like Xtext, the cost of inventing a new language is dropping, which undermines the advantage of using XML.

The other way that we intend to further simplify authoring of UI definitions is by building an editor that frees the user from manipulating the definitions at text level. Initially this editor will be form-based, but I can see it evolving into a graphical WYSIWYG editor at some point in the future.

In any case, thanks for your interest and I hope you follow the Sapphire project as it gets off the ground and maybe join the party.

- Konstantin
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