Re: [e4-dev] Why XML UI is important for us

[Patrick Paulin <patrick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm glad to hear that the participants in this thread are going to get  
together at ESE and work through these issues. Meeting face to face  
often makes these discussions much easier :)

Unfortunately I can't attend ESE, so I wanted to provide my input  
here. I hope you'll consider these points when you're making final  
decisions. In my opinion, there are really two questions here:

1. What should the default UI construction experience be for Eclipse  
developers?
2. How can we maximize the UI framework's power and flexibility to  
allow for future innovation?

My answer to #1 is that the default UI mechanism should be standards- 
based and declarative. I've worked with and trained many RCP  
development teams. These teams often struggle to learn the many APIs  
that make up Eclipse RCP. The more we can incorporate familiar  
solutions into RCP, the easier it becomes for teams to adopt it. Many  
of the teams I talk to are very interested in declarative UIs, and I'd  
say that most of them would be very happy with XAML + CSS. Remember  
that this thread began with an RCP user saying how excited they would  
be with a declarative UI. Please listen to these users.

Choosing XAML as the default developer experience also allows us to  
leverage existing resources. There are books on XAML. There are tools  
that work with XAML. Vendors will be more interested in creating new  
Eclipse tooling for XAML. .NET developers will be tempted to try RCP,  
and they might be able to migrate some of their existing UI elements  
as well. In short, we should always be looking at how to leverage  
existing standards to build momentum. This is what we did by adopting  
OSGi, and we should be looking to do the same thing in the UI space.

But how do we address question #2? Well, saying that XAML is the story  
we tell developers new to RCP does not mean it has to be the only  
story. If we can back the declarative UI with an EMF model and this  
can be made transparent to most developers, I say we do it. If this  
makes possible competing approaches and tools for UI construction, so  
much the better. If the model evolves into a superset of what's  
provided by XAML, that's fine. But please let's start with the  
mechanism that developers already understand and work back from there.

Like the RCP user that started this thread, I'm really excited about  
what's happening with e4 and I think it has the potential to  
drastically increase the number of developers using this technology.  
Keep up the great work!

Thanks,

--- Patrick


Patrick Paulin
Eclipse RCP/OSGi Trainer and Consultant
Modular Mind, Ltd.

patrick@xxxxxxxxxxxx
608.213.4169
www.modumind.com

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