[Pipet Devel] an interesting thought

[J.W. Bizzaro]

Locians,

It's strange that I just came across this article:

  http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C34314%2C00.html?dd.ne.txt.0326.04

Strange, because a couple days ago I was thinking about the future of GUI
development and the role of XML and the Internet.  I thought that the Web
browser of today may some day become so customizable that it will be a portable
GUI toolkit, with an Internet backbone.

But this is also the direction Loci is heading.

The article talks about using XUL (an XML) to provide the browser with GUI
information (buttons, etc.).  The problems are, (1) XUL would require an
enormous and complex DTD, and (2) the browser would need all of the widgets
built-in, ready to be called upon at runtime.

I realized these would be insurmountable problems for Loci, if it were to go
this route, simply because Loci is not the scale of Mozilla.

But what if the GUI information for Loci were included in the XML, as with XUL,
but

                      >>>as a Python-GTK script<<<

Yes, a functional program/module embedded in the XML.  Has anyone heard of this
being done before?  Try that with compiled binaries!

So each locus would be the same: just a shell that can process our XML (workflow
+ bio + GUI) and make an application on the fly.

Any thoughts?  What would be the advantages and disadvantages?


Jeff
bizzaro at bc.edu