Re: [xml-dev] Microsoft Hypes Up XUL As The Greatest Expiriment Since Ad

[Gerald Bauer <luxorxul@yahoo.ca>]

>>    Now let's look what a button looks like in the
>>"revolutionary" Microsoft XAML thingy:
>>
>>    <Button Background="LightSeaGreen"
FontSize="24pt">
>>      Calculate
>>    </Button>
>>
>>    Whow. Compared to the XUL version:
>>
>>    <button label="Calculate" style="background:
>>lightSeaGreen; font-size: 24pt" />
> 
> Hmm. To me it looks like XAML is considerably better
> designed than 
> XUL. This is very much like the difference between
> SVG and XSL-FO 
> that I wrote about in Item 11 of Effective XML, Make
> structure 
> explicit through markup. XUL is using a double
> syntax with embedded 
> CSS. The syntax should be XML, even if the semantics
> come from CSS. 
> XAML and XSL-FO get this right. XUL and SVG get this
> wrong.

  Well, my point was that Microsoft doesn't care about
standards and blissfully ignores CSS and reinvents the
wheel to take full control.

  As far as I know in SVG you can use either CSS style
properties or full-blown XML attributes. 

  As far as XUL goes it's all in flux and adding
full-blown XML attributes in addition to CSS style
properties is just syntatic sugar and convenience and
thus easy to addon.     

> I think someone asked if it would be possible to
> write an XSLT 
> stylesheet to convert from XAML to XUL. One
> consequence of XUL's 
> design is that it is much easier to write a
> stylesheet to go from 
> XAML to XUL than from XUL to XAML. XAML-->XUL is
> straightforward 
> because all the important XAML structures are marked
> up in XML. 
> XUL-->XAML requires writing a CSS parser in XSLT,
> doable but ugly and 
> hard.

  Well, again adding full-blown XML attributes for CSS
style properties is easy, but the core questions still
remains. Will Microsoft play together with others? Of
course, not. They want it all for themselves.

> The use of a potentially structured label is also a
> decided 
> improvement in XAML, as I wrote about in Item 12 of
> Effective XML, 
> Store metadata in attributes. XUL's approach is
> decidedly limited. It 
> can't easily be extended to make a label anything
> other than plain 
> text. I've put that chapter online too: 

  Well, XUL already supports strutured labels that use
XHTML for rich text and not some new markup language
resembling XHTML.

  For example:

  <button>
    <label><b>Hello</b></label>
  </button>

  Is perfectly legal in XUL

  in XAML it's

  <button>
    <bold>Hello</bold>
  </button>

> Of course, I'm basing all of this on just one
> example, so it's 
> possible there are other issues here.

  Again, the main issue here is Microsoft go it alone
approach.

> Either way, this is an instructive example of the
> right and wrong way 
> to use markup. For a change, it looks like Microsoft
> is the one doing 
> it right.

 Well, I wouldn't say that reinventing CSS, XHTML, XUL
and SVG is the right thing to do.

  The main point of XML is interoperability as far as
I know. If you tell the world my way or the highway
how is this true to the XML charter?

  - Gerald 

______________________________________________________________________ 
Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca