On Apr 15, 2004, at 2:18 PM, Gerald Bauer wrote:
> Let us know what you think. Is XML too hard for mere
> mortals? Are the alternative syntax styles any better?
>
The complexity of all the forms is equivalent, so I don't think syntax
is the issue.
I believe the issue is that no one can really tell by looking at any of
these descriptions what the UI will actually look like when the program
is running. I don't think there's any way around providing a
WYSIWYG-ish editor for user interfaces, if you want to make it
"intuitive" or accessible to beginners.
Of course, such an editor should still allow for a good
Model-View-Controller separation. Something that only Apple's
Interface Builder does really well, it seems (can someone provide me
with good examples on other platforms?).
Having said that, of the alternatives I prefer the Lisp one the best;
it has the least amount of syntactic "noise" to distract from the
actual data.
-jimbo
Excelsior! XML Marshaller for Cocoa
http://www.homepage.mac.com/jimbokun/Excelsior.html
