[Dev] XML for CPIA

[John Anderson]

Brendan O'Connor wrote:

> On Aug 10, 2005, at 11:28 AM, John Anderson wrote:
>
>>>> - The syntax isn't better: while it might be familiar to HTML  
>>>> programmers just because it's XML, it isn't simpler or terser  than 
>>>> the equivalent Python code given in the example.
>>>>
>>> I'm not quite sure I understand the simpler/terser argument.
>>> It is actually terser: "brief and to the point" - there is less to  
>>> type/read. No need to refer to .update, the current parcel in each  
>>> element declaration.
>>> It is actually simpler: there are no redundant attributes like  
>>> blockName or parcel name and you don't have to explicitly declare  
>>> childrenBlocks.
>>
>> The similarity to HTML may not buy you much because using CPIA  
>> requires you understand a lot of concepts that are very different  
>> from familiar HTML
>
>
> HTML's way more mundane than CPIA, but sometimes you really want to  
> support the mundane tasks well: e.g. laying out widgets in a  
> hierarchy.  I've found such tasks difficult in CPIA (where,  
> depressingly, they were infinitely easier in html/javascript, though  
> in many ways that system is less sophisticated.  I couldn't have  
> written a chandler ui mockup in CPIA in two days time, though i did  
> in dhtml.)
>
> Though, most of my difficulties related to how cpia relates to the  
> repository and interfaces with wx, so maybe cpia xml wouldn't solve  
> them.  From my experience, the most important part of cpia to fix is wx!

CPIA is mostly a wrapper on top of wx, so it inherits wx's point of 
view. Making CPIA not be tied to wx is almost equivalent to replacing wx 
with another framework -- something that is very hard, given the goals 
of platform independence and native widgets.

>
> Brendan