[Fresco-devel] UIML

[Tobias Hunger]

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On Friday 14 June 2002 00:11, Sean Rae wrote:
> There's a new XML dialect called UIML that I read something about.
> Specifically it's a way to define UI's that can be translated to different
> medium (their examples: cell phone, desktop pc, voice devices) without
> changing the UI code.  This seems like a nice and standard way of fresco
> to handle the UI stuff.  I assume it would take a serious rewrite of
> warsaw (or whatever it is) to implement it, but I thought I would toss the
> idea out anyways.  Maybe there could be a Warsaw_UIML or something, as an
> option?

Warsaw (who's name got changed to Fresco by the way) is a bunch of interfaces 
used to request Graphic-objects with. Those interfaces are as minimalistic as 
possible: We want to be able to support as wide a range of look and feel as 
possible with those interfaces. So we are heading into the same direction as 
UIML: We want to be able to have specialiced Kits for special needs that can 
get switched at runtime to adapt an application to special devices. The idea 
is very simular: With Fresco a user can't meddle with the UI as easily though 
as the objects and how they are arranged is coded into the application. Is 
that a huge disadvantage? I don't think so: Most users have no clue about 
human computer interaction anyway, it would be a shame if someone could 
significantly improve the interface that was done by a professional UI 
designer.

Lets look at 
http://www.harmonia.com/resources/papers/www8_0599/4-How_UIML_Matches.htm and 
see which issues UIML addresses and what Fresco does:

Create natural separation of user interface from non-interface code:
    Fresco enforces a strict separation of UI and application logic through
    the MVC paradigm we use throughout the GUI code.

Be usable by non-programmers and occasional users:
    This is not a given with Fresco: As I said above, I don't consider this to
    be a huge disadvantage.

Facilitate rapid prototyping of user interfaces:
    In Fresco you can just write a python client and use that to prototype a
    interface. Dunno if that's more or less work then writting a UIML
    definition.

Allow the language to be extensible:
    You can have an arbitrary number of Kits in the server and switch between
    them at runtime.

Allow a family of interfaces to be created in which common features are 
factored out:
    You should be able to do this with programminglanguages like python or
    C++. Is there a 'cleaner' way?

Facilitate internationalization and localization:
    Fresco uses Unicode throughout the server. Actually having several
    languages is a problem we have not yet addressed.

Allow efficient download of user interfaces over networks to Web browsers: 
    We cannot (yet?) run fresco in a webbrowser.

Facilitate security: 
    No code is downloaded into the server. There should still be lots of
    security issues in Fresco.

Promote a high degree of usability for people with disabilities:
    We have that:-) No assumptions are made about the underlying hardware.
    This is nice for handicapped people, but it's nice to have to adjust to
    diffrent hardware like PDAs or 3D workstations:-)

As you can see Fresco does not compare too badly with UIML:-) Looks like the 
fresco guys got the right ideas 10 years back! If UIML ever comes of the 
ground it would be nice to have a UIML-Kit for Fresco that maps 
UIML-declarations to native Fresco widgets. That could be a nice project to 
dive into Fresco ;-) *hint* *hint*

> The main UIML site is http://www.uiml.org with sample syntax at
> http://mit.iddl.vt.edu/courses/cs5244/coursecontent/mod5/lesson2/uiml5.html
> and an interesting paper written on their reasoning at
> http://www.harmonia.com/resources/papers/www8_0599/index.htm

Thanks for the links: They are an interesting read. Maybe we should put them 
onto the website?

- -- 
Gruss,
Tobias

- ------------------------------------------------------------
Tobias Hunger           The box said: 'Windows 95 or better'
tobias at fresco.org                      So I installed Linux.
- ------------------------------------------------------------
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