User interface markup language: pros and cons
I learned about some declarative user interface languages like XUL for Mozilla / Gecko and HTA for Microsoft on Wikipedia.
- What will be the advantages / disadvantages of these markup languages?
- Why aren't shared OSes and Applications using these methods?
- Do these languages add flexibility to the system?
- Are there any OSs that use markup languages to display their interface, if not why? ... Examples of these OSs or Applications, however ancient ones might be welcome.
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- HTA is not a markup language. It is basically a container for HTML, which is markup.
- The web interface navigates through markup languages, so "regular" applications use them.
- This is a good place to start reading. Also this .
- You may also be interested in Metaprogramming . There's similar ideas for both. You describe something using markup or metadata, and then the program executes it and turns it into something useful.
Many of your questions will be covered in detail in these links. Except for the last one. I can't think of anything specific on the OS side.
Long and short, my personal experience is that markup is great for defining structures and organization and layout. But the behavior is not well represented. If you want your user interface to do something useful, you still need to program it.
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Are there any OSs that use markup languages to display their user interface
ISPF was a fast IBM mainframe application development system that used declarative markup to define screens and then Fortran or Cobol code to provide behavior. One of my previous jobs was converting such applications into a XUL-based interface for use on a PC; it was a pretty trivial conversion.
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