Re: XUL or Not XUL

Pierre DEZON (via Gerald Bauer) wrote:
> I don’t agree with some of Gerald Bauer actions, but I
> think the XUL Alliance site and the people involved or
> talking on the list all contribute to enhance
> innovation by sharing ideas and developing various XML
> User Interfaces technologies (XML UI).

    Agreed, though I prefer the term "XUIL".

> The site and all the products and solutions quoted by
> Gerald promote XML UI and Rich clients, no matter
> platform and languages.

    Also agree, although I thing he and others need to push for greater 
standardization. It would be nice to see these languages supporting some 
basic core features using the same markup. As it stands, you have a wide 
variety of languages weakening support for one another. With XAML and 
XUL out there, there's really only room for one or two more languages to 
be even moderately successful.

> All this advantages should be supported by companies
> or people promoting open source, but it’s a pity to
> see how they don’t as soon as they gain market shares
> or media visibility.

    I'm rather disappointed that the XUL spec was never completed and 
submitted to W3C like XBL was. If you notice, XBL 2.0 is only months 
away from becoming a standard, while people are still struggling with 
the XUL reference material.

> Following Ian’s message, it seems clear now that the
> purpose of the Mozilla foundation is not to promote
> XML UI technologies, but rather to impose worldwide
> its graphic platform, using XUL and firefox as a
> diffusion tool.

    This isn't supported by the content of Ian's messages, especially 
since he's an employee of Opera. At best, you can only support the claim 
that he believes that anyone working on an XUL rendering engine should 
start with the Mozilla codebase. I cannot recall a single message from 
him discouraging the development of other XUILs.

    Personally, I disagree with him on this. I think light weight XUL 
rendering engines with Javascript support would be excellent for game 
development and other purposes.

> It is obvious that trying to transform a diffusion
> tool in a major goal cannot please the foundation and
> its head.

??? Can anyone make heads or tails of this sentence?

> I respect Ian’s involvement, so I think he should
> respect our job: that’s why I think his posting his
> outrageous.

    What I think is "outrageous" is stating someone's postings are 
outrageous without specifying what is outrageous and why.


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