Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!orca!demiurge!brucec
From: brucec@demiurge.WV.TEK.COM (Bruce Cohen;685-2439;61-028)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: User Interface Generation Tools
Message-ID: <4850@orca.WV.TEK.COM>
Date: 5 Oct 89 17:46:56 GMT
References: <181@talarian.UUCP> <1889@bacchus.dec.com> <2662@harrier.ukc.ac.uk>
Sender: nobody@orca.WV.TEK.COM
Reply-To: brucec@demiurge.WV.TEK.COM (Bruce Cohen)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Wilsonville, OR
Lines: 36

In article <2662@harrier.ukc.ac.uk> rlh2@ukc.ac.uk (R.L.Hesketh) writes:
>As a side question, UIL doesn't appear to allow new widget classes to be
>added to its compiler tables.  I can see one reason why ... programmers
>should only be using the DECWindows widget set to stick to the DECWindows
>look and feel.  This does seem to be a limiting factor though, and may
>put a few people off (me for one).  Of course I would like to be wrong
>on this one 8-).
>
I took a Motif class (the track one overview course) last week, and the
instructor (David Berks (sp?) of OSF) said that OSF planned to remove this
restriction at a later date.  
>
 If DEC made a concious decision to be this limiting then
>why did they chosen a language?  Surely a graphical, direct manipulation
>editor would be much easier for everyone (except the guy who built the
>UI Builder in the first place!).  Okay, so UI Builders need to be quite
>intelligent to be able to handle creation of something more than just the
>static user interface which they can do very well anyway.  But thats
>what UIL only does????
>
As I understand it, the reason for the restriction is just to reduce the
complexity of the first implementation.  There was never an intention to
enforce the look and feel this way.  In fact, since there is no way that
any toolkit designer can predict what a UI designer will need to do, there
will always be people who have to go beyond the standard look and feel in
areas where the standard is mute.  Allowing these frontier explorers to
hook their widgets up the standard ones in a UIL description will keep
pressure on them to hold to the standards in areas where innovation is not
necessary.

"Small men in padded bras don't look the same falling from high places."
	- R.A. MacAvoy, "The Third Eagle"
Bruce Cohen
brucec@orca.wv.tek.com
Interactive Technologies Division, Tektronix, Inc.
M/S 61-028, P.O. Box 1000, Wilsonville, OR  97070