World: r3wp

regarding Henrik's blog, i should note, that being semantic is what 
i was suggesting with my old notes about how r3's gui should be. 
that would give us a great power... but many people are against it, 
so it won't happen soon.

Gabriele, the Fleecy Moss part?

Do you mean that a button will now just be a button ?

i mean, that the app programmers only specifies what he *means*, 
not what the UI should look like. "I want to get a string from the 
user". "I want to get the name and birth date from the user, and 
show the age". how this looks depends on 1) the look defined by the 
gfx designer (which can be the programmer himself, if he is able 
to do that too) 2) user preferences, to the point that an advanced 
user should be able to edit the UI.

Gabriele - what you describe is nearly possible with VID3, although 
I remember there is more to the concept you are describing. But, 
so far, how 'look is specified - it is not only look. It is so rebol 
related, that hardly any gfx designer will be able to define look 
of the styles.

I don't ge this - here's what I'd do:

Use CSS 2.1 styles on widgets. Create widgets ("classes") in VID-the-sequel 
and render them to Rebol or XHTML + Javascript. That way you can 
mobilize the entire web community to get a UI that renders both to 
a RIA and to the web.

Maarten - but does CSS allow you to define how your style behaves? 
Or is it plain and ordinary - hilite here, hilite there?

How you do such thing as drag & drop of an icon, where icon look 
during the drag period, if it animates, screams at you, whatever 
:-), is dependant upon VID stylesheet?

Embed rebol in CSS much like Javascript for the web?

Petr, CSS doesn't control behaviour, and nor should it.  At it's 
most complex, it has different rules for different states -- a:hover, 
a:visited, input:focus -- which is how I'd like a style system to 
work.

CSS is designed for documents, not applications.

The box model is appropriate for applications...

Not just the box model too -- SVG uses CSS for styling drawing objects.

http://www.ross-gill.com/r/vid-css.html

A small example.

HTML is also designed for documents, yet is being used for many of 
the applications that the new VID is designed for, no?

Gab, you're wrong. CSS is for styling of box models "containers" 
in application terms. Disable CSS on your favourite web-app and see 
what happens....

Chris: my point exactly. VID should map to the DOM with CSS and use 
REBOL instead of Javascript (or alongw ith....)

Get Firefox. 
Install the web developer toolbar plugin. 
Go to netvibes.com 
Disable all CSS via the web developer toolbar

Get the point?

Or even easier using just Firefox!  ->View->Page-Style->No Style

if box model means padding and margins, then the style system supports 
something similar. if it's what you can do with DIVs, then I strongly 
oppose it.

i.e. you can choose if your style will support it or not. it's hand 
coded for the style.

Chris, I would abandon VID3 immediately and use RebGUI if it were 
ever to behave like a web "application". Designing application user 
interfaces with HTML and CSS is a complete nightmare.

Did I miss the fireside announcement that was due this Monday??

graham, harvesting season. it's delayed.

Chris - if CSS does not control behavior, nor should it, - as you 
say - then - screw it. You guys should decide - if you want web, 
go web. But don't try to degrade VID3 to CSS model, because it would 
ease your life - your web life. You are not in VID land anymore.

If you want to build your web apps, then you have everything you 
probably need, no? html, js, css. Where's the place for VID there? 
Why the translator? Because some JAVA monkeys do that? Yes, because 
noone is going to tolerate monstrose JAVA web browser plug-in, which 
badly failed. Why don't you ask Flash guys for Flash to xhtml + css 
translator? I am against andy degradation of possible VID advancement.

We need VID3, we need plug-in, and we need to try to break-thru.

I believe, at some point, that actually some VID3 to xhtml plus js 
plus css could be done, but as a subset of VID3 functionality. But 
I refuse to limit VID3 in the very beginning design phase to some 
weird css model a priori.

someone knows PLEX (obsydian) ?

Cool-PLEX is the current name, IRC

they had a good semantic model for VID purposes

Henrik: that's not exactly what I'm driving at.  From a visual pov, 
it's very easy to put together an interface in HTML -- it's the behaviour 
part that bites.  Also, frameworks are becoming far more savvy -- 
they may not have the lexical elegance of Rebol, but others are narrowing 
down the patterns that make developing browser-based semi-distributed 
applications much easier.

Petr, I can't say I disagree with much Henrik put on his blog -- 
I have been advocating something similar for some time. It sounds 
consistent with the intent behind CSS, thus I'm curious exactly what 
aspect of CSS Gabriele and perhaps Henrik take issue with.  imo, 
the concept of a visual language that is hierarchial and context-specific 
is sound.  The actual implementation of CSS is kindof ugly..

If we are to, as you say 'screw', separating visual from function, 
then why bother when we still have VID 2?

Look at it another way -- if you are building a web application, 
you hire a designer to work on the interface.  The designer may adjust 
some of your HTML templates, but most all the work can be done with 
a style sheet.  That's it.  They don't need to go tinkering in your 
application code, they just need to know the elements of the interface 
and the range of states of those elements.  They code the CSS, bundle 
the images, then they're done and you can slot it into your interface 
without modification.

Where I have designed VID interfaces, I (or someone else) have had 
to implement my designs in lower level code, and still there are 
portions beyond my control.  And a change in the visual may change 
the functionality of the application..

Though don't misunderstand me -- I am not suggesting VID 3 should 
be an HTML/CSS/JS layout engine.  All I'm saying is learn from the 
good, proven concepts that exist in their design.

Maarten: I know what CSS is about. I don't want to use it for applications.

Yeah, why use a standard if you don't have to.

in VID3 function is completely separate from visual already. many 
people are strongly opposing that. I will fight for it.

It's hard to discuss this wihout any experience of what you have 
done so far.

I'll say...

Chris - I know, I remember your position. Was it REBOL2 or REBOL1 
world we were discussing that? VID 1.3 time. I too, asked Henrik/Gabriele 
about CSS. Because it would be cool, if we would be close to standards. 
Not because of standards themselves, but because of easy of deployment. 
But, as far as I understand the situation - Gabriele understands 
CSS, and so far, VID3 seems more flexible. If it would be upon to 
him, he would even more separate (completly) app logic and user interface.

As Graham says, it is difficult to judge, if you have no access to 
what is done. But - it is difficult to judge even if I have the access, 
as the thingy is not complete yet. I hope Gabriele is soon back on 
VID3.

Ok, I think we understand each other.

My idea is kind of VID3 translator/compiler - maybe with i limited 
functionality? I don't know, kind of how you decide if you output 
make-doc to pdf, html ...

Steeve, do you mean http://www.plextk.org?

GUI & functions: The only way I think we really can let GUI people 
work on it wihtout disturbing the code is to use a event model. So 
a GUI widget just sends an event to some rebol internal event-handler 
& dispatcher and this calls the app code.