You GOT to be kidding me!!

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You GOT to be kidding me!!
by Mambo-Jumbo on Thursday 25/Mar/2004, @11:04

XAML has the ease of use of XML/HTML, everyone can write a GUI on XAML with minimal training! That was the point of it!
Qt is a C++ toolkit and no matter how simple it is, it is still a C++ toolkit and the programmer will have to know how to use the language, compilers, debuggers and all things that come with it.

Please people, be objective for once, that "XAML vs Qt" article is a joke. The author obviously doesn't get what XAML is and what its goals/advantages are in the first place.

Related Links

·   Articles on Qt
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Re: You GOT to be kidding me!!
by Rik Hemsley on Thursday 25/Mar/2004, @11:36

The author, I believe, does 'get' what XAML is. XAML is _not_ a system for allowing people to write GUIs without recourse to a 'real' programming language. Even if you were to try and write your application's logic entirely in the XAML dialect, you would find yourself needing a similar depth of understanding to the person using a 'real' language; you would also be stumped as soon as you tried to do anything non-trivial.

Also on the subject of programming, who stipulated that you must write your app in C++? Write it in Python if you wish; then you get to forget about the nasty C++ compiler and debugger.

I would also say that anyone can write a GUI with Qt, with minimal training, if they use Qt designer, as I did. What exactly will be the difference between XAML with an interface designer and Qt with an interface designer? Not much, I would say.

Rik

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Re: You GOT to be kidding me!!
by Rayiner Hashem on Thursday 25/Mar/2004, @11:47

Ugh. Manually doing this stuff in XML doesn't make much sense. XML isn't a very expressive language *at all*. Why do you think XSLT is such a nightmare ugly hack? Give my PyQt any day!

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Re: You GOT to be kidding me!!
by Richard Van Den Boom on Thursday 25/Mar/2004, @12:36

I second that. I made a GUI app in PyQT in one month, language and object concepts learning included. It's not extremely efficient, it's probably ugly in many senses but it does what I want. I can't expect XAML to be any simpler or faster to develop.
BTW, the only language I used before coding this small app was Fortran.

Best regards,

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Re: You GOT to be kidding me!!
by David Johnson on Thursday 25/Mar/2004, @12:45

You are both correct and incorrect. True, with XAML anyone can write a GUI with minimal training. But that GUI will be just a GUI. Nothing more. Without code behind it, it will be merely buttons and widgets that do nothing but look pretty. I can do the same thing with Qt Designer. Heck, I don't even need Designer, I can write my own ui file knowing only XML!

While XAML may have a few "featurettes" that Qt does not have, Qt gives you a complete easy-to-use development environment. Even if you don't know C++, you can still create the GUI. So while XAML gives you a screwdriver, Qt gives you a screwdriver, wrench, hammer and saw.

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Re: You GOT to be kidding me!!
by David on Thursday 25/Mar/2004, @13:55

"True, with XAML anyone can write a GUI with minimal training. But that GUI will be just a GUI. Nothing more. Without code behind it, it will be merely buttons and widgets that do nothing but look pretty."

That's what I thought. It is even more pointless than I first imagined then. Are Microsoft actually selling this crap to people?

What I don't understand is why the MSDN article is showing you the XAML code and how to write it, because you're obviously going to need an IDE for this to really work for you, so it should all be transparent really. We've already got this in Qt Designer, and it produces XML, so I just cannot comprehend the hype some people are attributing to this thing.

This was useful, if only to ram home to me how totally pointless XAML is.

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Re: You GOT to be kidding me!!
by anon on Wednesday 31/Mar/2004, @14:04

Oh, please - neither of you have the first clue what XAML actually does, and the same (sadly) goes for the author of this article. I really don't like Microsoft or its products, but even having said that I have to admit their implementation of XAML is damn clever.

For your reference, the XAML code is designed to lay out GUI objects. You have this much correct - you can put in tabs, buttons, menu items, etc. All things that XML describes very well.

However, that XAML can then have scripts added to it either in a compiled language (such as C#) or a script language such as JScript. One XAML file can contain a complete application written in VBScript and XAML: both very, very easy (if somewhat verbose and slow) languages. Comparing it to C++ is very stretched, and not accurate - XAML allows you to /fully/ separate design from the code driving it (a place that Qt Designer is rapidly approaching, as opposed to the 95% separation we have now), which means developers can be beavering away in Visual Studio with their C# whilst the designers are pointing and clicking to make the GUI look nice.

As far as I'm concerned, having the GUI defined in XAML and the code written in C# makes life much easier for the Mono developers, so everyone's a winner.

Honestly: did you really think MS made a technology that did nothing but display a fancy GUI?

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Re: You GOT to be kidding me!!
by David on Saturday 03/Apr/2004, @11:51

"However, that XAML can then have scripts added to it either in a compiled language (such as C#) or a script language such as JScript. One XAML file can contain a complete application written in VBScript and XAML: both very, very easy (if somewhat verbose and slow) languages. Comparing it to C++ is very stretched, and not accurate - XAML allows you to /fully/ separate design from the code driving it (a place that Qt Designer is rapidly approaching, as opposed to the 95% separation we have now), which means developers can be beavering away in Visual Studio with their C# whilst the designers are pointing and clicking to make the GUI look nice."

Yes I did know that, and it is still rather pointless. It may be of use to Windows developers, but not to others - that was the point of the article.

"Honestly: did you really think MS made a technology that did nothing but display a fancy GUI?"

Yes, and they have.

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Re: You GOT to be kidding me!!
by Erik Engheim on Wednesday 31/Mar/2004, @17:56

I got to go with Anon on this one. As much as I love Qt and usually hate microsoft tools I got to admitt that XAML is a good idea (although not completly new) and that it is not possible to compare it to Qt.

One point that I don't think anybody has mentioned yet, is that XAML allows you to use the same code for web pages as for applications. This is pretty cool in a way.

However I am one of those who think that one should not blur the distinction between the web and desktop applications like Microsoft is starting to do.

They should be treated separatly. In this respect I am not sure if XAML will be such a good idea. It might end up totally webifying all Windows applications.

I can also see that something similar should be possible to achieve with Qt without to much modification. We allready got the XML definition for the GUI. One only needs to expand it so that it can be understood by a web browser.

Lastly I think something similar to this is already possible with Java.

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Re: You GOT to be kidding me!!
by David on Saturday 03/Apr/2004, @11:52

"One point that I don't think anybody has mentioned yet, is that XAML allows you to use the same code for web pages as for applications. This is pretty cool in a way. "

Where do you think this is heading?

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Re: You GOT to be kidding me!!
by Erik Engheim on Saturday 03/Apr/2004, @14:38

""One point that I don't think anybody has mentioned yet, is that XAML allows you to use the same code for web pages as for applications. This is pretty cool in a way. "

Where do you think this is heading?"

Into further webifying of the windows desktop. The distinction between web applications and desktop applications is going to be blured.

Perhaps the whole windows OS will eventually be a mixture of web services running locally and remotly. For instance that when you run regular apps like MS word, part of the functionality of the program will be provided by web services or something.

I don't like this development, but what do you think?

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Re: You GOT to be kidding me!!
by Shift on Thursday 25/Mar/2004, @13:21

"XAML has the ease of use of XML/HTML, everyone can write a GUI on XAML with minimal training!"

If everybody write XAML program as the do with HTML pages then I don't want to maintain this program :)

99% of the HTML web site don't use (X)HTML as they will do ;)

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Re: You GOT to be kidding me!!
by Eric Laffoon on Thursday 25/Mar/2004, @22:52

> XAML has the ease of use of XML/HTML, everyone can write a GUI on XAML with minimal training! That was the point of it!

This is easier than drawing it in Designer and getting the XML generated? Irrational!

> Qt is a C++ toolkit and no matter how simple it is, it is still a C++ toolkit and the programmer will have to know how to use the language, compilers, debuggers and all things that come with it.

Grab a copy of Kommander. You can build and run dialogs that assemble text to make strings, call DCOP or run applications. You can also use the scripting language of your choice as well as control the CVS version with DCOP. All of this in a non complied dialog based application with no C++... and you still get to draw the interface.

I think that beats what you're selling for ease of use for the common person.

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Benefits of XML approach to coding
by Kurt Cagle on Tuesday 30/Mar/2004, @17:34

The discussion concerning the inadvisability of XML over C++ (or Qt or Java or C#, et al) misses some fairly major points. When you're working with Algol based languages or frameworks, in general what you are doing is creating an imperative description of process -- call this function, pass this result to this store, change the state of this entity -- in a very linear fashion.

Algol languages emphasis DOing things. and typically the aggregation capabilities that are characteristics of GUI-centric languages such as Visual Basic, when converted into this type of code, can often become very cryptic, heavily dependent upon object APIs and tied to one host environment. I believe that it is this reason, more than bad coding practices directly, that is responsible for the plethora of truly bad VB apps.

XML based coding on the other hand, tends to BEing, rather than doing. The aggregation and encapsulation that is often the most complex part of maintaining state within C++ gets implemented for free, connectivity between components is defined more in terms of passing agreed upon XML structures through URL linking, and the API for interaction becomes a common one, namely the Document Object Model.

The significance of this should be obvious, though its usually not. I write an XML structure, and so long as I'm consistent within the language I've defined, it does not matter which platform I'm running on. Moreover, the code can be ported in and compiled into whatever the native platform formats are on the fly -- rather than passing the binaries (or even a low level IL like Java) you just pass the description of the environment.

It's not a perfect approach, of course -- there are places where XML is not appropriate. However, as someone who's been working with XML related programming issues for the last eight years, I've found that XML as a language descriptor is in fact far more powerful than the number of lines it saves a programmer would indicate. It can be generated dynamically, it can incorporate multiple outlier streams of content transparently, and can often hide the nasty issues of dealing with different data representations by using an XML bridge, such as that from a SQL database or LDAP directory.

If you use XML like C++, you will of course receive none of these benefits, because the underlying conceptual model is completely different (and even somewhat antagonistic).I see XML as being post-OOP, requiring a different paradigm for handling well, and capable of eliminating much of what currently exists in the procedural world.

-- Kurt Cagle
-- Author, Beginning XML, 1 and 2, Wrox Press, XML Developer's Handbook (Sybex)

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Re: Benefits of XML approach to coding
by Anshul Bajpai on Tuesday 30/Jan/2007, @23:10

What are the prons and cons of both XML and Compound files as a data storage?

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