GUI Builders: Data vs. Code

Some people are of the concerted opinion that GNUstep, Cocoa, and indeed GNOME are on the wrong path when it comes to building GUIs when compared to editors of the likes of NetBeans or Eclipse. The first set of technologies have chosen to generate data (even though Glade can generate code... the GNOME project recommends against this), whether they are serialized streams or XML, to represent thier GUIs whereas most Java GUI builders generate code.

This is a fundamentally mistaken position for a very important reason: Metadata is portable across different languages. In GNOME there is a Java interface as well as a C and C++ interface to libglade. This means that my program, no matter which of these languages it's written in, can load my interface without any problems. In NetBeans or Eclipse, it's not necessary for them to consider that SWT or Swing will ever be used by anyone but them, so they can generate the code. However, data is better in general, since it can also be manipulated outside of the program. For instance, it's possible to apply a stylesheet to an XML file and transform it as needed. Why not do this to an interface file? This way an XML interface file can be manipulated like data inside the program and the resulting XML can be loaded as the GUI.

So I hope this settles any arguments about which type is better. In my opinion, Data generating GUI builders are better, hands down.

A Father's passing

This entry is dedicated to my Father, who passed away today at 11:15AM. He was the best man I ever knew. He had his faults, but in spite of them he was a good man. My relatives and I are making the final arrangements for him and the funeral will happen next Tuesday.

There were many things I didn't tell my Father before he died. It's taught me one lesson. If there's someone you care about, tell them now, if there's something you want someone to know, don't wait. Don't leave it until tomorrow... or the next day, do it *NOW* because sometimes you may not have tomorrow.

Near the end of his life, my father went into renal failure. His renal failure was brought on by his heart attack and his aneurysm before that. It came to a point in his life where he was fighting to live, not living as he once did. My Dad always used to be active, and loved to travel in his earlier years. He would sing and dance and do all kinds of things. I hope that now he can do all of those things, because wherever he is, I know he's happier.

I love you, Dad. Until we meet again...

Slashdot finally posts Gorm Announcement

One of the people on the #gnustep channel on freenode posted the Gorm article which ran on slashdot earlier this week. A myriad of good, non-controversial articles were posted before hand, but were ultimately rejected. So when Malda does finally decide to publish a GNUstep article, it has to be this one, which was intended as a joke.

This post was approved not be one of Malda's minions, but apparently by Malda himself as it was approved by CmdrTaco according to slashdots entry. This is a shameful commentary on just how unreliable slashdot is as any measure of good news. Slashdot is yellow journalism at it's worst.

Slashdot's incessent rejection of Gorm 1.0 announcements

I'm sorry, but am I the only person in the world getting pissed off at slashdot for rejecting my posts? Does it seem like slashdot only worries about certain peoples posts and indeed only posts on certain subjects?

The site has increasingly become an GNOME/KDE site over the course of the past few years. It's become apparent to me that no other competing API toolkit will be able to edge it's way into that site so that it can get some attention.

It's time to make a better slashdot.