[Sigia-l] Intelligent signs at Microsoft

[Listera]

Terrence Wood:
 
> It's pedantic IMO as to whether a language is compiled or interpreted,
> as they require a similar skill set to understand and use.

Well, I'm not sure how else to explain the fundamental difference between
markup and executable code, which is not a matter of compilation at all.

> so it's XSLT

No, it's not.
 
> I simply don't understand how Illustrator is object orientated - it has shapes
> that you can push around, but that's not OO.

You need to 

    a)  download the Illustrator SDK and look at its DOM-like structure or
    b)  watch the movie where Michael is describing how its OO nature helped
him map it to XAML's structure, or
    c)  check Illustrator's objects through something like AppleScript,
write some code to manipulate them every which way you want and convince
yourself.

I'm not sure what else I can say on this.

> I was not talking about animation, I was about interactive elements
> (buttons and forms, which also sit in the 4th dimension - change over
> time) 

Again, it's very difficult to discuss this with you if you're unwilling to
look at the source. This is precisely what Michael was demoing in the video.

> It sounds like a good ideal...

Again, it's hard to discuss this if you're not willing to consider reality
in the form of shipping products.

> what application from MM would a designer use to generate UI's for FLEX for
> example?

It would be a long-shipping app called Flex Builder

<http://www.macromedia.com/software/flex/flexbuilder/>

or the upcoming Eclipse plug-in (codenamed Zorn).
 
>> You are thoroughly confusing the visual *appearance* of a doc and the
>> underlying data format that produces it.
> 
> No I am not. Have you ever converted a bunch of documents into some
> variant of SGML? Most legacy documents are created in a way to acheive
> a visual effect (i.e. they print well), but contain little or no
> structural information (e.g A heading is made bigger and bolder
> visually. A pie chart is a bunch of vectors that knows nothing of the
> data it represents).

You are utterly uniformed about how Illustrator and/or Flex works under the
covers. I suggested that you go check the Macromedia site for Flex, look at
some declarative Flex markup and study the structure therein. It would also
help to read about Adobe's current and upcoming plans on PDF/XML and
server-based data.

> Document structure (i.e the purpose of an element and it's relationship
> with other elements) doesn't enter into it.

You are simply uninformed on this. Please, go read some stuff I suggested.
You just have the wrong picture of these apps.

> Seriously, I'm not going to download a 25 minute video on dialup in New
> Zealand  to watch a tweening animation - but if it answers the above
> question, then perhaps you can provide a summary. I am talking about
> interaction and UI's, not animation.

I wish you could watch the video and I'm sorry you can't. It's a fairly
compact piece, without fluff, showing you vistas into how that
transformation has the potential to bridge the gap between 'freeform'
drawing apps and backend code.

I'm not sure where MSFT is going with this. But the potential is clearly
there, and even Michael acknowledges it in the video itself.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba