[Sigia-l] Intelligent signs at Microsoft

[Terrence Wood]

On 16 Aug 2005, at 3:47 PM, Listera wrote:

> 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.

You don't need to explain, I know the difference. And does it matter? 
You seem hell bent on being right that on the one hand ML's are not 
programming languages, AND that XUL and XAML are declarative languages 
(which is programming concept) despite the fact that they too are ML's, 
AND that using a declarative language is not programming. Phew, I'm 
confused.

I was simply saying, perhaps wrongly expressed, that these higher level 
ML fall into the realm of programmers/programming not designers/design. 
I think we can both agree on this.

>> 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.

OO has the concepts of classes, methods, instances and inheritance.

What I think you are saying is that Illustrator can, through it's 
plugin architecture or applescript or perhaps some other language, 
manipulate xml documents. The light bulb goes on... it is the 
application itself, not its document that is OO. This is where I was 
getting confused. Flash, and even Fireworks *documents* could be 
considered OO as they have symbols and instances which map quite nicely 
to classes and instances with inheritence. Illustrator does not. BBEdit 
is apple scriptable and has classes in the same way Illustrator is, but 
I don't consider it object orientated.

>
>> 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.
A brief summary, as requested is not too hard is it? Just the facts.

"Yes, Michael showed how he is able to build a form from different 
layers in an illustrator file. He also successfully builds a clickable 
button."

> It would be a long-shipping app called Flex Builder
Oh I see.... an IDE, not discreet applications (As the Illustrator + 
XAML example). See below for more on Flex.

> <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.

Flex is completely different - it has an IDE built upon a programming 
language (actionscript, I believe)  where UI elements (components) are 
surrogates for code blocks.

Illustrator (v10) is essentially a drawing and layout application, 
which does not have the foundations for document structure, and while 
you can programmatically get at the shapes in the document you still 
have no idea how that relates to document structure. There is nothing 
in there that informs me that this is a heading, followed by two 
paragraphs followed by a second level heading followed by a button. 
Illustrator gives me text block, text block, text block, text block, 
square.

>
>> 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.

I am confused by how you choose to quote me... it seems quite out of 
context, and I am left wondering if you are actually getting the gist 
of the point I am making. I know it has taken me some time to 
understand where you are coming from.

I haven't followed Flex, and the last time I spent any real time with 
MM products was at a developers conference in 2004.

I admit I'm not that interested in 'Flash as a platform', but I am 
interested in being able to describe UI programmatically (or should 
that be markupperly?) so that a UA can decide how best render it.


> 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 enjoy your use of the word vista - the new codename for longhorn =)

> 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.

Anywhere anyone else goes... it kinda sounds like svg.
>