Parrot-0.0.1

[Grant Edwards]

In article <7pp517$dce$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, Georg Mischler wrote:
>philh at vision25.demon.co.uk wrote:
>[...]
>> To use Parrot, first you create a *.par file describing your
>> application's GUI. Your file might look something like this:
>>
>> -----------Cut here-------------------------------
>> window @MyWindow "My First Window" {
>>    menuBar {
>>       menu "File" {
>>          menuItem @New "New"
>>          menuItem @Exit "Exit"
>>       }
>>       menu "Help" {
>>          menuItem @About "About..."
>[...]
>
>
>Looks very interesting.
>And actually reminds me a lot of autodesks slowly deprecated
>dcl description language which I also liked a lot at the time.
>Is this a coincidence?

The text-based specification langauge methodology is also used
by the GUI package for Modula-3.  The interface is defined in a
text file by building up composits of controls, containers
(vertical and horizontal) and glue (hbox,vbox,glue: very
TeX-like -- with Lisp s-expressions as the syntax).  The result
can be parsed at compile-time and stored in the executable, or
parsed at run-time.  Or, if you're feeling particularly
masochistic, you can generate the s-expressions on-the-fly in
your program and parse them as you go.

It also has a prototyping application that lets you
interactively edit the interface specification and try it out.
Though I've only used it under Unix/X11, the UI Source files
can be used without change under the Windows-NT implementation
of M3.

A very well though-out system, IMHO.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  How do I get HOME?
                                  at               
                               visi.com