GUI definition for web and desktop

[Daniel Fetchinson]

> > It's clear to me that the logic behind a web interface and a desktop
> > interface are two totally different things. I don't want a magic
> > method to convert an html/javascript based web app to a desktop app as
> > this is clearly impossible.
>
> But it is not impossible to embed a server on your desktop and make it
> render HTML on some windows.

That's true, that is why I'm looking for a format that is
html/javascript/desktop/guitoolkit agnostic. It's ideally simply a
text file listing the widgets in whatever format (xml, plain text,
json, etc). And the python web app takes this file, parses it and
spits out the right html/javascript while the desktop app takes the
same file, parses it, and spits out GUI-toolkit specific code that
renders a window with those widgets using the GUI-toolkit in question.
The web app code that spits out html and the desktop app code that
renders a dialog window are different and have to be maintained
separately but the *definition file* can be shared.

> Then you'd have to code just the web app and
> the desktop would also use it...
>
> If Internet is a requirement, you can even render the HTML from a remote
> server.

The internet is assumed to be accessible so this is an interesting
possibility what you mention. Which GUI toolkit would be able to do
this? And so it would work in a way that the desktop app grabs an html
page and renders that in a dialog window? If this was possible then
maybe this would solve all my problems.

Thanks,
Daniel