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Project Name | pentaho-xul |
Project Description | The XUL Framework is a project that is attempting to provide an architecture for different UI technologies to be mapped and rendered from the the Mozilla XUL specification. The purpose is to be able to render a user interface across multiple technologies without the overhead of rewriting the presentation layer every time, and providing technology agnostic business logic code for reusability. |
Status | The API is in beta stages, and still in a great deal of flux. The current implementations in progress are XUL-to-SWT and XUL-to-Swing, with a XUL-to-Web 2.0 very near on the list of priorities. |
Source Location | svn://source.pentaho.org/svnroot/pentaho-commons/trunk/pentaho-xul |
Lead Developer |
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Reasoning and Use Cases
The basic idea behind building the XUL framework is to be able to create user interface definitions that can be reused across multiple technologies or multiple products (not mutually exclusive). A need to be able to easily replace or redesign a user interface is also a goal of the the framework. The following use cases clarify the reasoning behind building the framework, and also help identify under what circumstances a developer may want to use the XUL framework instead of programming a traditional UI.
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New applications are coming that will be required to plug-in as features to existing tools and plug-in to new architectures that are being designed. These "tooling applications" can generally be thought of and used as standalone applications, but don't make a lot of sense outside of the larger Pentaho client tools, or the platform itself. An example tooling application would be the new Chart Editor.
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Overview
The XUL Framework starts by processing an XML user interface definition, as XUL is, inherently, and an XML technology. The XUL specification lends itself well to providing definition for a standard widget toolset, the kind most developers would be comfortable with if they have used SWT or Swing. The spec does not allow for or account for more advanced components or completely customized components. For a detailed breakdown of what components fall into which category, refer to the Categorized UI Component Matrix.
Pentaho has extended the XUL specification with its own namespace in order to accommodate advanced functionality or customized UI components. How to use this namespace, and what elements/attributes are available can be found in the Pentaho XUL Specification Extension document.
The XUL Framework Architecture
XUL Framework Getting Started Guide
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