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There are new applications in development which require the ability to plug into existing tools and future architectures. 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. The new Chart Editor is an example of such an application.
Overview
The XML User Interface Language (XUL) is an interface design language originally developed by the Mozilla Project for use in creating Web browser user interfaces. The project home page, which includes an in-depth explanation of the reference XUL implementation, is at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/ http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/ . There is also a formal XUL 1.0 specification, but it is seven years old and mostly unwritten: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/xul.html http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/xul.html . You can find a better, more comprehensive set of XUL resources is in the Mozilla Developer Connection: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Category:XUL http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Category:XUL.
Writing user interfaces in XUL requires a complete implementation of a rendering engine to display them in. Gecko-based browsers such as Firefox, Netscape, Mozilla, and Galeon have XUL support built in, but others do not. Pentaho has its own entirely XUL 1.0 compliant rendering engine built into the BI Platform.
The XUL Framework starts by processing an XML user interface definition, as XUL is, inherently, 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.
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