Miguel de Icaza on Mono, Ximian/Novell, XAML

moquist writes "Netcraft has an interview with Miguel de Icaza, of Gnome and Ximian fame. Icaza expounds his thoughts on Mono (the .Net framework for open source), the current direction of Microsoft's .Net, Novell's acquisition of Ximian, Novell's Linux desktop environment, Linux for grandmas and kids, and "the greatest danger to the continuing adoption and progress of open source" (Hint: it's pronounced "XAML".)."

For those who don't speak Spanish.

[jsweval]

Mono means monkey.

Re:it's pronounced "XAML".

[omicronish]

How the hell do you pronounce "XAML"?

It's pronounced like "Zammel".

Re:Zamil?

[frenetic3]

It's pronounced "Zammel" [ondotnet.com]:

"One of Longhorn's most interesting technologies for developers is its new XML-based markup language, codenamed XAML (short for eXtensible Application Markup Language, and pronounced "Zammel"). User interfaces in Longhorn applications are typically built using XAML. In this article, we look at how XAML ..."

-fren

Re:For those who don't realize..

[krumms]

http://www.go-mono.org/faq.html#q7 [go-mono.org]

Re:Embracing and Extending XUL?

[miguel]

XUL is more of a standard: there is a specification
which describes what things must do, and there are
a couple of implementations (Mozilla's being the
most popular one).

XAML on the other hand is a serialization format:
every tag in the XML is looked up in the class
libraries, and every attribute as an event or as
a property to be set. So the resulting markup
is just a way of creating instances of your classes.

The idea of XAML can be used with any class
library really, its not limited to Avalaon (for
instance, MyXAML is a XAML implementation for
Windows.Forms). Like I said on the interview,
what makes XAML/Avalon powerful is that it runs
on a sandbox, and it has a set of fairly recent
controls as opposed to those we have grown used
to on the Web.

Miguel.

Re:Nice wrap-up

[tarka69]

Add to that the fact that Java is rapidly gaining first-class support in mono via IKVM. From the IKVM blog:

The next Mono release will contain the C half of the IKVM JNI provider and the next IKVM snapshot will contain the C# half of the Mono JNI provider. This means that JNI will work out of the box on Mono (for the parts of JNI that are actually implemented).

This will hopefully attract developers who want want to go the Mono route but can't afford to lose their existing codebase/knowledge.

Re:XAML is only scary because it's Microsoft

[GarfBond]

I haven't read the article (duh), but from what I remember, XAML wasn't a complete overhaul of HTML. XAML was more like a way of using XML to design your user interfaces, integrated completely into Windows. It's not designed to work with anything but Longhorn.

Does that technology sound familiar? Oh right, it does! [mozilla.org]

XUL (pronounced "zool") is Mozilla's XML-based User interface Language that lets you build feature-rich cross platform applications that can run connected or disconnected from the Internet. These applications are easily customized with alternative text, graphics and layout so they can be readily branded or localized for various markets. Web developers already familiar with Dynamic HTML (DHTML) will learn XUL quickly and can start building applications right away.

Obviously, Mozilla's focus is on "cross platform," whereas Microsoft would much rather just focus on the one.

Clickable links!

[ashot]

Sorry, posted in plain text on accident..

Macromedia Flex [macromedia.com]
Macromedia Central [macromedia.com]
MXML [macromedia.com]
ego7 [ego7.net]

Re:Miguel is right-on-target!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm... Consider this:

Director of Quality Assurance write macros (basic) for his Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet that generates graphs based on collected metrics data and populates a web site.

Director of Engineering works with consultant to design user interface for CMM PAL (process asset library)

Director of Software Engineering implements defect tracking system, with metrics managemenet system

The list goes on and. Lots of business people are creating small applications. The spreadsheet is one of the most common applications used by non-profesional programmers to create small applications.

GigatanKramePithicus

Re:XML == acronym ?

[shadowmatter]

"Non-pronouncable" abbreviations, such as SMTP and FBI, are initialisms.

"Pronouncable" abbreviations, such as NASA and FUBAR, are acronyms.

And if I remember it correctly, that was the gospel, straight from my Linguistics 10 professor's mouth ;)

XML is an initialism. XAML, although it looks like an initialism at first, is actually an acronym (pronounced "Zammel").

- shadowmatter

Re:XAML is only scary because it's Microsoft

[prockcore]

Having said that, why isn't there an far-reaching OSS project to replace HTML?

Well, that's not really what XAML is, it's a way of marking up UIs.

Apple does the same thing with iTMS.

The structure of iTMS XML is similar to the structure of a Gtk app (in fact, I'm currently working on implementing a viewer of iTMS XML using Gtk).

In general, iTMS XML isn't as powerful as html+css, but it does do some things that html can't do.

Because both XAML and iTMS XML mix content with presentation, neither is a good replacement for html+css, but both are interesting none-the-less.

Java on .NET is an open source reality.

[JanusFury]

Say hello to IKVM! [ikvm.net]. It works with Mono and MS's .Net implementation, and has already been demonstrated running full-fledged Java applications like Eclipse, along with translating between aspects of the Java and .NET world. It's a very cool project, and I look forward to seeing it completed.

What's scary?

[Jugalator]

Longhorn has kind of a scary technology called Avalon, which when compounded with another technology called XAML, it's fairly dangerous. And the reason is that they've made it so it's basically an HTML replacement. The advantage is it's probably as easy as writing HTML, so that means that anybody can produce this content with a text editor.

The main application code is supposed to be written in a .NET language like C# or VB.NET if I'm not mistaken. Yes, XAML apps are similar to HTML pages, but they, like HTML, also need a scripting part to actually do something and not just be static. And that's what e.g. C# is for.

Re:Nice wrap-up

[Jotham]

Very nice diagram and it'll continue to grow with other interesting projects such as Tao [randyridge.com] which adds OpenGL, OpenAL, SDL, etc as your opensource alternative to DirectX.

Hopefully those that still view C# as microsoft lock-in, will see that C# is an open (ECMA approved) language, and Mono is doing a great job of supporting it. The choice (and any potential lock-in) is really in what APIs you use, which is no different from a C++ programmer choosing between DirectX or OpenGL.

Re:Its that loser miguel again praising Windows.

[0x0d0a]

He's the most visible member of the Linux community who does stuff related to MS technologies.

Miguel's .NET stuff is pretty recent. I think Jeremy Allison (of Samba fame) has to get the nod on this point.

Re:The advantages of taking MS seriously...

[ndykman]

Two reference to look at: Stephen Gilmore, Mobile Resource Guarantees Project, Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh, Presentation, "Comparing the JVM and .NET", here> [ed.ac.uk] Jeremy Singer, "JVM versus CLR: A Comparitive Study", Proceeding of the 2nd International Conference on Principles and Practice of Programming in Java, May 2002, pp. 167-169 Both papers compared the performance of the JVM to the CLR. The first used the Pascal compiler that emitted code for both the JVM (1.4) and the CLR and the second used Java Grande benchmarkes that were translated to C# and complied to the 1.0 CLR (the Java was compiled to Java 1.4.1, with hotspot). In both cases, the CLR beat the JVM in performance, in some cases, by a large margin. A beta version and version 1.0 of the CLR on Microsoft beat a mature version of the JVM on the Windows platform. So, the CLR can indeed be faster than the JVM. In fact, each paper talks about how the CLR instruction is more ameddable to optimization (on any platform) than the JVM, which was not originally designed with JIT in mind. Just FYI. Any references on Java beating the CLR to counteract the above? (Seriously. Debate is good).

Tried XULmaker yet ?

[savuporo]

I was looking for a XUL RAD tool myself the other day and came across XULMAKER [mozdev.org]
Havent tried it yet, dont know whether its anywhere near mature or not.

Re:Embracing and Extending XUL?

[zhenlin]

Which makes it more akin to the .nib files of NeXT/ OS X Interface Builder fame.

In any case, if you can break out of a chroot jail, you can break out of a sandbox. Truly malicious people will not be deterred by it.

Re:Markup languages are still code.

[ashot]

"XAML enables you to create a UI without using code. You can create quite elaborate documents entirely in markup using controls, text, images, shapes and so forth..."

you layout the UI with XAML, you control it using embeded actions which are code. This code can be in any language and is independent of the UI. Thats actually part of the beauty of it all..

Re:all the pieces are in places now, why not just.

[gglaze]

Avalon is not really about providing dynamic "web pages", which is, at least based on my probably outdated understanding, what Flash is about...

Avalon is about providing actual *native* Win32 applications, but doing so with a simple XML-based format, and potentially in a way that is deliverable over the internet. The key difference between this and all other browser-based technologies that have preceeded this (including Flash and Applets) is the *native* part. Technically, it has been possible to do truly native stuff from the browser with ActiveX controls, but obviously this is an attempt at a technology which is far more robust, secure, and appropriate for web-based and non-web-based apps.

Will Avalon replace the need for Flash altogether? Perhaps some day, when "skinning" ability in native windows apps is so strong that you can easily throw a very fancy skin on a custom native win32 app as easily as you could design a Flash app with the same look and feel. But until then, Flash will still have it's place as a framework for "flashy" web-based apps that do not require the native win32 look-and-feel.

Yes, I know I'm using the word win32 a lot here, along with native - but let me clarify - that is just an example, since we are talking about Avalon within the Windows platform. But obviously once this XAML technology gains the potential to be "native" to any desktop system, such as GTK or KDE - so what I am talking about still applies, and even moreso - we are not talking about providing Flash-based apps that run on the native "Flash platform" which is a plugin inside the browser - we are talking about providing actual native apps that run on the platform of the desktop OS.

And in the end once the ability to do this becomes as easy (and "standard") as writing HTML, but combines the power of both native apps and fancy customizable look-and-feel of Flash apps, it starts to become clear that this is a new way of doing things over the internet that has the potential to make all of the other technologies in the browser (including HTML and Flash) become legacy.

Errr... This already exists, dear.

[Balinares]

You've just described what DCOP [kde.org] does in KDE. Contact info is offered by the address book component, which can be queried by the email suite, the IM tool, etc. The entire desktop is built upon this approach, in fact.

The Freedesktop group has begun working on a generalization of DCOP called D-BUS [freedesktop.org], primarily geared toward exchanging message between backend (hardware detection...) and frontend (desktop environment), if I got it right, but I think that GNOME will also eventually be able to use it to tap into KDE components as well. This would be really nice.

What about XUL?

[ManikSurtani]

Moz developers out there? Excuse my ignorance, but this XAML beast sounds an awful lot like XUL. So in a sense, the OS world has had a XAML alternative for a few years now - just a damn shame the Moz platform isn't ubiquitous enough to promote proper takeup of XUL. And if XAML is such a threat (and I see why), is it being developed along some standards? Is M$ going to submit this to ECMA as well? Why can't Moz/XUL start publishing "HTML New Generation" specifications, get corp buy-in from the likes of IBM, Sun, Novell, etc. to try and get XUL and XAML to converge?

Re:Zamil?

[perly-king-69]

You don't have to try to pronounce every acronym as though it were a normal word.

Yes you do. That's what an acronym [reference.com] is.

Re:Nice wrap-up

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times does it have to be said? ECMA approval says *nothing* about what patents may be involved. All the MS astroturfers - including Miguel - always brush this off with a "...oh well, yeah, patents, that'll never... OH, LOOK OVER THERE! A FLYING TAPIR!"

Of course MS would love nothing more then wide-spread adoption of it patented tech in OpenSource projects. That way they can pull an SCO, and actually have a case.

Re:Miguel is right-on-target!!!

[maw]

Example: Gnome could ask evolution for it's contact information. In fact, Gnome could ask for any piece of information, group of information, or all of evolutions information.

You're right - that would be a good idea [ximian.com].

Just like X but by MS

[gathas]

Microsoft Drives me batty with their absolute flaunting of supporting open formats. Take for instance Avalon which they describe as "Microsoft® Windows® Vector Graphics (WVG) . . . and it is familiar to users of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)" Everytime I read a MS programming book, I feel like they have branded everything that should be considered a basic fundamental Computer Science (Use your Microsoft® Windows® mouse® to type in a Microsoft® Windows® int®). I know this is so they can prevent competition, but I just can't get over how accepting computer users are to this as a whole.

Re:Naming conventions

[JimDabell]

It's a Google spamming technique, exactly like spamming your meta tags full of keywords.

Exactly like it? I suppose so, seeing as neither work. Google treats underscores as part of words. If they had wanted to "spam" Google, they should have used dashes to separate the words. Google also ignores <meta> keywords, so both techniques are equally useless.

Re:For those who don't speak Spanish, but speak en

[ffub]

For those that don't speak Spanish but English with latin stems, mono* is a prefix meaning single or singular, e.g. monotheism - the belief in one god.

For those that speak slightly geeky American English, mono is short for mononucleosis, which is another term for glandular fever.

For those that speak common English, mono means a single sound source, i.e. monophonic as opposed to sterophonic.

But for the Spanish speakers of the world... it's Monkey.

* I know not it's true etymology.

Re:What about XUL?

[Chester K]

Excuse my ignorance, but this XAML beast sounds an awful lot like XUL. So in a sense, the OS world has had a XAML alternative for a few years now - just a damn shame the Moz platform isn't ubiquitous enough to promote proper takeup of XUL.

If the Mozilla project were to produce a reasonably sized installer for Windows that would allow you to double-click an .xul document in order to start a fully-capable XUL-based application, and provide easily accessible documentation on how to get started with it, they could get a huge jump up on Microsoft.

Unfortunately, distributing an XUL runtime is difficult since it's currently tied directly into Mozilla and/or Firebird. The documentation on making applications with XUL is extremely lacking, and getting into anything more simple than "show this form" requires digging into even more poorly documented arcana.

I tried, and found the Getting Started phase of using XUL was far too steep of a boundary for XUL to gain any traction.

Re:Denied migration (was Re:it's pronounced "XAML"

[Brendan Eich]

Take a closer look. XAML is just XML, but it maps 1:1 to "WinFX" class instances, and attributes map to properties, methods, and events. It's another CLR source language, but a terrific one for the easy-programming crowd of graphic designers, web content hackers, VB consultants, etc.

It's trivial to extend XAML with C# or any other CLR source language, too.

Your XML reprocessor is going to do *what*, exactly, when it encounters some inline C#? And to what are you going to translate the whizzy graphics, animations, videos, and other effects?

XAML is just the surface, an easy-to-use XUL + Flash language. Scratch below that and you get the Avalon engine and the .NET runtime. That combination is not something lying around on today's Linux, and not something you can whip up in an evening.

Although Mono gives us a good start on half of the substance behind XAML....

/be

Re:Comments from an MS Developer

[Serpent Mage]

eclipse.org

i develop in both c# and java and both ide's are excellent. java actually has the productivity advantage over c# though because of maven, junit, dbunit, apache commons, and jcoverage technologies that c# does not even come close to due to it being a new and immature language currently but i'm quite certain that c# will have tools to one day compete with java on a productivity level.