[R-gui] XML specifs for R GUIs dialog boxes

[thomas.friedrichsmeier@ruhr-uni-bochum.de]

Just a short clarification on the term "translator". What I had in 
mind was really run-time generation of the dialog directly from the 
specification. This will make it easier for users to plug-in new 
functionality that e.g. they downloaded somewhere, and for developers 
of dialog-boxes to test what they created. Therefore if an 
application/implementation can see any way to use run-time 
generation, that approach should probably be preferred.
Of course using some platforms/toolkits, this may not be easily 
possible, so translating a dialog-specification into compilable code 
first, will still be an option.
This does not change anything about the general concept. Just trying 
to avoid confusion about the term "translator".

Thomas

> Such a file is intended to be parsed and translated by an engine (that
> I will call here, a "translator") in an actual form specification/code
> for building the dialog box using a particular programming language
> combined with a particular graphical toolkit (Tcl/Tk, Gtk, Swing,
> ActiveX/OCX,...), and possibly specialized widgets like those
> currently developed for tcltk by the Bioconductor group.
> 
> This file should be very easy to build for simplest dialog boxes.
> Anybody should be able to write one, and to translate it in dialog
> boxes, at least, using the most automatted "translators" (this will be
> obviously dependent upon the level of automatisation provided by each
> translator). Of course, more complex dialog boxes, will obviously
> require more work.
> 
> The ultimate level in simplicity would be to pick up any R function
> and to create a specification file just by filling a dialog box asking
> how each function argument should be translated into a graphical
> widget (text, list, pushbuttons,...).