1000 GUI toolkits

[Samuel A. Falvo II]

In article <Pine.BSF.4.10.10002251206080.13041-100000 at hercule.perceval.be>,
Gregoire Welraeds wrote:

>Quartz, new graphic layer for the next mac GUI (called aqua), will be a
>mix of pdf and display postscript.

>From what I understand, they'll be using display PDF all the way.

>Window will be drawned and animated with postcript / pdf. 

Yes.  A window will be *drawn* with PDF.  But where in the PDF format does
it permit any kind of mouse or keyboard event notifications?  It doesn't.

Like HTML, PDF is a *file format*; it is not a user interface *subsystem*.
Note the difference.  PDF is a tool which is used to render to the screen;
PDF is used by the GUI libraries to do this -- applications will not be
coded to output PDF directly (in general).

Now, for user INPUT, they'll be relying on other methods, quite likely
Unix-domain sockets (seeing as how MacOS X is based on BSD now instead of
Mach).  PDF has no concept of how many buttons the user's input device has,
no clue about the differences between mice and joysticks, doesn't care about
MIDI input streams at all, and I'll be very impressed if PDF can set up any
form of interaction outside of a meager hyperlink without some form of
outside GUI library.

So no, PDF is not interactive at all.  Saying that it is is like calling an
animated GIF multimedia.

Terry wrote:

>> HUH?  pdf is not interactive, HTML is, with links and forms.
>> Many web sites (take Ebay for instance) are almost completely interactive,
>> with just a few prewritten pages.

Correction: PDF is interactive in precisely the same ways that HTML is
considered interactive -- it allows for hyperlinks, and if necessary, can
launch a web browser for form entry.

-- 
KC5TJA/6, DM13, QRP-L #1447
Samuel A. Falvo II
Oceanside, CA