[Bf-committers] Declarative UI Experiment

[Brecht Van Lommel]

Hi,

I think this declarative UI is an interesting experiment, but in this
state it also doesn't really address any important problems. In my
opinion it's only useful when it's used for a GUI designer, there's a
small improvement in readability for simple cases, but for more
difficult cases with for/if loops it might also makes things more
complicated. Going from one text based format to another only seems
like a small improvement that is not worth the effort.

Second, I think smarter layout engines and/or doing things based on
data grouping is interesting, but I've always found these things
fuzzy. Because it's all python code now it's pretty flexible to solve
some things, also where perhaps the design doesn't fit so well. For
example the theme user preferences or keymaps, or texture properties.

We can of course say, well, then those things have to be solved then,
cleaning up the design so the UI can reflect it properly without being
confusing. That's great, but I also don't see a clear path to get
there... only solutions to make the things that are already quite
simple a bit simpler. To me it's more interesting to look into how can
we make better list widgets, data block management UI, accommodate
node based materials/textures/particles, etc, .. in a way that is
consistent throughout the interface, easy to understand/use, and not
hacked code.

Brecht.