CSS is purely declarative in nature and entirely deterministic. Moreover, it's expressive power is such that you can completely and radically alter the look of a website with modifications to CSS alone (see Zen Garden). The grammar and semantics are relatively simple and can be interpreted and generated by tools, which means that a designer can work with CSS files without knowing anything about CSS.

Is it perfect? No. But it's a lot better than trying to encode everything in a single language that only a software developer can safely work with.

Regards,

John A. De Goes

N-BRAIN, Inc.

The Evolution of Collaboration

http://www.n-brain.net | 877-376-2724 x 101

On Feb 3, 2009, at 10:09 AM, Peter Verswyvelen wrote:

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 5:49 PM, John A. De Goes <john@n-brain.net> wrote:
I never said, "CSS", I said "like CSS".

Oh, I missed the "like" word! What do you mean with that? What aspects of CSS do you prefer to? In WPF a "style" is basically just a bunch of attribute key/value pairs.

Layout combinators in the spirit of TeX or Lout are more
flexible while being simpler. In any case, a simple primitive

grid :: [[Rect a]] -> Rect a

that arranges widgets in a rectangular grid should be enough for GUIs.

Spoken like a true programmer who knows nothing about usability. :-)

Yes, layout must be very versatile and user definable.

Regards,

John A. De Goes
N-BRAIN, Inc.
The Evolution of Collaboration

http://www.n-brain.net | 877-376-2724 x 101

_______________________________________________
Haskell-Cafe mailing list
Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe