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I'm trying to wrap my head around what this pattern entails (other than just "I'm using a recent Microsoft GUI toolikt"). The MVVM wiki page seems to explain it as a separation of the parts of the system that represent the model and the part that represent the graphical view of it, with a bit in the middle converting between the two. It also implies that Microsoft invented this concept for WPF.

However, I'm not seeing what the difference is between this and what UIL has done for Motif since the 1980's.

So is MVVM just patternese for schemes like Motif's user code/UIL/MRM setup, or is there something more to it?

Community
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T.E.D.
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MVVM is a concept, or "patternese," as you coined, for one method of separating the user interface from the algorithms that produce the data you want to visualize.

I wouldn't say, though, that UIL is a good example of this. According to Wikipedia, MVVM doesn't require a separate user interface language, but it can help. Motif was never designed to perform a complete separation of UI from business logic. All UIL does is specify templates of a UI widget hierarchy that can be fetched multiple times, reused whenever and wherever, and pre-set various things. You still need to provide code for the callbacks to make things happen, including changing color and performing other operations above & beyond what UIL permits.

Joe Sewell
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