[GUI] GUIs and events (was: Re: Concurrency)

[Wolfgang Thaller]

(I accidentally posted this to ffi@haskell.org yesterday...)

Glynn Clements wrote:

> Wolfgang Thaller wrote:
>
>> 2) CGA implementations should automatically do all necessary
>> synchronization so that the CGA fully supports concurrency even if the
>> backend library does not.
>
> I suspect that this might be a bad idea, and I'm not totally sure that
> it's even possible. I think that it would be better to defer this
> decision until the feasibility can be assessed.

While different implementations might in some cases be slightly more 
complex than just using locks, I don't see why it should be impossible. 
After all, thread-safe toolkits are not new.

Do you have any specific problems in mind?

Also, it should be noted that this feature is important: Unless we have 
this or an equivalent, it will _not_ be possible to use concurrent 
Haskell for writing GUI programs.

Of course, we could still agree that it is a goal, add something like 
"unless it turns out to be infeasible" and then revisit the issue later.

Cheers,

Wolfgang