[GUI] What is the primary goal of the CGA?

[Vincenzo Ciancia]

On Tue, 6 May 2003 21:59:59 +0100
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements@virgin.net> wrote:

> 
>  This sounds as if it might boil down to only allowing that which is
>  allowed on all platforms, which is too restrictive.

Why? I think, instead, that there needs to be a core, as restricted as
it has to, that really works (in the sense that it respects the
specification) on all platforms, (without emulation of features, of
course). This will be the expected way for a programmer to create simple
GUIs for haskell programs. 

These GUIs will be simple indeed, but they will surely feature menu
bars, dialog boxes, text widgets and file open/save dialogs, wich is
sufficient for many applications.

The CGA should also provide simple means to create extensions wich work
on a subset of the supported platforms. For example, xaw has no panel,
while windows, gtk and kde (and macosx?) support applications in the
panel or systray or whatever they call them. Windows allows for more
than one menubar ecc.

So if a programmer is going to work on a subset of the supported
library, he will use the allowed extensions, like "more menubars".

I think that this is the goal of the CGA, but since you seem to think
differently, it's time to ask ourselves what are the goals, and to write
them down, (BTW, the "mission statement" speaks about an intersection of
features).

V.

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