[GUI] Re: Future of Haskell: GUI development

[David Roundy]

On Sun, Sep 14, 2003 at 01:51:17AM +0200, Nick Name wrote:
> Alle 12:47, mercoledì 10 settembre 2003, Axel Simon ha scritto:
> > In case people feel inclined to still pursue the CGA idea, one of the
> > following two routes could be taken:
> > - re-expose parts of wxHaskell in a way that forces the user to write
> > applications that look and feel native on different platforms, i.e. a
> > "Common GUI API on top of wxWindows"
> 
> I think that this could be done, to have an haskell GUI library instead 
> of a wxwindows binding, wich would be just an implementation. And this 
> decision makes a fast startup because Daan is already trying this.

I agree.  I am excited by the progress on wxHaskell, but am even more
interested in a well designed CGA.  Not necesarily featuring every widget
on earth, but something that looks like it would be practical to create
another backend for.  And I think that this is the way I would do it if I
had time.

> Am I unsubscribed to this list, or people do not want to comment on 
> anymore? The main problem of wxwin was, according to (if I remember 
> well) Wolfgang Thaller, that it does not feel native on OSX; so I guess 
> the opinion of some OSX user or developer would be interesting now.

Well, I've coded with wxwin for mac, and the only problem with it that
comes to mind is the menus.  It is possible to write an (almost?)
native-behaving application using wxwin, although it requires considerable
#ifdefing to get it to work.  I proposed a solution (codeless, of course)
to this a while back, and if I ever got around to doing any GUI work (been
too busy) I'd probably try to implement it on top of wxhaskell.

By the way, the (almost?) in the above paragraph refers to the preferences
menu item.  Last I used wxwin (over a year ago) I couldn't figure out how
to create that menu item in the application menu where it belongs.  On the
other hand, wxwin is very actively developed, and the mac port is very
young, so I wouldn't be surprised if there now an interface to create the
preferences menu item.
-- 
David Roundy
http://www.abridgegame.org/darcs