[Haskell-cafe] Windows Haskell GUI

[Duncan Coutts]

On Wed, 2006-07-05 at 17:51 -0700, Jason Dagit wrote:
> On 7/5/06, Duncan Coutts <duncan.coutts at worc.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> > On Wed, 2006-07-05 at 16:06 -0700, Jason Dagit wrote:
> > > I can't help with gtk2hs as I haven't tried it yet, but I hear the dev
> > > community is much more alive and very helpful.  My main concerns with
> > > gtk2hs were 1) I need a native look 'n feel
> >
> > This is a common misconception. Gtk+ uses the windows native theming
> > dlls so look pretty good. See some of our screen shots:
> > http://www.haskell.org/gtk2hs/gallery/HRay
> >
> > If you do find any places where it doesn't match the native theme then
> > please report them in the Gtk+ bugzilla.
> 
> What about file dialogs?  Perhaps it's just GIMP but I thought it was
> all gtk programs that used the really out-of-place file dialogs on
> windows (I think gaim uses the same ones).  I looked at some of your
> screenshots.  Looks better overall than I remembered.

Yes, you're right. Gtk+ does a native theme but does not use the native
dialogues (except for printing). I'm not completely sure of the position
of the Gtk+ devs on this one. It's not clear if it's not been done due
to lack of time or because there is some technical difficulty or
objection to it.

See for example:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=337093
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=337267

> > > 2) ease of distribution with my application.
> >
> > Is there something specific we could improve here?
> 
> I haven't tried this myself; I was going by word of mouth.  The
> testimonial appears here:
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/13378

The note about installing the Gtk+ dlls being very hard is not quite
true. There are win32 installers for this stuff at
http://gladewin32.sf.net.
Indeed, Gtk2Hs relies on these installers.

What was being referred to in that post is the win32 builds provided by
one of the Gtk+ win32 developers, which indeed are not aimed at end
users. They are however a useful resource for developers putting
together customised or minimal Gtk+ dll sets to bundle with their
application.
http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/downloads.html


Duncan