[Haskell-cafe] Why binding to existing widget toolkits doesn't make any sense

[Conal Elliott]

Hi John,

I'm not sure how to interpret your remarks about "has no effect" and "is
best".  I guess they're subjective opinions, but maybe I'm missing something
objective in your intent.  I can see, for instance, at least one way in
which layout has a direct and enormous effect on interaction semantics.  And
while I can see some benefits in choosing CSS, I also see some significant
drawbacks, and I wonder if you've factored these drawbacks into your "is
best".

  - Conal

2009/2/2 John A. De Goes <john at n-brain.net>

>
> The size, color, and layout of widgets has no effect on interaction
> semantics and is best pushed elsewhere, into a designer-friendly realm such
> as CSS.
>
> Regards,
>
> John A. De Goes
> N-BRAIN, Inc.
> The Evolution of Collaboration
>
> http://www.n-brain.net    |    877-376-2724 x 101
>
> On Feb 2, 2009, at 2:15 PM, Conal Elliott wrote:
>
> Could CSS give us semantic clarity?  - Conal
>
> On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 11:58 AM, John A. De Goes <john at n-brain.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> The actual presentation and layout of widgets would be better handled by a
>> DSL such as CSS (which is, in fact, declarative in nature), while event
>> logic would be best handled purely in Haskell.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> John A. De Goes
>> N-BRAIN, Inc.
>> The Evolution of Collaboration
>>
>> http://www.n-brain.net    |    877-376-2724 x 101
>>
>>
>> On Feb 2, 2009, at 12:39 PM, Creighton Hogg wrote:
>>
>>  2009/1/29 Conal Elliott <conal at conal.net>:
>>>
>>>> Hi Achim,
>>>>
>>>> I came to the same conclusion: I want to sweep aside these OO,
>>>> imperative
>>>> toolkits, and replace them with something "genuinely functional", which
>>>> for
>>>> me means having a precise & simple compositional (denotational)
>>>> semantics.
>>>> Something meaningful, formally tractable, and powefully compositional
>>>> from
>>>> the ground up.  As long as we build on complex legacy libraries (Gtk,
>>>> wxWidgets, Qt, OpenGL/GLUT, ...), we'll be struggling against (or worse
>>>> yet,
>>>> drawn into) their ad hoc mental models and system designs.
>>>>
>>>> As Meister Eckhart said, "Only the hand that erases can write the true
>>>> thing."
>>>>
>>>
>>> I think working on a purely functional widget toolkit would actually
>>> be a really cool project.  Do you have any ideas, though, on what
>>> should be the underlying primitives?
>>>
>>> The initial gut feeling I have is that one should just ignore any
>>> notion of actually displaying widgets & instead focus on a clean
>>> algebra of how to 'add'  widgets that relates the concepts of
>>> inheritance & relative position.  What I mean by inheritance, here, is
>>> how to direct a flow of 'events'.  I don't necessarily mean events in
>>> the Reactive sense, because I think it'd be important to make the
>>> model completely independent of how time & actual UI actions are
>>> handled.
>>>
>>> Any thoughts to throw in, here?
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> C
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
>>> Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
>>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
>> Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
>>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
> Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/attachments/20090202/70308280/attachment.htm