[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] ANNOUNCE: first Grapefruit release

[Wolfgang Jeltsch]

[redirecting to haskell-cafe]

Am Sonntag, 15. Februar 2009 00:26 schrieben Sie:
> One more thing, would Grapefruit work with files created by Glade (UI
> builder)?

No, it won’t, I’m afraid. There is, for example, the principal problem that 
Glade is GTK+-specific (as far as I know) while Grapefruit shall have a 
toolkit-independent library interface.

However, I don’t think it is such a good idea to support traditional GUI 
builders. These builders typically let you design a static interface but you 
have to code event handlers or similar stuff completely by hand and you have 
practically no support for dynamic user interfaces (user interfaces that 
change their structure).

On the other hand, Grapefruit uses arrow notation for composing user 
interfaces so that the source code already reflects the visual appearence of 
the GUI to a certain degree. For example, you just list the widgets of a box 
and say what their input and output signals are.

That said, I still think it might be a good idea to use a GUI builder together 
with Grapefruit. But such a builder should be specifically designed for 
Grapefruit, in my opinion. I already have some rough ideas in my mind about 
how such a builder could work. I’d want it to cover also the communication 
between the UI components (using signals) and maybe even dynamic user 
interfaces. If you are interested in my ideas, please ask.

Best wishes,
Wolfgang