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

[Jamie]

On Mon, 16 Feb 2009, Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote:

> [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.

Make sense.

> 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.

That would be a great addition to Grapefruit.

Time for me to read fully about FRP and arrow notation and go from there!

> Best wishes,
> Wolfgang

 	Jamie