[Haskell-cafe] Re: libraries [was GUI haters]

[aditya siram]

Cocoa is probably the best GUI toolkit (open-source or otherwise) that
I've seen. However it ties your app to the Mac (and the iPhone). And I
don't believe there is a mature Haskell bridge.

Cross-platform GUI's like GTK don't look as nice but functions pretty
well for what they do. Unfortunately they are written in C/C++/.
Integration to Haskell is pretty nice but it seems like a bear to
install on Windows or Mac and hence there are deployment issues.

Until a cross-platform Haskell GUI toolkit is sufficiently mature,
that doesn't leave many options and all of them require spending time
coding in another language. If natively running code was a major
requirement, I'd  use a Java Swing app as a client connecting to
Haskell server - if not I'd go with a web frontend as previously
described.

And Javascript [1] is really not _that_ bad!

-deech

[1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596517742



On 4/3/10, Heinrich Apfelmus <apfelmus at quantentunnel.de> wrote:
> Michael Vanier wrote:
>> aditya siram wrote:
>>> Yes Haskell is not strong on the GUI end of things but have you
>>> considered turning your desktop app into a web app? I've done this
>>> for a few things and really enjoyed the process. Haskell's STM is
>>> what makes this so nice.
>>
>> This is a great idea!  IMO this is also one of the main ways that
>> GUI-based apps are likely to evolve into in the future.  Cross-platform
>> GUIs are a pain in the butt in _any_ language (possibly excluding full
>> language platforms like Java/.NET, and I'll bet even those were a
>> nightmare for the original implementors).
>
> This is a bad idea! :) As a long term Mac user, I have a strong dislike
> for web applications that try to be desktop applications. Sagemath is
> probably an example in point. Not only are the well-designed standard
> GUI elements thrown out of the window (the menu bar, it belongs at the
> top), it's also sluggish to navigate between pages, doesn't support drag
> & drop from other applications and most importantly, doesn't play nice
>  with local files.
>
> >From the programmers point of view, I don't want to code my GUI in
> Javascript either, I want to do it in Haskell.
>
>
> Regards,
> Heinrich Apfelmus
>
> --
> http://apfelmus.nfshost.com
>
>
>
>
>
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