[Haskell-cafe] I still cannot seem to get a GUI working under Windows.

[Steve Schafer]

On Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:44:22 +0200, you wrote:

>Yeah, but not liking wrestling with libraries isn't peculiar to
>Haskell developers. There just needs to be enough people that the
>probability of there being a person who will bother to wrestle with it
>is high enough. Hence, the issue is lack of interest.

No, it isn't peculiar to Haskell developers; the problem is the one that
is discussed in more detail in the two references I gave in my previous
message: For the most part, developers who are attracted to open-source
projects (and this certainly includes the majority of Haskell
developers) simply don't think much of GUIs, and are consequently
willing to release software with half-baked GUI support (at best).

This is an attitude that just doesn't fly in the Windows world. Which is
unfortunate, because the Windows market is HUGE compared to OS X, and
STUNNINGLY HUGE compared to everything else.

The fix isn't going to be to find a developer who's willing to do the
work to make Haskell+GUI more seamless under Windows. The fix is for the
Haskell community--as a whole--to wake up and realize what the wxWidgets
folks did a while ago: "Hey, you know what? This GUI stuff is
_important_ if we want people to pay any attention to the software that
we write!"

-Steve Schafer