[Haskell-cafe] Status of Haskell + Mac + GUIs & graphics

[Jurriën Stutterheim]

A few weeks ago I set out to build a GUI app using wxHaskell. Long story short, we ditched the entire idea of a desktop GUI and went for a web application instead, because it was easier to develop a front-end for it and it was easier to style it.
So here's my (perhaps slightly provoking) question: do we need to care at all about good GUI toolkits being available? Web applications, especially with an HTML 5 front-end, have become increasingly more powerful. If we can also find a good, standardized way to generate JS from our Haskell code, we're pretty much all set.


Jurriën


On 18 May, 2011, at 08:29 , Tom Murphy wrote:

>> I still haven't found any way to do GUIs or interactive graphics in Haskell
>> on a Mac that isn't plagued one or more of the following serious problems:
>> 
>> * Incompatible with ghci, e.g., fails to make a window frame or kills the
>> process the second time one opens a top-level window,
>> * Goes through the X server, and so doesn't look or act like a Mac app,
>> * Doesn't support OpenGL.
>> 
> 
>     If there doesn't currently exist something without these
> handicaps, that's a serious problem for the use of Haskell for
> developing end-user software.
>     If we as a community want to be able to develop software for
> end-users (i.e. people who'll be thrown off by gtk widgets or x11
> windows)*, then it would be a very good idea to focus our energies on
> one or two promising pre-existing libraries, and hammer them into
> completion. A roadmap for this could be worked on at Hac Phi?
> 
> Just my 2¢,
> Tom
> 
> *This, of course, would NOT be avoiding success at all costs. :)
> 
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