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

[Donn Cave]

Quoth =?iso-8859-1?Q?Jurri=EBn_Stutterheim?= <j.stutterheim at me.com>,
...
> 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.

That isn't so controversial - do we need to care about good GUI
toolkits being available?  Evidently not, we can say that from the
fact that we're still looking for GUI support on the Mac in 2011.

The Web application idea might be a useful workaround for some,
like X11 may be acceptable for others, but these could be thought
of as exceptions that prove the rule.  If that's enough to solve
the problem, then there would appear to be little call for Mac GUI
applications.

My only Haskell application on my ancient PPC Mac uses the terminal,
but long ago I tried a Haskell Cocoa library, HOC, that would have
supported native graphics, if it had worked for me.  Has anyone
taken that route with an application?  I have been using native
API graphics on another more obscure platform (Haiku), of course not
portable but much easier to get working than the gigantic cross
platform GUI toolkits, and maybe that would address the chicken
vs egg problem that helps make Mac GUI apps a non-issue for Haskell.

	Donn