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

[John Lask]

On 19/05/2011 10:31 PM, Heinrich Apfelmus wrote:

my comments for what their worth:

(1) wx and ghci: I successfully run wx in ghci (albeit) on windows. I 
take an alternative path to that proscribed by the current build process 
- I think principally so that I am able to run it in ghci, although I 
can not now recall the exact reason why I took the different route.

The current build process links the haskell wxcore library against the 
wxwdigets libraries directly. Once upon a time, the wxlibraries were 
wrapped as a C (dll) library, and the haskell libraries linked against 
this. I choose this route, and have no problems loading wxwdigets 
applications in ghci (on windows) ... and using OpenGL with them.

(2) on the question of GUI libraries in general.

I remind readers that the discussion of a GUI for haskell is no new 
thing, (cf. GUI API Taskforce)

http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2001-September/007960.html
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.gui/7
... and many more ...

a lot of which has been said recently, has been said before (it does
not make it less relevant, though) ...

there are two very different responses, the tactical and the strategic, 
they generally have very different time frames and cost (effort) required.

A tactical response might be to ensure that one of the (many) currently 
existing libraries (wxHaskell, qtHaskell, hs-fltk...) built and operated 
problem free on all platforms.

Whereas, a strategic response might be to have a cross platform gui 
library binding to low level platform libraries (Win32, X11, Cocoa)

Of course there are all sorts of variants in between.

A general problem with strategic response is they underestimate the 
effort required due to the long range horizon and the uncertainties 
involved.

if the question is what will provide me with the tools that I need today 
or tomorrow, which is the more efficacious response?


> Conal Elliott wrote:
>> Last I heard, wx still had the problem of crashing its host the second
>> time
>> one opens a window (which is typical in ghci). And last I heard, Jeremy
>> O'Donoghue (cc'd) was exploring solutions but had very little time to
>> pursue
>> them. - Conal
>
> Last I remember, the latest problem is that ghci is unable to link
> libstdc++. But the crash problem is probably still there.
>
>
> Best regards,
> Heinrich Apfelmus
>
> --
> http://apfelmus.nfshost.com
>
>
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