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

[KQ]

On Wed, 18 May 2011 20:01:48 -0700, wren ng thornton <wren at freegeek.org> wrote:

> 3. Using the web as Haskell's main method of non-command line
> (graphical) deployment seems to lose two of Haskell's most powerful
> features: its type safety, and its speed.
>I agree with these disagreements. Web apps have long been touted as a replacement for desktop apps. For certain specific kinds of domains people have been able to realize them sufficiently well as web apps. But I am still of the firm belief that there are numerous domains where browser-based UIs are wholly inappropriate.


There are interesting scenarios where a "browser" is not required.  I haven't worked with Snoyman's wai-handler-webkit which may be along these lines, but there's also https://developer.mozilla.org/en/xulrunner which provides the intriguing capability of an application that has (cross-platform) native-looking local windows but which can also interact via a (local or remote) browser.  Clearly there's a gap between here and there, but part of that gap is the ability to simply and easily generate internal Javascript (to drive xulrunner) without actually programming in Javascript (it's just an API layer to the display, which is what I interpreted Jurriën Stutterheim's comments to be referring to).

-- 
-KQ