[Haskell-cafe] Poll & plea: State of GUI & graphics libraries in Haskell

[Conal Elliott]

Hi Atze. I'm glad to hear that some work is going into wxHaskell. Do you
know about the issue that arose roughly 7-8 years ago that prevented
opening more than one top-level window per process? It had to do with a
change to initialization techniques, and made wxHaskell no longer useful
with GHCi.

-- Conal


On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 3:24 AM, Atze Dijkstra <atze at uu.nl> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> as for wxHaskell, it is currently maintained at
> https://github.com/wxHaskell/wxHaskell, compilable with wxWidgets 2.9.5
> and GHC 7.6. Work is underway to fix various bugs introduced over time by
> changes in wxWidgets, but we (i.e.
> https://github.com/wxHaskell?tab=members) hope to release & announce in
> not too much time.
>
> cheers,
> Atze
>
> On  30 Sep, 2013, at 20:32 , Conal Elliott <conal at conal.net> wrote:
>
> > Hi Conrad,
> >
> > Great. The challenge is not specific to Pan, Vertigo, etc. If we can get
> some low-level GUI platform working with the characteristics I listed, I
> can resurrect and my high-level libraries accordingly. Any GUI program
> containing at least one OpenGL window would probably get us most of the way
> there (again, noting the properties I listed).
> >
> > -- Conal
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 1:40 AM, Conrad Parker <conrad at metadecks.org>
> wrote:
> > Hi Conal!
> >
> > Yes. I'd be very interested to help get Pan and Vertigo working. Do you
> have a repo somewhere?
> >
> > Conrad.
> >
> >
> > On 27 September 2013 13:32, Conal Elliott <conal at conal.net> wrote:
> > I'm polling to see whether there are will and expertise to reboot
> graphics and GUIs work in Haskell. I miss working on functional graphics
> and GUIs in Haskell, as I've been blocked for several years (eight?) due to
> the absence of low-level foundation libraries having the following
> properties:
> >
> > * cross-platform,
> > * easily buildable,
> > * GHCi-friendly, and
> > * OpenGL-compatible.
> >
> > The last several times I tried Gtk2hs, I was unable to compile it on my
> Mac. Years ago when I was able to compile, the GUIs looked and interacted
> like a Linux app, which made them awkward and upleasant to use. wxHaskell
> (whose API and visual appearance I prefered) has for years been
> incompatible with GHCi, in that the second time I open a top-level window,
> the host process (GHCi) dies abruptly. Since my GUI & graphics programs are
> often one-liners, and I tend to experiment a lot, using a full compilation
> greatly thwarts my flow. For many years, I've thought that the situation
> would eventually improve, since I'm far from the only person who wants GUIs
> or graphics from Haskell.
> >
> > About three years ago, I built a modern replacement of my old Pan and
> Vertigo systems (optimized high-level functional graphics in 2D and 3D),
> generating screamingly fast GPU rendering code. I'd love to share it with
> the community, but I'm unable to use it even myself.
> >
> > Two questions:
> >
> > * Am I mistaken about the current status? I.e., is there a solution for
> Haskell GUI & graphics programming that satisfies the properties I'm
> looking for (cross-platform, easily buildable, GHCi-friendly, and
> OpenGL-compatible)?
> > * Are there people willing and able to fix this situation? My own
> contributions would be to test and to share high-level composable and
> efficient GUI and graphics libraries on top of a working foundation.
> >
> > Looking forward to replies. Thanks,
> >
> > -- Conal
> >
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> >
> >
> >
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>
>
>
>                 - Atze -
>
> Atze Dijkstra, Department of Information and Computing Sciences. /|\
> Utrecht University, PO Box 80089, 3508 TB Utrecht, Netherlands. / | \
> Tel.: +31-30-2534118/1454 | WWW  : http://www.cs.uu.nl/~atze . /--|  \
> Fax : +31-30-2513971 .... | Email: atze at uu.nl ............... /   |___\
>
>
>
>
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