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

[Heinrich Apfelmus]

Conal Elliott 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.

Hello Conal,

I have been similarly dissatisfied with the state of GUI libraries in 
Haskell and have finally started working on one myself: [threepenny-gui][1].

Threepenny-gui uses the web browser as a display, which means that it's 
cross-platform, easy to install and works from GHCi! On the flip side, 
it doesn't support native OpenGL.


   [1]: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Threepenny-gui

Best regards,
Heinrich Apfelmus

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