Am Sonntag, 14. September 2003, 17:05 schrieb Manuel Chakravarty:
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What makes you think that the few people in the Haskell community who are interested in building GUI infrastructure can do a better job at a cross-platform API than the masses of GUI developers for whom this is their daily bread?
I think we are better off by piggy-backing on a major cross-platform effort driven by a large developer community than by wasting our time on trying to solve problems that the experts couldn't crack so far.
Maybe, the reason for GUI libraries not really providing native look-and-feel is not only that the task is hard but also that many people just don't care that much about look-and-feel. I remember a discussion with someone who wanted me to convince that GTK has native look-and-feel under Windows. In order to proof himself correct, he pointed me to a screenshot which definitely showed the standard GTK L&F and not the Windows one. Maybe he thought: "Oh, there are scrollbars and buttons which are grey and have a 3D look, so it definitely looks like Windows." Well, I cannot really say how difficult it is to implement a GUI library adhering to the different styleguides as I haven't been involved in GUI development very much.
Cheers, Manuel
Wolfgang