On Thu, 2007-07-19 at 00:12 +0100, Claus Reinke wrote:
gui libs are wonderful, but haskell sometimes has too few and sometimes has too many. and those we have do not work with every haskell implementation. and when they do work (usually with ghc, these days), they need to be rebuilt whenever ghc is updated, even if the gui lib hasn't changed at all (one gui lib binding per ghc version). still, we put up with that when we need all those gui lib features, because we have to, and we're happy to live in one of those periods when there are such bindings to full-featured gui libraries.
You're right, that's annoying. It's particularly a problem for Windows GHC users who expect pre-built binaries, since GHC currently requires all libs to be rebuilt with each new minor GHC version. It's particularly annoying for GUI libs which are non-trivial to build from source (due to needing so many C header files and such) and so there is always a lag between when GHC gets updated and when someone (me) gets round to making a new binary build for Windows. Our hope is that we can get Gtk2Hs working with Yhc some day. That'd be interesting because it shouldn't have the same versionitis issues and the same compiled GUI program should run unaltered on Windows, Linux or OSX (and several others).
but what about quick and dirty/cheap and cheerful graphics? over the years, HGL/SOEGraphics has served as a persistent reminder that things keep changing, and that when they do, something breaks. even if all people want to do is draw some simple graphics, or animations.
There's a SOEGraphics implementation with Gtk2Hs, but then of course see problem 1. :-)
i don't have a solution, but i'd like to throw another alternative into the ring, based on the ongoing fight between web browsers and other guis for world dominance..
[..] Sounds fun! :-) Duncan