On 09/27/2013 04:32 AM, 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.
We are working on bindings to SDL 2 at the moment - https://github.com/Lemmih/hsSDL2. They are currently usable for most 'stock' work - drawing things, doing interaction, window management, etc. However, I'm afraid SDL bindings don't really solve what you want in terms of a GUI programming. SDL2 at least gives you a sane cross platform way to create a window with an OpenGL context, and to draw things using hardware acceleration. If you actually need widgets, then SDL probably won't help here. - ocharles