On Mon, 16 Feb 2009, Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote:
[redirecting to haskell-cafe]
Am Sonntag, 15. Februar 2009 00:26 schrieben Sie:
One more thing, would Grapefruit work with files created by Glade (UI builder)?
No, it won’t, I’m afraid. There is, for example, the principal problem that Glade is GTK+-specific (as far as I know) while Grapefruit shall have a toolkit-independent library interface.
However, I don’t think it is such a good idea to support traditional GUI builders. These builders typically let you design a static interface but you have to code event handlers or similar stuff completely by hand and you have practically no support for dynamic user interfaces (user interfaces that change their structure).
On the other hand, Grapefruit uses arrow notation for composing user interfaces so that the source code already reflects the visual appearence of the GUI to a certain degree. For example, you just list the widgets of a box and say what their input and output signals are.
Make sense.
That said, I still think it might be a good idea to use a GUI builder together with Grapefruit. But such a builder should be specifically designed for Grapefruit, in my opinion. I already have some rough ideas in my mind about how such a builder could work. I’d want it to cover also the communication between the UI components (using signals) and maybe even dynamic user interfaces. If you are interested in my ideas, please ask.
That would be a great addition to Grapefruit. Time for me to read fully about FRP and arrow notation and go from there!
Best wishes, Wolfgang
Jamie