Cocoa is probably the best GUI toolkit (open-source or otherwise) that
I've seen. However it ties your app to the Mac (and the iPhone). And I
don't believe there is a mature Haskell bridge.
Cross-platform GUI's like GTK don't look as nice but functions pretty
well for what they do. Unfortunately they are written in C/C++/.
Integration to Haskell is pretty nice but it seems like a bear to
install on Windows or Mac and hence there are deployment issues.
Until a cross-platform Haskell GUI toolkit is sufficiently mature,
that doesn't leave many options and all of them require spending time
coding in another language. If natively running code was a major
requirement, I'd use a Java Swing app as a client connecting to
Haskell server - if not I'd go with a web frontend as previously
described.
And Javascript [1] is really not _that_ bad!
-deech
[1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596517742
On 4/3/10, Heinrich Apfelmus
Michael Vanier wrote:
aditya siram wrote:
Yes Haskell is not strong on the GUI end of things but have you considered turning your desktop app into a web app? I've done this for a few things and really enjoyed the process. Haskell's STM is what makes this so nice.
This is a great idea! IMO this is also one of the main ways that GUI-based apps are likely to evolve into in the future. Cross-platform GUIs are a pain in the butt in _any_ language (possibly excluding full language platforms like Java/.NET, and I'll bet even those were a nightmare for the original implementors).
This is a bad idea! :) As a long term Mac user, I have a strong dislike for web applications that try to be desktop applications. Sagemath is probably an example in point. Not only are the well-designed standard GUI elements thrown out of the window (the menu bar, it belongs at the top), it's also sluggish to navigate between pages, doesn't support drag & drop from other applications and most importantly, doesn't play nice with local files.
From the programmers point of view, I don't want to code my GUI in Javascript either, I want to do it in Haskell.
Regards, Heinrich Apfelmus
-- http://apfelmus.nfshost.com
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