It seems a bit of a stretch to call wxhaskell perfectly stable, when it seems that the API changes with each release... It's definitely a working interface, but I wouldn't really call it a stable one. I guess it is stable in the sense that it doesn't crash.

Yes, you are right. I meant the latter meaning of the word 'stable'. The interface has changed considerably at version 0.8 but will hardly (if at all) be changed at 0.9. Maybe Daan himself can shed some more light on the matter. Cheers, Arjan

On Mon, Dec 27, 2004 at 11:44:49AM +0100, Arjan van IJzendoorn wrote:

...

However, I want to know if there has been any practical standardisation in the GUI area. Last time I looked at this it seemed some decisions had been made (bind to existing api - wxWindows?). I am waiting for some real standardisation and a mature API before I jump ship from Java for my day-to-day programming.

wxHaskell is available at http://www.wxhaskell.sfnet.org/ It runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS X. It has many GUI controls, database access, is well documented and ...[snip]

----------------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "Well documented" is relative to the background of the user. As a Haskell novice who has no prior experience with wxWindows, I have found the documentation a little bit sparse! For example, the device context (dc) of the widget where an event occurs is apparently passed (by the wxHaskell routines) to the user written callback function for that event. I had a need for the dc of a different widget in a certain callback. I stumbled onto the function "withClientDC" more or less by accident. I'd like to be able to output my drawing in PostScript. Based on some wxWindows examples, and some function signatures in the wxHaskall documentation, I believe I'll eventually be able to do this, but expect to have to do some heavy digging and reading of a certain amount of C++ code in order to figure out how. This is not a complaint, just a warning to the novice. Don't expect anything like Python's TKInter Life Preserver. I am fairly happy with wxHaskell and get happier with it as I get to understand it better. I'm grateful for the work Daan and others have put into wxHaskell. wxHaskell does have extensive Haddock documentation, the Wiki has a very good wxHaskell page (as far as it goes), and Daan's paper "wxHaskell A Portable and Concise GUI Library for Haskell" is excellent. I understand that writing documentation for the novice is time consuming. I hope to add some comments to the Wiki for other beginers when I get a little further along. Best, John Velman