--- Axel Simon <A.Simon@ukc.ac.uk> wrote:
Hi Krasimir,
In the last two years I have implemented a binding of Gtk Version 2 to Haskell. I read the first paper about Object I/O of Peter Achten and Simon PJ which was published in IFL'00. I wondered if I could supply a layer like that of Object I/O to my library to get away from the raw monadic feeling whenever possible. I don't know how far you got to use Gtk but I assume there are mayor obstacles in creating a native interface to Windows and Gtk at the same time. Since I managed to get my binding running on Windows recently (no MSI installer yet), I thought it could be worthwhile considering Gtk as a single backend to Object I/O.
Could you give me some hints as if that is useful/possible? Also references to the most relevant papers would be good to get me started.
Thank you in advance, Axel.
Dear Axel, The Object I/O development is currently frozen. The native Win32 backend works but maybe still have bugs. I still support the library but only for bugfixes. I tried develop GTK backend for Object I/O but I found many difficulties. The main trouble is that the original Clean library are developed only for Windows. I think that Object I/O must be rewriten from scratch to make it more portable. For that reason I started my new project HToolkit (http://sourceforge.net/projects/htoolkit). The project maintain both GTK and native Win32 API. The library are separated in two levels. The low level is written in C and has two versions: for Win32 and for GTK. I think that the low level part are mostly completed (about 80-90% of GUI related Win32 and GTK API). The last week Daan Leijen started development of Port library. This is very thin Haskell layer over the low level C part. The idea is to make it reusable in other high level GUI libraries. After its completion I will retarget HToolkit to use Port. I hope that for the feature the Port will be ported to Mac platform. I think that for the time being developers which want to use Haskell for development of large scale projects are a trouble. There are nine known GUI libraries: * Gtk+HS * iHaskell * Gtk2HS * HTk * TclHaskell * Fudgets * FranTk * Object I/O * Yahu None of them are capable for large scale development for some reason. The HTk, TclHaskell, FranTk and Yahu are based on Tcl/Tk. The Tcl/Tk backend are portable but slow. The Gtk+HS, iHaskell, Gtk2HS are based on GTK. The backend is powerful and portable (GTK >= 2.0) but I prefer to use just native libraries on different platforms. The Object I/O is Win32 specific. I think that there are need of one portable and efficient library. It needs to have advantages of existing library but must have single uniform interface. I post this message to haskell@haskell.org because I think that development of nice libraries requires agreement of the entire Haskell Community on basic design lines. I looking for peoples which are interested in the development of "standard" GUI library. Best regards, Krasimir __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com