John Meacham
heck, lets dispense with the FFI altogether and just write some Haskell code to speak the X11 protocol :). I am only semi-serious (although such a project is entirely feasible).
The Fudgets project did just that. (This must have been more than 9 years ago.)
In any case there are some alternate client X11 libraries besides XLib which have some very nice features which are worth looking at if you are at all interested in the design of a modern interface to X.
It would certainly be hard to find a worse design. It's some time since I looked at Xlib in detail but I think the bit that disgusted me most was that when an error occurs, Xlib calls your callback function and then exits the program. I consider it none of Xlib's business what I do after it reports an error as long as I do not call into Xlib again or I take steps to reset the state of Xlib. In my opinion, it is appropriate for a library to decide that the library can no longer continue but it is not appropriate for a library to decide that the entire program must exit now. -- Alastair Reid alastair@reid-consulting-uk.ltd.uk Reid Consulting (UK) Limited http://www.reid-consulting-uk.ltd.uk/alastair/