[GUI] Re: Gtk and Object I/O

Wolfgang Jeltsch wolfgang@jeltsch.net
Sat, 25 Jan 2003 11:57:05 +0100


On Saturday, 2003-01-25, 06:58, CET, seth@cql.com wrote:
> Wolfgang,
>
> No disagreement, but then we return to the question:  why not use an
> existing toolkit such as gtk? Especially as there is an existing haskel=
l
> interface to it from which a lot can be learned.

I never meant not to use an existing toolkit. In fact, I always meant tha=
t we=20
should use existing "native" toolkits/libraries in order to achieve platf=
orm=20
look-and-feel etc.

Because for POSIX I see the available desktop environments as platforms, =
I=20
would prefer a GTK+/GNOME implementation instead of just a GTK+=20
implementation but to get a working solution a GTK+ implementation is o.k=
=2E

What we cannot do with the HToolkit approach is to reuse one of the exist=
ing=20
Haskell GTK+ bindings since the C interface we bind to has to be already=20
platfrom-independent. But of course, it can be learned from them.=20

By the way, the approach of doing the platform-dependent stuff completely=
=20
outside Haskell and providing a platform-independent interface in C has=20
another advantage. Since most programming languages can export C function=
s,=20
this approach allows as to also implement our GUI stuff on top of a non-C=
=20
library/toolkit. We could for instance write C++ code which is based on Q=
t=20
and the KDE libraries and exports our standardized platform-independent C=
=20
functions.

> [...]

Wolfgang