[GUI] Future of Haskell: GUI development

Wolfgang Jeltsch wolfgang at jeltsch.net
Sun Sep 14 18:36:04 EDT 2003


Am Sonntag, 14. September 2003, 17:05 schrieb Manuel Chakravarty:
> [...]

> What makes you think that the few people in the Haskell community who are
> interested in building GUI infrastructure can do a better job at a
> cross-platform API than the masses of GUI developers for whom this is their
> daily bread?
>
> I think we are better off by piggy-backing on a major cross-platform effort
> driven by a large developer community than by wasting our time on trying to
> solve problems that the experts couldn't crack so far.

Maybe, the reason for GUI libraries not really providing native look-and-feel 
is not only that the task is hard but also that many people just don't care 
that much about look-and-feel. I remember a discussion with someone who 
wanted me to convince that GTK has native look-and-feel under Windows. In 
order to proof himself correct, he pointed me to a screenshot which 
definitely showed the standard GTK L&F and not the Windows one. Maybe he 
thought: "Oh, there are scrollbars and buttons which are grey and have a 3D 
look, so it definitely looks like Windows."

Well, I cannot really say how difficult it is to implement a GUI library 
adhering to the different styleguides as I haven't been involved in GUI 
development very much.

> Cheers,
> Manuel

Wolfgang



More information about the GUI mailing list