Re: [wxhaskell-users] wxhaskell vs. gtk2hs

[Conal E. <co...@co...>]

Hi Gour,

I've worked with both wxhaskell and gtk2hs.  I prefer wxhaskell for elegant
design.  And I like that it gives me a native Mac OS X look.  There is a
partially working native Gtk for Mac, but I don't think it works with 3D,
which was a requirement for me.  The X11 mode is painful & ugly, and awfully
disappointing considering how much more expensive a Mac is than a Linux
machine.

In spite of these reasons, I'm using gtk2hs for the time being, because
wxhaskell has a problem that makes it very unfriendly to ghci.  The second
attempt to display a GUI kills its host process.  This behavior is okay for
many (but not all) compiled programs, but is a killer for
interactive/exploratory development.  As soon as I hear that this problem is
fixed, I'll very happily return to wxhaskell.

Longer term, I want Haskell GUI programming to move away from these
massively complex OO imperative frameworks to something much more elegant
and harmonious with the spirit and benefits of pure functional/denotative
programming.

Regards,  - Conal

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:59 AM, Gour <go...@go...> wrote:

> Hiya!
>
> Haskell noob considering to write desktop gui app by developing on
> Linux...
>
> Moreover, I'd like the application to be multi-platform and to be
> nicely supported on Mac OS X and finally (the least priority) on
> Windows.
>
> For long time I was considering gtk2hs (yeah, I'm 'learning' Haskell
> too long), but recently one of the important targets for the app
> switched from Windows to Mac, and now I'm considering wxhaskell as
> well...
>
> Now, based on what I know so far wxhaskell may be better supported on
> Mac since GTK+ port is not finished. otoh, I'm a bit concerned about
> "Since the core interface is generated automatically from the wxEiffel
> binding..." and visiting the project show the status notice:
>
> "The 0.7 release will probably be the last official release.
>
> The project lost its core developer following the 0.7 release in late
> June 2003 and it is unlikely that anyone will be able to take on this
> vital role. "
>
> So, my question is if this dependency on wxEiffel will change soon,
> especially considering the upcoming wx-3.0 release?
>
> Another concern is question of memory management touched upon in the
> following article:
>
> http://haskell.org/gtk2hs/archives/2005/07/15/automatic-memory-management/
>
>
> So, can someone share some thoughts about gtk2hs vs. wxhaskell with
> the reference to ease of use, learning curve etc. for a noob not being
> too familiar with none of the toolkits and considering suitability for
> multi-platform development in Haskell for (priority order) Linux, Mac
> and Windows?
>
>
> I've noticed that wxhaskell is improving ease of install (I'm arch
> user) -
>
> http://archhaskell.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/wxhaskell-packaged-for-arch/
>
> and it may be that more devs are actively working on it atm.
>
> Otoh, wx toolkit is often not very much likened (upon mentioning it),
> at least, on Linux platform where people recommend Qt and GTK+ (in
> general, I prefer GTK+ look over Qt which I do not consider as
> option). Why is it so?
>
>
> Sincerely,
> Gour
>
> --
>
> Gour  | Hlapicina, Croatia  | GPG key: F96FF5F6
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>