From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id TAA09126 for caml-redist; Thu, 27 Apr 2000 19:58:58 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id RAA00779 for ; Thu, 27 Apr 2000 17:08:59 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from orion.inrets.fr (orion.inrets.fr [137.121.1.1]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id RAA04017 for ; Thu, 27 Apr 2000 17:08:59 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from deneb.inrets.fr by orion.inrets.fr (8.9.3/8.7.1); Thu, 27 Apr 2000 17:08:57 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from terre.inrets.fr by deneb.inrets.fr (8.7.6/8.7.6); Thu, 27 Apr 2000 17:08:56 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from GeorgesMARIANO (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by terre.inrets.fr (8.9.3/8.8.8) with SMTP id RAA14732 for ; Thu, 27 Apr 2000 17:08:52 +0200 (MET DST) Message-ID: <007901bfb05b$ff8e6da0$c3537989@GeorgesMARIANO> From: "Georges Mariano" To: Subject: Ocaml and (the lack of) RAD tools Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 17:17:58 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.5 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Sender: weis Hello every one, Following the thread about (the lack of) RAD tools around Ocaml, may I suggest an idea... [ooops, first : I'm an ocaml newbie and I don't use (yet) Glade, so I'm speaking without a clear view of the technical consequences the following idea may induce...] Would'nt it be useful to define the coupling between a tool like Glade and the Ocaml language ??? Briefly, Glade is a (graphical [drag'd drop]) tool used in the building of GUIs, several backends are available which make possible to generate the corresponding code in Perl, Eiffel, ADA95, C, lisp (scheme/guile can't remember)... [Sorry I have no URL at hand now to provide... may be someone on the list ??] I can't see why it would be impossible to define an Ocaml backend... Advantages/Drawbacks ?? Advantages ========= Glade relies on GTK, it is largely used by several communities and may become a de facto standard for Open Source GUIs Since there is at least two "threads/tasks" concerned by Ocaml/GTK binding (namely LablGTK and mlGTK), Glade technologie may be accessible at reasonable (human ressource) cost and can be a "support" or an "advertising" additional argument for Ocaml diffusion. Furthermore, Glade is also based on XML technologie, GUIs descriptions are stored in *.glade XML files. I just make a few tests which show that these files are parsed with simple (ocaml written) XML parsers like 'tony' (I suppose that 'markup' will also do the job...). So, one part of the job seems to be very easy... Drawbacks ========= The main drawback I can see at the moment : ok, but who will do this job ??? Answer : I don't know. Just an idea... PS : Yes, I agree, GUIs development is just a part of RAD process !!! ;-)