From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1449FBDCB for ; Wed, 31 Aug 2005 17:24:05 +0200 (CEST) Received: from pih-relay04.plus.net (pih-relay04.plus.net [212.159.14.131]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id j7VFO4Rr005459 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Wed, 31 Aug 2005 17:24:04 +0200 Received: from [80.229.56.224] (helo=chetara) by pih-relay04.plus.net with esmtp (Exim) id 1EAURS-0006ma-34 for caml-list@yquem.inria.fr; Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:23:58 +0100 From: Jon Harrop Organization: Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Subject: Re: Feeding the OCaml GUI troll (was: Re: [Caml-list] Does LablTk have a future?) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 15:27:43 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.7.2 References: <20050830174757.99765.qmail@web30510.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200508302001.58080.jon@ffconsultancy.com> <3d13dcfc05083101487092acd5@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <3d13dcfc05083101487092acd5@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200508311527.44346.jon@ffconsultancy.com> X-Miltered: at nez-perce with ID 4315CB94.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml:01 caml-list:01 labltk:01 underlined:01 afaik:01 ocaml:01 doable:01 wxwindows:01 48,:98 ...:98 ...:98 frog:98 wrote:01 writting:01 graphical:02 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.3 (2005-04-27) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none autolearn=disabled version=3.0.3 On Wednesday 31 August 2005 09:48, David MENTRE wrote: > Well, in option (1), as somebody else underlined it, it is a lot more > than just skinning. How do you handle i18n and l10n issues? How to > display bidirectionnal languages? How to write Arabic, Hebrew or > Chinese characters? How to take input in Japanese or Tamil? How to > handle copy/paste and drag & drop with other applications of the > platform? Or to print PDF with Arabic and Indian characters in the > same document? Those features would require a substantial amount of work for either (1) or (2), AFAIK. > Maybe you don't have those issues for you local market, Jon. But as > soon as you are writting graphical applications to be used worldwide, > those issues are coming out pretty quickly. This is at least a > requirement for my application. Then your requirements are quite different from my own and, I believe, many other people's. To start with, I am just interested in a minimal working library that would let me knock up simple applications. Cross-platform drag and drop is way down the line... > I really fear your under estimate the amount of work needed to > accomplish such a job. And the OCaml community seems pretty fragmented > on this GUI front. If you're talking about supporting all languages and all features on all platforms then of course it is an enormous undertaking. From my point of view, that is such a difficult task that it simply isn't worth discussing. I believe we can only do a decent job if we attack a small problem. > ... > 3. (Jon option) write a pure GUI from scratch, in pure OCaml. A > project similar to Qt or WxWidgets for C++. It seems doable to have a > basic GUI but handling all i18n and desktop interoperability issues > seems pretty complicated; If you're talking about my option (2) then it is more like GLUI and not like Qt and wxWindows. -- Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. Objective CAML for Scientists http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists