Re: [Caml-list] OCaml vs Ada and/or GUI options

[Kakadu <kakadu.hafanana@gmail.com>]

For simple applications: I think it's ready to replace C++. For
complex ones I'm not so sure (some complex widgets can be not
expressable in pure QML), some testing/testers/users are needed.

I have demo application there: https://github.com/Kakadu/QOcamlBrowser_quick
Some opam installation instructions there: http://kakadu.github.io/lablqt/

Best wishes,
Kakadu

On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 3:37 PM, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
>
> Yes. What is the state of Qt bindings for OCaml these days?
>
> Cheers,
> Jon.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kakadu [mailto:kakadu.hafanana@gmail.com]
> Sent: 14 September 2013 08:11
> To: jon@ffconsultancy.com
> Cc: Alain Frisch; Caml List
> Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml vs Ada and/or GUI options
>
> If we seriously talking about OpenGL GUI I should mention that QtQuick
> already uses OpenGL to render itself. Also, if you are going to write some
> phone app with OCaml Qt will also be helpful
>
> Kaladu
>
> On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 7:05 AM, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
>>
>> More the tooling and documentation than the language although there is
>> some overlap. The OCaml language is good for expressing GUI and
>> graphical programs. Polymorphic variants are particularly useful.
>>
>> I'd say the main challenges are:
>>
>> 1. API Exploration: OCamlBrowser is a great little tool but it is much
>> slower to use to explore a big API (like a GUI toolkit's API) than
>> Intellisense.
>>
>> 2. Libraries: OCaml has mature bindings to GTK but GTK has very
>> limited support for modern GUI features. For example, vector graphics
>> are ubiquitous in modern GUIs and GTK punts this to Cairo which
>> comparable to using the Acorn DRAW file format from BBC BASIC in 1987
>> (26 years ago) but without the high-level memory safety that BBC BASIC
> offered.
>>
>> 3. Interoperability: both GTK and Qt punt more advanced (e.g. 3D)
>> vector graphics to OpenGL but OCaml doesn't have any up-to-date OpenGL
> bindings.
>> LablGL is mature but I don't think its bindings to GLU were ever
>> finished and, of course, it only supports OpenGL circa the turn of the
> millenium.
>> Ultimately, the problem is that interoperability is hard with OCaml.
>>
>> 4. Samples: There are relatively few OCaml GUI samples out there.
>>
>> With tablets reinventing user interface designs, the time is ripe for
>> a new GUI toolkit, e.g. written in OCaml using OpenGL ES 2.0...
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Jon.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Alain Frisch [mailto:alain@frisch.fr]
>> Sent: 12 September 2013 15:52
>> To: jon@ffconsultancy.com
>> Cc: caml-list@inria.fr
>> Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml vs Ada and/or GUI options
>>
>> On 09/12/2013 04:40 PM, Jon Harrop wrote:
>>> OCaml is nowhere near
>>> having competitive support for basic features required for modern GUI
>>> programming
>>
>> Hi Jon!
>>
>> Could you more specific?  Are you referring to language features?
>>
>> -- Alain
>>
>>
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>