Re: GUI for OCaml (was: Re: [Caml-list] Does LablTk have a future?)

[Chris Campbell <cyberdanx@gmail.com>]

On 30/08/05, Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 30, 2005 at 09:16:20AM +0200, David MENTRE wrote:
> > The client of my application is also written in Lablgtk2 and, despite
> > helpful answers by Jacques Garrigue and Olivier Andrieux as well as
> > SooHyoung Oh's tutorials, I find programming with Labgtk2 not very
> > easy (to say the least). I find Lablgtk2 is largely under-documented.
> > Of course, this is a large task that cannot be achieved by two
> > individuals.
> 
> Lablgtk2 is a pain, but I think the pain comes from Gtk itself, not
> any shortcomings in lablgtk2 or ocaml.

Yep.  Every time I've used a binding to Gtk in any language it's been
pretty ugly.  Unfortunately it's seems to be the only one any wants to
bind to on Linux. :'(

>> I'd also loved too. Having a cross-platform GUI (with native look and
>> behaviour on Windows and MacOS X),   programmed using a functional
>> style, well documented (with reference manual and tutorial) and with
>> necessary tools (GUI design application) would be very very helpful.
>>
>> However this is a huge task. [...]
> 
> It is a huge task.  I'm not even sure what a "functional" API for a
> GUI toolkit would look like.  Ideas?  Example code snippets?

Ch 10 or 11 of CTM (Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer
Programming by Haridi and Van Roy) describes a good model and the
trade offs of various models.  The ref documentation for QTk, the
toolkit they describe, is available at
http://www.mozart-oz.org/documentation/mozart-stdlib/wp/qtk/html/index.html.

It's incredibly simple, yet very powerful.