Hi Conal, I'm glad you're bringing this up. I am currently working on FLTK bindings ( github.com/deech/fltkhs). It's main advantage of this toolkit is that it lets the user deploy apps as a self-contained binary on all platforms.
Right now the work consists of the tedium of binding Haskell to the underlying C layer. Any help with the grunt work or input on creating a nice Haskell API would be appreciated. So far it seems as though wxHaskell is worth emulating but I'm pretty open. Thanks! -deech On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 10:32 PM, Conal Elliott <co...@conal.net> wrote: > I'm polling to see whether there are will and expertise to reboot graphics > and GUIs work in Haskell. I miss working on functional graphics and GUIs in > Haskell, as I've been blocked for several years (eight?) due to the absence > of low-level foundation libraries having the following properties: > > * cross-platform, > * easily buildable, > * GHCi-friendly, and > * OpenGL-compatible. > > The last several times I tried Gtk2hs, I was unable to compile it on my > Mac. Years ago when I was able to compile, the GUIs looked and interacted > like a Linux app, which made them awkward and upleasant to use. wxHaskell > (whose API and visual appearance I prefered) has for years been > incompatible with GHCi, in that the second time I open a top-level window, > the host process (GHCi) dies abruptly. Since my GUI & graphics programs are > often one-liners, and I tend to experiment a lot, using a full compilation > greatly thwarts my flow. For many years, I've thought that the situation > would eventually improve, since I'm far from the only person who wants GUIs > or graphics from Haskell. > > About three years ago, I built a modern replacement of my old Pan and > Vertigo systems (optimized high-level functional graphics in 2D and 3D), > generating screamingly fast GPU rendering code. I'd love to share it with > the community, but I'm unable to use it even myself. > > Two questions: > > * Am I mistaken about the current status? I.e., is there a solution for > Haskell GUI & graphics programming that satisfies the properties I'm > looking for (cross-platform, easily buildable, GHCi-friendly, and > OpenGL-compatible)? > * Are there people willing and able to fix this situation? My own > contributions would be to test and to share high-level composable and > efficient GUI and graphics libraries on top of a working foundation. > > Looking forward to replies. Thanks, > > -- Conal > > _______________________________________________ > Haskell-Cafe mailing list > Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe > >
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