The future development of GUI libraries for Haskell
The development of Haskell applications with a graphical user interface has long been complicated by the large number of mostly incomplete libraries. In spring of this year people tried to focus the development effort and came up with the idea of a Common GUI API (CGA for short) which should define an intersection of three major platform APIs (Win32, Gnome/Gtk and Mac OS X) and that addresses the requirements of the platform's style guide (or human interface guidelines). The process of defining this CGA is a major undertaking. The alternative is to use a readily available cross-platform API, like wxWindows, at the expense of creating applications that might violate a platform's style guide and the cannot make use of platform specific functionality. A quick poll at the Haskell workshop revealed that 1/3 of the people thought that the CGA approach is worthwhile, 2/3 thought that the cross-platform approach is adequate. Hence the CGA idea as it stands right now will not be pursued.
The discussions at the Haskell Implementor Meeting (HIM) yielded some interesting options (or compromises) that could help to target and unify the development effort of the different library maintainers. In particular we would like to
- focus development on wxWindows (in form of wxHaskell) as this cross-platform toolkit should be adequate for most needs
- move the programming model of Yahu (Attribute/set/get functionality) into the Haskell library hierarchy so that other (GUI) libraries can use it.
- exploit wxWindow's capability to extract platforms specific handles/objects. The goal is to use other libraries (like gtk+hs, gtk2hs, Mocca, etc.) if wxWindows does not provide the needed functionality.
- mention the names of the maintainers of each GUI library on the Haskell web site so that programmers can estimate how well-maintained a library is. Update these names regularly.
In case people feel inclined to still pursue the CGA idea, one of the following two routes could be taken:
- re-expose parts of wxHaskell in a way that forces the user to write applications that look and feel native on different platforms, i.e. a "Common GUI API on top of wxWindows"
- write a GUI Builder application for Haskell; it would surely make Haskell itself more attractive as a rapid development language (such a Builder could also cater for the look-and-feel requirements of the different platforms)
Please send any comments or critics to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . All input (and development effort) is welcome.
Axel (on behalf of the GUI Task Force).
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