Re: [Caml-list] Re: Cross-platform "Hello, World" graphical application in OCaml

["Evan Martin" <martine@danga.com>]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 02:03:34PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> > Do you mean that gtk has the native look and feel on windows, including
> > e.g. font selection or file open dialog? 
> 
> Good question.  Answer is unfortunately no.  The native look and feel
> is provided by the Gtk-Wimp theme (http://gtk-wimp.sourceforge.net/)
> which was recently intergrated into Gtk itself.  However the theming
> only applies to widgets, and not to such things as the file->open
> dialog.

Additionally, GTK provides file dialogs at the level of GTK widgets:
from GTK you can create a file dialog and pack in your own widgets (like
a preview when loading an image or a "file type" dropdown).  This is too
low of a level to allow an API that abstracts across the Windows file
dialogs.

[getting further off ocaml-list territory, but...]
Though it depends on your application's target audience, I think you
should use Wimp only as a last resort.  Programs atop GTK+ look and
behave subtly different from the way they behave in Windows, and I fear
that using Windows-native-looking widgets will only serve to
frustrate/annoy users further with the differences.  If you're making a
professional application the Proper Thing is to abstract away the common
parts and write the GUI twice.

(I actually sowed the seeds of that project while sorta drunk:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/evan/520561.html)

-- 
Evan Martin
martine@danga.com
http://neugierig.org