Re: [Caml-list] A labltk book?

[Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>]

On Friday 12 October 2007 22:58:42 Dario Teixeira wrote:
> > you have to go via C so it's much work and the available tools to do the
> > automagically aren't good enaugh to do it  (ok, there is swig, but I
> > don't like  the way the binding is generated).
> > There exists the smoke project, it a lib to interface qt and python or
> > ruby use it to bind to qt (and the next perl qt will also you smoke).
> > Maybe that'a
>
> I reckon that native bindings might therefore prove nearly impossible!
> Two alternate routes have occurred to me though.  The first involves
> the Ocaml-Java project and Qt-Jambi bindings (basically Qt on the JVM):

The LablGTK2 bindings to GTK2 by Jacques Garrigue et al. are simply superb 
(robust, efficient and easy to use):

  http://wwwfun.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/soft/olabl/lablgtk.html

SooHyoung Oh has kindly written an awesome tutorial about LablGTK2:

  http://compiler.kaist.ac.kr/~shoh/ocaml/lablgtk2/lablgtk2-tutorial/

> The second route involves the OCamIL project (OCaml on .NET) and
> the Qyoto/Kimono bindings (Qt/KDE bindings for .NET):

Might I suggest that using Microsoft's F# and Microsoft's Windows Forms 
from .NET is an infinitely saner way to approach GUI programming on 
Microsoft's platforms. :-)

Only now that I'm working on Java and Scala code in Eclipse have I come to 
appreciate the awesome combo that F#'s VS mode and Windows Forms provide. 
Although the final GUI code is similar in size between LablGTK/OCaml and 
F#/Windows Forms, developing code in Visual Studio is vastly easier because 
Intellisense lets you explore APIs graphically with no effort.

I would dearly love to see a GUI IDE for OCaml written in OCaml that combined 
simplicity with such a rich form of information throwback.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e