Re: Preferred GUI Toolkit for O'Caml 3?

[skaller <skaller@maxtal.com.au>]

Jacques Garrigue wrote:
> 
> From: Thorsten Ohl <ohl@hep.tu-darmstadt.de>
> 
> > I soon have to do major surgery (= an almost complete rewrite) on a
> > graphical user interface, currently in O'CamlTK.
> >
> > Since retargeting to incompatible GUIs is such a boring job, I'd like
> > to hear which toolkit do you see in your tea leafs as the future
> > toolkit of choice?
> 
> I answer for the two libraries I'm concerned with.
> 
> >    -  LablTK     [ (+) more convenient than O'CamlTK
> >                    (+) part of O'Caml 2.99 ]
> 
> This is now an integral part of the ocaml distribution, available on
> both Unix and Windows (in ocaml 3.00). The interface should be stable
> in the future, making it a good choice if portability and
> maintainability matter.
> 
> >    -  lablgtk    [ same a mlgtk, plus
> >                    (-) still beta
> >                    (+) appears(!) to have the slickest API ]
> 
> Beta does mainly mean that it may undergo API changes in the future.
> It is already good enough for writing applications. The next version
> will also support Windows.
> This is a good choice if appearance matters, and you are ready to
> eventually suffer a bit with API changes.

I would beg to differ with this analysis: Tk has some nice widgets,
like the text widget, which are _much_ better than GTK's rather woeful
offering. However, GTK has a tree widget, and while GTK is under
development
-- which is a disadvantage -- it is also under development -- which is
an advantage :-)

Tk is reasonably stable .. but dead. It is also sssllllloooowwwww under
Windows.

IMHO: use Tk if it is enough, and GTK for projects with a serious
future.

-- 
John (Max) Skaller, mailto:skaller@maxtal.com.au
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