From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none autolearn=disabled version=3.1.3 X-Original-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Delivered-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Received: from discorde.inria.fr (discorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.38]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 44BECBC69 for ; Sat, 12 May 2007 16:37:50 +0200 (CEST) Received: from sys15.mail.msu.edu (sys15.mail.msu.edu [35.9.75.115]) by discorde.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id l4CEbmIX012593 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Sat, 12 May 2007 16:37:49 +0200 Received: from shawjef3 by sys15.mail.msu.edu with local (Exim 4.63 #1) id 1HmsjE-0007z5-8P for caml-list@inria.fr; Sat, 12 May 2007 10:37:48 -0400 From: "Jeffrey Loren Shaw" To: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] labltk for tk 8.4 BETA release Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 10:37:47 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: X-Virus: None found by Clam AV X-Miltered: at discorde with ID 4645D13C.002 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail . ensmp . fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; labltk:01 activestate:01 labltk:01 activestate:01 yup:01 ocaml:01 ocaml:01 extensively:01 ocamldoc:01 avoided:01 textvariable:01 type-safe:01 parser:01 caml-list:01 functions:01 * ease of installation http://downloads.activestate.com/ActiveTcl/Windows/8.3.5/ or for the beta labltk... http://downloads.activestate.com/ActiveTcl/Windows/8.4.14/ Yup that link should be updated. I don't think it should be bundled with ocaml, however. The end-user might already have it installed, or might not need it. But this is a decision for the ocaml devs. * Documentation You're right, it's not very good. I used the ocamlbrowser extensively to learn how to use labltk. It took me a lot of experimenting, and I'm still terrible at getting widgets laid out the way I want. I'm not sure how to do the documentation in an automated way without changing the grammar for widgets.src to allow ocamldoc comments. That's beyond my abilities, but I suppose it's a worthy project for someone. On the other hand, widgets.src is already very cluttered. * Other libraries I don't know anything about these, but again these are questions for the ocaml devs. Anyway, my focus right now is getting this beta version of labltk working correctly... there's a lot of functions to test. Now here's an idea... Instead of documenting labltk, which is difficult for the beginner ocaml programmer anyway, make a wrapper to make it more ocaml-y. I'm not sure if this would be easy or possible, but coercing labltk into one style of programming (preferably functional) could go a long way towards making it easier to learn for the beginner. Also the wrapper would potentially be easier to document. As I recall, the most difficult aspects of labltk are those that are imperative, eg: event functions are unit -> unit, (maybe this can't be avoided) pack is difficult to deal with, the need to use optionmenu and Textvariable.handle together is not obvious Another huge but useful project would be a type-safe parser for the outputs given by the Widget.configure_get functions. Now back to testing.