Cross-platform "Hello, World" graphical application in OCaml

Cross-platform "Hello, World" graphical application in OCaml

[Richard Jones]

http://merjis.com/developers/xphelloworld

This is something I've been meaning to do for over a year now, and
I've finally got around to it.  In 2003 I worked on a project where we
wrote a complex graphical (Gtk-based) application for Windows.  The
program was primarily written on Linux, and we developed a
cross-platform Makefile and installer allowing us to target both
Windows and Unix platforms.  The managers of this project have kindly
allowed me to release the Makefile, NSIS installer script, and
supporting code into the public domain.

This is a "Hello, World"-type program which shows how it is possible
to write a cross-platform graphical application which targets Windows
and Unix.  On Windows, it comes with an installer, an uninstaller, a
desktop icon and menu entries.  It has the native Windows look and
feel on Windows.  On Linux/Unix it has the ordinary Gtk look and feel.

License is public domain.  You can do whatever you like with the
Makefile and installer script, including writing proprietary packages.

I need help documenting how to install all the many extra development
packages required under Windows.  Let me know if you can help me
document this.  At the moment I have a Windows box here which works,
but I'll need to reverse engineer exactly what I installed and where I
got each component from.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com
Team Notepad - intranets and extranets for business - http://team-notepad.com

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

[Sven Luther]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 12:03:08PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> http://merjis.com/developers/xphelloworld
> 
> This is something I've been meaning to do for over a year now, and
> I've finally got around to it.  In 2003 I worked on a project where we
> wrote a complex graphical (Gtk-based) application for Windows.  The
> program was primarily written on Linux, and we developed a
> cross-platform Makefile and installer allowing us to target both
> Windows and Unix platforms.  The managers of this project have kindly
> allowed me to release the Makefile, NSIS installer script, and
> supporting code into the public domain.
> 
> This is a "Hello, World"-type program which shows how it is possible
> to write a cross-platform graphical application which targets Windows
> and Unix.  On Windows, it comes with an installer, an uninstaller, a
> desktop icon and menu entries.  It has the native Windows look and
> feel on Windows.  On Linux/Unix it has the ordinary Gtk look and feel.
> 
> License is public domain.  You can do whatever you like with the
> Makefile and installer script, including writing proprietary packages.
> 
> I need help documenting how to install all the many extra development
> packages required under Windows.  Let me know if you can help me
> document this.  At the moment I have a Windows box here which works,
> but I'll need to reverse engineer exactly what I installed and where I
> got each component from.

Does it allow you to do ocaml cross-plateform executables ? 

Friendly,

Sven Luther

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

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 01:15:01PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> Does it allow you to do ocaml cross-plateform executables ? 

You need to build separate executables for each platform, unless
you're using bytecode.

I think you may be mistaking it for something much more clever than it
actually is :-)

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com
Team Notepad - intranets and extranets for business - http://team-notepad.com

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

[Sven Luther]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 12:28:52PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 01:15:01PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > Does it allow you to do ocaml cross-plateform executables ? 

Maybe i should say, can you do cross-plateform ocaml builds with it ? 

> You need to build separate executables for each platform, unless
> you're using bytecode.

Well, that would be obvious. But then again, the interest is to do
cross-plateform builds, which i previously failed to do with ocaml/gtk.

I know how to generate C windows/gtk applications, altough it has not the nice
installer wrapper you mention, with the debian cross-mingw packages.

> I think you may be mistaking it for something much more clever than it
> actually is :-)

Well, it was not entirely sure what exactly is included in it, since there is
not a single mention of the ocaml word in the whole body of the email, and
still it was sent to the ocaml mailing list, so ...

Friendly,

Sven Luther

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

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 01:35:36PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> Well, that would be obvious. But then again, the interest is to do
> cross-plateform builds, which i previously failed to do with ocaml/gtk.

Ah, you mean something like cross-compiling?  No, it won't help you do
that.

> Well, it was not entirely sure what exactly is included in it, since there is
> not a single mention of the ocaml word in the whole body of the email, and
> still it was sent to the ocaml mailing list, so ...

I should probably have said lablgtk2, instead of just gtk.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com
Team Notepad - intranets and extranets for business - http://team-notepad.com

Re: Cross-platform "Hello, World" graphical application in OCaml

[Vincenzo Ciancia]

Richard Jones wrote:

> On Windows, it comes with an installer, an uninstaller, a
> desktop icon and menu entries.  It has the native Windows look and
> feel on Windows.


Do you mean that gtk has the native look and feel on windows, including
e.g. font selection or file open dialog? 

Bye

Vincenzo

-- 
Please note that I do not read the e-mail address used in the from field
but I read vincenzo_ml at yahoo dot it
Attenzione: non leggo l'indirizzo di posta usato nel campo from, ma
leggo vincenzo_ml at yahoo dot it

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

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 02:36:23PM +0100, Vincenzo Ciancia wrote:
> Richard Jones wrote:
> 
> > On?Windows,?it?comes?with?an?installer,?an?uninstaller,?a
> > desktop icon and menu entries.??It?has?the?native?Windows?look?and
> > feel on Windows.
> 
> 
> 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.

Note that even Microsoft isn't consistent in this area.  Office XP,
for example, uses its own widgets and dialogs.

Printing is another area where things are complicated.  Under Unix
it's relatively straightforward: generate a PS or PPM file and pipe it
into 'lpr'.  On Windows things are much more complex.  For the app I
wrote in 2003, I managed a primitive form of graphic-only printing by
hacking out a standalone printing program from the guts of the GIMP
Windows printer driver (written in C, not OCaml).  I can let anyone
have this if they're interested.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com
Team Notepad - intranets and extranets for business - http://team-notepad.com

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

[Michael Walter]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 14:36:23 +0100, Vincenzo Ciancia
<vincenzo_yahoo_addressguard-gmane@yahoo.it> wrote:
> Richard Jones wrote:
> 
> > On Windows, it comes with an installer, an uninstaller, a
> > desktop icon and menu entries.  It has the native Windows look and
> > feel on Windows.
> 
> Do you mean that gtk has the native look and feel on windows, including
> e.g. font selection or file open dialog?
... and the menu bar :o)

Anyway, I could assist you with Windows support, Richard.

thanks,
Michael

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

[Sven Luther]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 12:53:41PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 01:35:36PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > Well, that would be obvious. But then again, the interest is to do
> > cross-plateform builds, which i previously failed to do with ocaml/gtk.
> 
> Ah, you mean something like cross-compiling?  No, it won't help you do
> that.

Oh well.

> > Well, it was not entirely sure what exactly is included in it, since there is
> > not a single mention of the ocaml word in the whole body of the email, and
> > still it was sent to the ocaml mailing list, so ...
> 
> I should probably have said lablgtk2, instead of just gtk.

Ok.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

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

[Blair Zajac]

Richard Jones wrote:
> http://merjis.com/developers/xphelloworld
> 
> This is something I've been meaning to do for over a year now, and
> I've finally got around to it.  In 2003 I worked on a project where we
> wrote a complex graphical (Gtk-based) application for Windows.  The
> program was primarily written on Linux, and we developed a
> cross-platform Makefile and installer allowing us to target both
> Windows and Unix platforms.  The managers of this project have kindly
> allowed me to release the Makefile, NSIS installer script, and
> supporting code into the public domain.

What would it take to have a native Mac OS X interface that doesn't use X11?

Thanks,
Blair

-- 
Blair Zajac <blair@orcaware.com>
Plots of your system's performance - http://www.orcaware.com/orca/

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

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 09:05:57AM -0800, Blair Zajac wrote:
> What would it take to have a native Mac OS X interface that doesn't use X11?

The code uses lablgtk2 for the interface.  If you look in the source
you'll see a ~10 line program called "hello.ml" which uses the
lablgtk2 API.  On Windows, widgets are rendered using Gtk with a
Windows theme applied, so they're not native widgets, although they
look like it.

To get true native widgets across all three major platforms you'd have
to use a different API completely.  WxWidgets is the obvious choice
(http://www.wxwindows.org/).  You'd probably want to start with
SooHyoung Oh's wxcaml
(http://pllab.kaist.ac.kr/~shoh/ocaml/wxcaml/doc/) which was built
using CamlIDL from the WxWidgets headers.

WxWindows isn't really suitable for what I want to do because it
doesn't support a rich canvas widget, nor a good rich text editor.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com
Team Notepad - intranets and extranets for business - http://team-notepad.com

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

[Christophe TROESTLER]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org> wrote:
> 
> Printing is another area where things are complicated.  Under Unix
> it's relatively straightforward: generate a PS or PPM file and pipe it
> into 'lpr'.  On Windows things are much more complex.  For the app I
> wrote in 2003, I managed a primitive form of graphic-only printing by
> hacking out a standalone printing program from the guts of the GIMP
> Windows printer driver (written in C, not OCaml).  I can let anyone
> have this if they're interested.

There is gsprint.exe (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/gsprint.htm)
which makes it easy to print PS files on a window box.  It is a bit
heavy -- you need Ghostscript -- but it works well.  I have been using
it for several months to print to a win$ only color laser printer
(with the help of a LPD daemon written in OCaml! :).

Hope it helps,
ChriS

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

[Jon Harrop]

On Tuesday 22 February 2005 17:23, Richard Jones wrote:
> WxWindows isn't really suitable for what I want to do because it
> doesn't support a rich canvas widget, nor a good rich text editor.

Does it support cross-platform OpenGL? If so then you could write your GUI in 
OpenGL...

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

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

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 07:24:28PM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:
> On Tuesday 22 February 2005 17:23, Richard Jones wrote:
> > WxWindows isn't really suitable for what I want to do because it
> > doesn't support a rich canvas widget, nor a good rich text editor.
> 
> Does it support cross-platform OpenGL? If so then you could write your GUI in 
> OpenGL...

Joke, right?  Blender actually has a GUI written in OpenGL.  One of
the remarkable consequences of this is that you can smoothly zoom and
sheer the controls ...

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com
Team Notepad - intranets and extranets for business - http://team-notepad.com

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

[chris.danx]

Jon Harrop wrote:
> On Tuesday 22 February 2005 17:23, Richard Jones wrote:
> 
>>WxWindows isn't really suitable for what I want to do because it
>>doesn't support a rich canvas widget, nor a good rich text editor.
> 
> 
> Does it support cross-platform OpenGL?

Yes.

http://wiki.wxwidgets.org/wiki.pl?WxGLCanvas

> If so then you could write your GUI in OpenGL...

And you could render it with Cairo which would be very interesting 
(although Cairo's api isn't that stable at the moment and the OCaml 
bindings don't seem to support the OpenGL (glitz) back end yet, though 
it supports the other back ends like ps, x11, pdf, png, in memory ...).

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

[Jon Harrop]

On Tuesday 22 February 2005 20:24, Richard Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 07:24:28PM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:
> > On Tuesday 22 February 2005 17:23, Richard Jones wrote:
> > > WxWindows isn't really suitable for what I want to do because it
> > > doesn't support a rich canvas widget, nor a good rich text editor.
> >
> > Does it support cross-platform OpenGL? If so then you could write your
> > GUI in OpenGL...
>
> Joke, right?

No, not at all.

Just this afternoon, a friend of mine suggested that I commercialise the OCaml 
port of my vector graphics engine:

  http://www.chem.pwf.cam.ac.uk/~jdh30/programming/opengl/smoke/

The OCaml implementation is much more evolved and vastly easier to use, of 
course. In particular, it makes cross-platform GUIs relatively trivial.

I didn't believe him though. I mean who would want to be able to write 
cross-platform GUIs easily? Especially smoothly animated ones with alpha 
blending, texture mapping and integrated 2D and 3D.

Seriously though, if I did this, would anyone be interested in buying it to 
develop commercial applications with for, say, 1,000UKP?

> Blender actually has a GUI written in OpenGL.  One of 
> the remarkable consequences of this is that you can smoothly zoom and
> sheer the controls ...

Yes, if you're already using OpenGL then there are a lot of advantages to 
having an OpenGL-based GUI. Even if you're not already using OpenGL, it is 
the most cross-platform GUI-capable API and runs on virtually any modern 
computer, typically with performance orders of magnitude better than anything 
you'll get with Qt, GTK, WxWindows or any other software renderer.

I develop for Linux and just had a go on another friend's Apple PowerBook. 
Once you've added <-cclib "-framework Foundation"> to the link line, the 
OCaml code compiles and runs beautifully.

If you want some examples of trivial OpenGL programs written in OCaml, have a 
look at the freebies from my book:

  http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists/visualisation

There are Linux and Mac OS X executables you can just click on. Also, check 
out the examples which come with lablGL and lablglut.

The main omission for me is then the lack of native-looking drop-down menus 
and a save dialog. I tried to port my lablglut-based code to lablgtk but 
failed miserably - I couldn't even get a window with a menu bar and a 
full-size OpenGL widget.

Incidentally, would someone be so kind as to send me some Windows executables 
of my demos? Then we could have the full complement. :-)

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

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

[chris.danx]

Richard Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 07:24:28PM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:
> 
>>On Tuesday 22 February 2005 17:23, Richard Jones wrote:
>>
>>>WxWindows isn't really suitable for what I want to do because it
>>>doesn't support a rich canvas widget, nor a good rich text editor.
>>
>>Does it support cross-platform OpenGL? If so then you could write your GUI in 
>>OpenGL...
> 
> 
> Joke, right?  

At first, I read it as GUI but then I thought maybe John Harrop meant 
canvas.  Not sure.  You could use the wxwidgets gl canvas widget to 
create a "rich canvas widget".

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

[chris.danx]

Jon Harrop wrote:
> On Tuesday 22 February 2005 20:24, Richard Jones wrote:
> 
>>Joke, right?
> 
> No, not at all.
> 
> Just this afternoon, a friend of mine suggested that I commercialise the OCaml 
> port of my vector graphics engine:
> 
>   http://www.chem.pwf.cam.ac.uk/~jdh30/programming/opengl/smoke/
> 
> The OCaml implementation is much more evolved and vastly easier to use, of 
> course. In particular, it makes cross-platform GUIs relatively trivial.
> 
> I didn't believe him though. I mean who would want to be able to write 
> cross-platform GUIs easily? Especially smoothly animated ones with alpha 
> blending, texture mapping and integrated 2D and 3D.
> 
> Seriously though, if I did this, would anyone be interested in buying it to 
> develop commercial applications with for, say, 1,000UKP?

I'm not in a position to pay that kind of money (just a student right 
now), but in general, it would depend on the licence terms and whether 
you were offering support as well as a license.

It also depends on the product... people have to evaluate it somehow 
before committing money to it.  To raise awareness people have to know 
it exists, which means apps have to use it.

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

[Jon Harrop]

On Tuesday 22 February 2005 21:26, chris.danx wrote:
> At first, I read it as GUI but then I thought maybe John Harrop meant
> canvas.  Not sure.  You could use the wxwidgets gl canvas widget to
> create a "rich canvas widget".

To clarify, here's an example of what I'm talking about:

  http://www.ffconsultancy.com/temp/smoke.png

This is a screenshot of a cross-platform vector graphics editor I've been 
writing. The GUI is done entirely in OpenGL, overlaid on the vector graphics 
being edited.

As it is based upon Smoke, the entire editor is only 2,166 lines of 
straightforward OCaml code. It features:

1. Vector graphics editing (the "cursor" and "line" tools).
2. An optionally-visible, snapable grid (the "hash" tool).
3. Smooth panning and zooming (the "eye" tool).
4. Native-format import and export.
5. EPS and SVG export.
6. Dynamically-loadable OCaml byte-code tools for the tool-bar (so users can 
create their own plug-in tools and sell them).

Of course, awesome performance, anti-aliasing, transparency, gradient and 
radial fills and many other features are inherited from Smoke.

I'd have thought that seasoned OCaml hackers would be able to knock out ass- 
kickingly good commercial applications in no time with a library like this...

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

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

[Jon Harrop]

On Tuesday 22 February 2005 22:13, you wrote:
> I'm not in a position to pay that kind of money (just a student right
> now), but in general, it would depend on the licence terms and whether
> you were offering support as well as a license.
>
> It also depends on the product... people have to evaluate it somehow
> before committing money to it.  To raise awareness people have to know
> it exists, which means apps have to use it.

I think licensing would be best done by following TrollTech's example with Qt. 
I'd provide some level of support, of course, but I couldn't be at a user's 
beck and call unless I was compensated appropriately.

My concern is whether or not anyone would be willing to pay me for a 
commercial license. If people only want to use the code for in-house projects 
and to develop open source Linux software then it would be silly for me to 
give it away when I could keep it closed source and sell it (or software 
derived from it).

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

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

[Daniel Bünzli]

Le 22 févr. 05, à 23:16, Jon Harrop a écrit :

> Of course, awesome performance, anti-aliasing, transparency, gradient  
> and
> radial fills and many other features are inherited from Smoke.
>
> I'd have thought that seasoned OCaml hackers would be able to knock  
> out ass-
> kickingly good commercial applications in no time with a library like  
> this...

One nice thing to have would be a pure ocaml gui system (maybe along  
the lines of Fruit [1] or Fudgets) with a functorized renderer  
interface so that it can be used with/rendered by different graphic api  
(e.g. see cegui [3,4]) or even inside a canvas widget. Input handling  
should also be functorized so that it is easy to plug the gui system in  
a particular environment.

However the big problem of these custom gui systems is the lack of  
integration with the native gui system. This may not be an issue for  
fullscreen vizualisation tools or games but can be for other  
applications like editors (e.g., because you usually have a single  
window in which everything occurs (your gl context), you don't have  
access to platform specific save dialogs, look and feel, etc., etc.).

Daniel

[1] <http://www.haskell.org/fruit/>
[2]  
<http://www.cs.chalmers.se/ComputingScience/Research/Functional/ 
Fudgets/>
[3] <http://www.cegui.org.uk/>
[4] <http://www.cegui.org.uk/api_reference/classCEGUI_1_1Renderer.html>

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

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 09:23:31PM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:
> Yes, if you're already using OpenGL then there are a lot of
> advantages to having an OpenGL-based GUI. Even if you're not already
> using OpenGL, it is the most cross-platform GUI-capable API and runs
> on virtually any modern computer, typically with performance orders
> of magnitude better than anything you'll get with Qt, GTK, WxWindows
> or any other software renderer.

This sounds like fun but all my client wanted was a boring old Windoze
application with the standard look and feel.  The only fancy part of
it was the fact that it generated and updated some charts and graphs
in real time.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com
Team Notepad - intranets and extranets for business - http://team-notepad.com

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

[Oliver Bandel]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 06:46:46PM +0100, Christophe TROESTLER wrote:
[...]
> (with the help of a LPD daemon written in OCaml! :).


...you may publish it, so it makes one more useful tool that
is written in OCaml.

Ciao,
   Oliver

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

[Oliver Bandel]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 05:23:41PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 09:05:57AM -0800, Blair Zajac wrote:
> > What would it take to have a native Mac OS X interface that doesn't use X11?
> 
> The code uses lablgtk2 for the interface.  If you look in the source


...well, I did not try to install gtk-stuff on Mac OS-X.

But even if I had do this... the question was, if there is a
native OS-X interface *without X11*, and gtk uses X11.

So this is not the direction to go...

Ciao,
   Oliver

P.S.: Any of these windowing stuff/GUIs needs windows and point/pixels,
      dialogs, colors, buttons, text, graphics,...

      ... and even if they are all distinct, they are also common.
      ... it may be necessary to provide a High-Level GUI-language/DSL
      to create GUIs.

      When using HTML for describing web-layout, this Weblanguage/DSL
      called HTML does not make any assumptions about implementation
      of webbrowsers or programming APIs.
    
      Maybe it is necessary to provide a high level language similar
      to HTML, but intended for creating GUIs in compiled programs.

      Or maybe it even makes sense to use HTML (or a subset) (or a
      superset (?!) (xml?)) to create native GUIs (e.g. with code generators).

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

[Oliver Bandel]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 07:24:28PM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:
> On Tuesday 22 February 2005 17:23, Richard Jones wrote:
> > WxWindows isn't really suitable for what I want to do because it
> > doesn't support a rich canvas widget, nor a good rich text editor.
> 
> Does it support cross-platform OpenGL? If so then you could write your GUI in 
> OpenGL...

OpenGL provides no buttons and no menues... and similar stuff....

... so you had to reinvent the wheel with OpenGL.

...and that means: if everyone writes his GUI in OpenGL,
the  there are - agaib - as many GUIs as there are programs around...
...and all are reinventing the wheel...

OpenGL is not a GUI-toolkit.

It only provides 3D-API.

Ciao,
   Oliver

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

[Jon Harrop]

On Tuesday 22 February 2005 23:30, Daniel Bünzli wrote:
> One nice thing to have would be a pure ocaml gui system (maybe along
> the lines of Fruit [1] or Fudgets) with a functorized renderer
> interface so that it can be used with/rendered by different graphic api
> (e.g. see cegui [3,4]) or even inside a canvas widget. Input handling
> should also be functorized so that it is easy to plug the gui system in
> a particular environment.

I prefer the idea of implementing a single back-end: a decent vector graphics 
renderer which uses OpenGL. I can't think of any reason I'd ditch these for 
another back-end.

> However the big problem of these custom gui systems is the lack of
> integration with the native gui system. This may not be an issue for
> fullscreen vizualisation tools or games but can be for other
> applications like editors (e.g., because you usually have a single 
> window in which everything occurs (your gl context), you don't have
> access to platform specific save dialogs, look and feel, etc., etc.).

I disagree.

Firstly, you can have as many GL windows and contexts (and widgets) as you 
like. You aren't restricted to just having one window with one widget and one 
context.

Secondly, using OpenGL does not prohibit the use of platform-specific look and 
feel. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to bring up native menus and 
dialogs. Qt, GTK and WxWindows all allow you to do this.

Thirdly, Mathematica is one of the "editors" I use most often. It benefits 
greatly from embedded vector graphics (although software rendered for now) 
for features such as mathematical typesetting, graph generation and 
visualisation.

IMHO, vector graphics based editors are a huge step forward. Imagine having an 
OCaml IDE which typeset your program (lambdas, pattern matches, arrows, 
subscripts etc.) and gave you graphical feedback on syntax, type inference 
and type checking, smooth scrolling, a search facility which animated its 
results. The possibilities are endless.

The editors I've seen under Linux are making tentative steps in the right 
direction but they are still miles away from what could be achieved. 
OCamlbrowser displays hierarchical lists of module contents graphically. 
KEdit lets you flatten C++ function definitions, but C++ lacks nested 
functions. Particularly in OCaml, programming could be so much easier with 
more sophisticated editors...

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

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

[Oliver Bandel]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 11:00:00PM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:
> On Tuesday 22 February 2005 22:13, you wrote:
> > I'm not in a position to pay that kind of money (just a student right
> > now), but in general, it would depend on the licence terms and whether
> > you were offering support as well as a license.
> >
> > It also depends on the product... people have to evaluate it somehow
> > before committing money to it.  To raise awareness people have to know
> > it exists, which means apps have to use it.
> 
> I think licensing would be best done by following TrollTech's example with Qt. 
> I'd provide some level of support, of course, but I couldn't be at a user's 
> beck and call unless I was compensated appropriately.
> 
> My concern is whether or not anyone would be willing to pay me for a 
> commercial license. If people only want to use the code for in-house projects 
> and to develop open source Linux software then it would be silly for me to 
> give it away when I could keep it closed source and sell it (or software 
> derived from it).

Give the sources free (GPL) and write more books....

... or do it like Kai's powertools...... as shareware...?

Or sell it as GPL-software...

...or sell it to a big company and get big money right now
(or some percents of each license sold).


Ciao,
   Oliver

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

[Oliver Bandel]

On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 12:30:18AM +0100, Daniel Bnzli wrote:
[...]
> However the big problem of these custom gui systems is the lack of  
> integration with the native gui system.
[...]

...smells like functors....

...using specialized API-bindings in certain modules
and using them with functors inside a generic GUI-API
(which should be very high-level and really platform independent).

OCaml seems to me to be a very powerful tool in this respect,
but not used in such a powerful way...?!

Ciao,
   Oliver

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

[Michael Walter]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 00:05:01 +0000, Jon Harrop <jon@jdh30.plus.com> wrote:
> The editors I've seen under Linux are making tentative steps in the right
> direction but they are still miles away from what could be achieved.
> OCamlbrowser displays hierarchical lists of module contents graphically.
> KEdit lets you flatten C++ function definitions, but C++ lacks nested
> functions. Particularly in OCaml, programming could be so much easier with
> more sophisticated editors...

I pay for good IDEs :-)

Michael

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

[Daniel Bünzli]

Le 23 févr. 05, à 01:05, Jon Harrop a écrit :

> On Tuesday 22 February 2005 23:30, Daniel Bünzli wrote:

>> However the big problem of these custom gui systems is the lack of
>> integration with the native gui system. This may not be an issue for
>> fullscreen vizualisation tools or games but can be for other
>> applications like editors (e.g., because you usually have a single
>> window in which everything occurs (your gl context), you don't have
>> access to platform specific save dialogs, look and feel, etc., etc.).
>
> I disagree.
>
> Firstly, you can have as many GL windows and contexts (and widgets) as 
> you
> like. You aren't restricted to just having one window with one widget 
> and one
> context.

I didn't say you were restricted to one widget in one window. I said 
that usually, OpenGL apps implementing their own gui system use only 
one context (e.g. see the various cross-platform 3d modelers that do 
so). There may be many reasons but what comes to my mind is :

a) An OpenGL context is not a lightweight structure. Especially if you 
are doing realtime rendering, a context switch is a heavy operation\v. 
Very often it is much more efficent to have a single context in which 
you draw various subregion by setting the viewport and scissor rect 
rather than creating many opengl contexts.

b) OpenGL context management is not defined in the opengl specification 
but by platform specific libraries (e.g. agl, wgl, glx, etc) that 
behave quite differently and this means that you may run into various 
issues (like platform dependent context texture sharing policy).


> Secondly, using OpenGL does not prohibit the use of platform-specific 
> look and
> feel. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to bring up native 
> menus and
> dialogs. Qt, GTK and WxWindows all allow you to do this.

Sure but if they do then :

1) Either they don't work at the level of OpenGL. That is they use the 
platform specific gui libraries to provide their cross-platform 
abstraction. Then we are not talking about the same thing (I was 
talking about opengl-based gui systems).

2) Or they try to mimic the platform-specific look in their rendering, 
an imitation that can become obsolated by any system update.

But looking at the end of your message I think that we may not be 
talking about the same thing.

Cheers,

Daniel

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

[Jon Harrop]

This is getting off topic so I'll keep it brief...

On Wednesday 23 February 2005 03:13, Daniel Bünzli wrote:
> a) An OpenGL context is not a lightweight structure. Especially if you
> are doing realtime rendering, a context switch is a heavy operation.

I've never had a performance problem with context switching. As a test, try 
running multiple copies of my OpenGL demos:

  http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists/visualisation

> Very often it is much more efficent to have a single context in which
> you draw various subregion by setting the viewport and scissor rect
> rather than creating many opengl contexts.

If you want multiple windows you can't do this, of course.

> b) OpenGL context management is not defined in the opengl specification
> but by platform specific libraries (e.g. agl, wgl, glx, etc) that
> behave quite differently and this means that you may run into various
> issues (like platform dependent context texture sharing policy).

Whatever library created the contexts for you tends to handle all that, e.g. 
FLTK and Qt do. This isn't rocket science though. OpenGL users have to do 
this themselves if they want to use pbuffers, for example:

  http://www.chem.pwf.cam.ac.uk/~jdh30/programming/opengl/pbuffer/index.html

> Sure but if they do then :
>
> 1) Either they don't work at the level of OpenGL. That is they use the
> platform specific gui libraries to provide their cross-platform
> abstraction. Then we are not talking about the same thing (I was
> talking about opengl-based gui systems).

I see, you were referring to toolkits which render native-like GUIs using 
OpenGL. Sorry, I was talking about actually calling real native GUIs from an 
OpenGL app.

> 2) Or they try to mimic the platform-specific look in their rendering,
> an imitation that can become obsolated by any system update.

Yes. GLUI mimics Windows 9x using OpenGL, for example.

> But looking at the end of your message I think that we may not be
> talking about the same thing.

Yes, I think we were talking at cross purposes.

To recap, if you must have some native-looking windows in an OpenGL app, you 
should be able to implement it quite easily (in theory). In practice, I have 
been unable to do this from OCaml, so I'd be very interested if anyone has a 
demo of this working. :-)

I'd suggest sticking to lablglut and writing your own GUI entirely using 
OpenGL though, as I have found this to be much more stable. I don't really 
think users will be too bothered by a slightly-different-looking GUI though, 
especially if it looks better. :-)

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

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

[Bardur Arantsson]

On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 12:05:01AM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:

> On Tuesday 22 February 2005 23:30, Daniel Bünzli wrote:
> > One nice thing to have would be a pure ocaml gui system (maybe along
> > the lines of Fruit [1] or Fudgets) with a functorized renderer
> > interface so that it can be used with/rendered by different graphic api
> > (e.g. see cegui [3,4]) or even inside a canvas widget. Input handling
> > should also be functorized so that it is easy to plug the gui system in
> > a particular environment.

> I prefer the idea of implementing a single back-end: a decent vector graphics 
> renderer which uses OpenGL. I can't think of any reason I'd ditch these for 
> another back-end.

On Linux, only Radeon and NVidia cards have even half-way decent OpenGL
support -- and even then you need proprietary drivers for the most recent
ones. I probably don't need to tell you that rendering OpenGL to a
framebuffer via software on a general-purpose CPU (ie. software
rendering) is spectacularly slow. Certainly slow enough to make a GUI
completely unusable.

[--snip--]
> The editors I've seen under Linux are making tentative steps in the right 
> direction but they are still miles away from what could be achieved. 
> OCamlbrowser displays hierarchical lists of module contents graphically. 
> KEdit lets you flatten C++ function definitions, but C++ lacks nested 
> functions. Particularly in OCaml, programming could be so much easier with 
> more sophisticated editors...

Maybe you should try Eclipse and the OCaml-plugins:

- http://www.eclipse.org/
- http://eclipsefp.sourceforge.net/ocaml/

Now, I haven't tested the OCaml/C++ support, so I don't know how good
that is, but the Java support in Eclipse is incredible.

-- 
Bardur Arantsson
<bardur@imada.sdu.dk>
<bardur@scientician.net>

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of
people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
             Douglas Adams | The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

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

[Evan Martin]

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

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

[Sven Luther]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 06:46:46PM +0100, Christophe TROESTLER wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org> wrote:
> > 
> > Printing is another area where things are complicated.  Under Unix
> > it's relatively straightforward: generate a PS or PPM file and pipe it
> > into 'lpr'.  On Windows things are much more complex.  For the app I
> > wrote in 2003, I managed a primitive form of graphic-only printing by
> > hacking out a standalone printing program from the guts of the GIMP
> > Windows printer driver (written in C, not OCaml).  I can let anyone
> > have this if they're interested.
> 
> There is gsprint.exe (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/gsprint.htm)
> which makes it easy to print PS files on a window box.  It is a bit
> heavy -- you need Ghostscript -- but it works well.  I have been using
> it for several months to print to a win$ only color laser printer
> (with the help of a LPD daemon written in OCaml! :).

Mmm, would it be possible to use only said LPD daemon, to print plain text to
the printer under windows ? For log-like applications which don't really need
advanced printing capabilities ? 

I was thinking to generate .pdf files on windows, and then print them with
acrobat reader or something.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

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

[Olivier Andrieu]

 > "chris.danx" [Tue, 22 Feb 2005]:
 > And you could render it with Cairo which would be very interesting
 > (although Cairo's api isn't that stable at the moment and the OCaml
 > bindings don't seem to support the OpenGL (glitz) back end yet,
 > though it supports the other back ends like ps, x11, pdf, png, in
 > memory ...).

actually I wrote some glitz bindings (just the bare minimum). I need
to test this (with say, lablglut). If you're interested in this and
want to help, I can send you that code.

-- 
   Olivier

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

[Jon Harrop]

On Wednesday 23 February 2005 07:29, Bardur Arantsson wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 12:05:01AM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:
> > I prefer the idea of implementing a single back-end: a decent vector
> > graphics renderer which uses OpenGL. I can't think of any reason I'd
> > ditch these for another back-end.
>
> On Linux, only Radeon and NVidia cards have even half-way decent OpenGL
> support -- and even then you need proprietary drivers for the most recent
> ones. I probably don't need to tell you that rendering OpenGL to a
> framebuffer via software on a general-purpose CPU (ie. software
> rendering) is spectacularly slow. Certainly slow enough to make a GUI
> completely unusable.

That is totally untrue, of course. Software rendering of OpenGL is about as 
fast as the current software rendering of GUIs.

> Maybe you should try Eclipse and the OCaml-plugins:
>
> - http://www.eclipse.org/
> - http://eclipsefp.sourceforge.net/ocaml/
>
> Now, I haven't tested the OCaml/C++ support, so I don't know how good
> that is, but the Java support in Eclipse is incredible.

I've tried them. They are certainly going in the right direction but there is 
still a lot of room for improvement. :-)

Would anyone be interested in a commercial OCaml IDE?

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

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

[Jon Harrop]

On Wednesday 23 February 2005 00:02, Oliver Bandel wrote:
> OpenGL provides no buttons and no menues... and similar stuff....
>
> ... so you had to reinvent the wheel with OpenGL.

Not if there was an OpenGL-based GUI library that you could use. OCaml is 
ideal for writing this kind of code natively, IMHO.

> It only provides 3D-API.

And 1D, 2D and a little 4D.

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

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

[Bardur Arantsson]

On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 11:21:36AM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:

> On Wednesday 23 February 2005 07:29, Bardur Arantsson wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 12:05:01AM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:
> > > I prefer the idea of implementing a single back-end: a decent vector
> > > graphics renderer which uses OpenGL. I can't think of any reason I'd
> > > ditch these for another back-end.

> > On Linux, only Radeon and NVidia cards have even half-way decent OpenGL
> > support -- and even then you need proprietary drivers for the most recent
> > ones. I probably don't need to tell you that rendering OpenGL to a
> > framebuffer via software on a general-purpose CPU (ie. software
> > rendering) is spectacularly slow. Certainly slow enough to make a GUI
> > completely unusable.

> That is totally untrue, of course. Software rendering of OpenGL is about as 
> fast as the current software rendering of GUIs.

Well, maybe I've just been unlucky, but all the OpenGL GUI stuff I've
tried has been unusable both because of (lack of) speed and other
usability issues. (Granted, this *was* a long time ago when CPUs weren't
as powerful as they are today, but still...)

> Would anyone be interested in a commercial OCaml IDE?

I'm not really sure caml-list is the proper place to do market
research...

-- 
Bardur Arantsson
<bardur@imada.sdu.dk>
<bardur@scientician.net>

The glass is not half full, nor half empty. The glass is just too
big.

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

[Christophe TROESTLER]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Oliver Bandel <oliver@first.in-berlin.de> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 06:46:46PM +0100, Christophe TROESTLER wrote:
> [...]
> > (with the help of a LPD daemon written in OCaml! :).
> 
> ...you may publish it,

I mentioned that some time ago on this mailing list (also saying that
it is not a library -- as it should -- but that with the help of
somebody I was ready to try to turn it into that).  You will find the
code here: http://math.umh.ac.be/an/software.php#x4-80007

Regards,
ChriS

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

[Christophe TROESTLER]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 06:46:46PM +0100, Christophe TROESTLER wrote:
> > (with the help of a LPD daemon written in OCaml! :).
> 
> Mmm, would it be possible to use only said LPD daemon, to print
> plain text to the printer under windows ? For log-like applications
> which don't really need advanced printing capabilities ?

The deamon does not care about printing per-se, just to handle the
interactions with LPD on the client machine.  In other words, if you
know what to do to print a text file, the daemon will be happy to feed
your command with files sent through the LPD protocol.  

To be really useful, I think the deamon should be turned into a
library.  If enough people are interested, I can open a mailing list
for discussions.

Regards,
ChriS

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

[William D. Neumann]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Oliver Bandel wrote:

> But even if I had do this... the question was, if there is a
> native OS-X interface *without X11*, and gtk uses X11.
>
> So this is not the direction to go...

Well, it may be possible to get lablgtk working with gtk+osx 
<http://gtk-osx.sourceforge.net/>, an attempt to bring gtk+ natively to 
Aqua.  Unfortunately, like HOC, this project seems to have stagnated as 
well, with no evidence of progress in the last nine months...

William D. Neumann

---

"There's just so many extra children, we could just feed the
children to these tigers.  We don't need them, we're not doing 
anything with them.

Tigers are noble and sleek; children are loud and messy."

         -- Neko Case

  Think of XML as Lisp for COBOL programmers.

 	-- Tony-A (some guy on /.)

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

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 03:08:13PM +0100, Christophe TROESTLER wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> > 
> > On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 06:46:46PM +0100, Christophe TROESTLER wrote:
> > > (with the help of a LPD daemon written in OCaml! :).
> > 
> > Mmm, would it be possible to use only said LPD daemon, to print
> > plain text to the printer under windows ? For log-like applications
> > which don't really need advanced printing capabilities ?
> 
> The deamon does not care about printing per-se, just to handle the
> interactions with LPD on the client machine.  In other words, if you
> know what to do to print a text file, the daemon will be happy to feed
> your command with files sent through the LPD protocol.  

Mmm, i don't quite follow that. the lpd sits between the program output and
the system queues or something like that ? You use gsprint to generate the
printable files from .ps ones, and send it to the lpd queue, which sends it to
the disk, or the other way around, you send the .ps to the lpd, which sends it
to the gsprint and then to the disk.

> To be really useful, I think the deamon should be turned into a
> library.  If enough people are interested, I can open a mailing list
> for discussions.

Yes, i guess that would be interesting.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

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

[Christopher Campbell]

Olivier Andrieu wrote:
>  > "chris.danx" [Tue, 22 Feb 2005]:
>  > And you could render it with Cairo which would be very interesting
>  > (although Cairo's api isn't that stable at the moment and the OCaml
>  > bindings don't seem to support the OpenGL (glitz) back end yet,
>  > though it supports the other back ends like ps, x11, pdf, png, in
>  > memory ...).
> 
> actually I wrote some glitz bindings (just the bare minimum). I need
> to test this (with say, lablglut). If you're interested in this and
> want to help, I can send you that code.

I would be willing to test it, sure!  Just email me the code and I'll 
have a play with it and get back to you on how it goes.

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

[Christopher Campbell]

Jon Harrop wrote:
> On Tuesday 22 February 2005 22:13, you wrote:
> 
>>I'm not in a position to pay that kind of money (just a student right
>>now), but in general, it would depend on the licence terms and whether
>>you were offering support as well as a license.
>>
>>It also depends on the product... people have to evaluate it somehow
>>before committing money to it.  To raise awareness people have to know
>>it exists, which means apps have to use it.
> 
> I think licensing would be best done by following TrollTech's example with Qt. 
> I'd provide some level of support, of course, but I couldn't be at a user's 
> beck and call unless I was compensated appropriately.
> 
> My concern is whether or not anyone would be willing to pay me for a 
> commercial license. If people only want to use the code for in-house projects 
> and to develop open source Linux software then it would be silly for me to 
> give it away when I could keep it closed source and sell it (or software 
> derived from it).

I just meant in some ways it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem.

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

[Oliver Bandel]

On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 08:21:49AM -0700, William D. Neumann wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Oliver Bandel wrote:
> 
> >But even if I had do this... the question was, if there is a
> >native OS-X interface *without X11*, and gtk uses X11.
> >
> >So this is not the direction to go...
> 
> Well, it may be possible to get lablgtk working with gtk+osx 
> <http://gtk-osx.sourceforge.net/>, an attempt to bring gtk+ natively to 
> Aqua.  Unfortunately, like HOC, this project seems to have stagnated as 
> well, with no evidence of progress in the last nine months...

And like HOC (somebody wrote about this yesterday),
gtk seems also to be waste of ressources.

At least when using Gnome it seems to me as blaoted as qt/KDE is.

Well, it's some yeras ago, but I always was happy when I could use
fvwm2 or similar smart XFree-stuff, because it worked stable and
didn't used all ressources....

So when I hear from Qt/GTK I always get shuddered. This is a bit like
reiimplementing M$-Windows on Linux/Unix and I don't want to have stupid
GUIs!

Keep it small and simple.

Don't blow it up.

Ciao,
   Oliver

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

[Christophe TROESTLER]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> 
> Mmm, i don't quite follow that. the lpd sits between the program
> output and the system queues or something like that ? You use
> gsprint to generate the printable files from .ps ones, and send it
> to the lpd queue, which sends it to the disk, or the other way
> around, you send the .ps to the lpd, which sends it to the gsprint
> and then to the disk.

It goes like this:

             network
Unix client --------> LPD on (e.g.) windows
(lpr file)            OCaml daemon gets the file
                      |
                      `--> once the file is received, it can be sent
                           to a command of your choice (currently
			   gsprint but is can be anything)

Did I make myself more clear?

> > To be really useful, I think the deamon should be turned into a
> > library.  If enough people are interested, I can open a mailing list
> > for discussions.
> 
> Yes, i guess that would be interesting.

Go to http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ocaml-lpd-devel

Cheers,
ChriS

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

[Ingo Bormuth]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 346 bytes --]


> OpenGL provides no buttons and no menues... and similar stuff....
>
> ... so you had to reinvent the wheel with OpenGL.

http://libufo.sourceforge.net/

(no ocaml bindings ...)

-- 

Ingo Bormuth

ibormuth@efil.de

GnuPG key: http://ibormuth.efil.de/contact

fingerprint: 4DCD 234E 139F 8292 E618  A145 3735 AA74 8632 6EC9


[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: Cross-platform "Hello, World" graphical application in OCaml

[Vincenzo Ciancia]

Richard Jones wrote:

> 
> What I think would be useful is an OCaml wrapper around Gtk, Win32 and
> Aqua/COCOA.  The idea would be for the OCaml wrapper to abstract away
> the differences, allowing cross-platform programming with native
> widgets.  WxWidgets fits the bill here, but the actual API is clunky.
> I have a feeling that something could be done better with a functional
> programming approach.

This has been proposed, discussed and forgotten more than one time on the
haskell-gui mailing list (of course, s/ocaml/haskell/). The most promising
projects for haskell in this area are htoolkit and wxhaskell:

http://htoolkit.sourceforge.net/
http://wxhaskell.sourceforge.net/

I think that to do a serious effort in this direction involves both
designing the abstracted interface, which is nontrivial and perhaps can't
be done much better than wxwidgets, and implementing it - in a way, IMHO,
that can be used by more than one language. 

Wx fails in that direction, since it's written in C++ - there are wxcaml and
wxhaskell of course, but they seem to require lots of manual tuning to
complete the bindings (don't take this too seriously, I might be plain
wrong). Since XML user interfaces are in vogue these days, maybe the best
thing to do is to implement one of these, fulfilling the required
properties, and then binding for any language will be easy. Of course, it
won't be too efficient but when I see web pages that render faster and look
smarter than my "efficient" desktop I think that this is a non-issue.

Vincenzo

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