Re: [Bug-apl] ⎕GTK

[Peter Teeson]

Hi Jürgen:

Thanks for ⎕GTK.. Mind you I think it should be called ⎕GUI. That way it may evolve beyond libgtk.

It’s interesting for me because for years I’ve tried to find an elegant way to use the well developed 

Apple Cocoa Document template app to provide a GUI for GNUAPL.. Now that we have libapl working I’m at it again. 

Of course I look at doing this with the Cocoa app being the main app and libapl as the server.

Whereas I think you view GNUAPL as the main app and the GUI as the server.

From my POV Cocoa provides all the mechanism… file handles, pipes, even sockets if need be (Obj-C is still C).

Especially Notifications for asynchronous communication ( to read file buffers etc.)

Just my 02¢…

respect….

On Aug 10, 2018, at 2:46 PM, Blake McBride <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi, and thanks for a great new feature!!

As you know there has been an evolution in GUI interfaces over the years as follows:

1.  Line-by-line  (APL Quad, Quad-quote)

2.  Desktop GUI applications (Win32, GTK, etc.)

3.  Web apps (HTML, _javascript_, REST)

What you have added to GNU APL elevates the possibilities with GNU APL to the second level.

However, even within level 2, there are (sub-)evolutions.  The original Win32 GUI stuff depended on a central event loop.  But I think there is a better approach that can be adapted to GNU APL.  This is something I've done in a GUI library that is part of a development system I wrote that is being used commercially (https://github.com/blakemcbride/Dynace).  What I propose is as follows:

1. eliminate the APL-side event loop entirely

2. create the ability to associate APL functions to events on the GTK side (callbacks).  These APL functions would have a standard set of arguments and return but would do the application work.

I know it can be done because I did it and it is being used by many developers every day for very real applications.  I also think this is a far simpler and manageable way of doing it.

Just by 2-cents.

Thanks.

Blake McBride

On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 12:32 PM Juergen Sauermann <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi,

I have added a new system function ⎕GTK to GNU APL.

⎕GTK is based on libgtk+ version 3 and provides a simple (and
therefore somewhat restricted) way of creating and  managing GUIs
from an APL program.

Think of it as a replacement for ⎕ and ⍞ as to create more intuitive
user interfaces to APL programs.

⎕GTK is described in HOWTOs/Quad-GTK.html.

Enjoy,
/// Jürgen