GUI Framework Options

Discussion:

Zelphir Kaltstahl

2018-10-07 18:53:03 UTC

Hello Guile Users,

Is there somewhere a list of all GUI frameworks one can use with Guile
2.2.3 or 2.2.4 (I think 2.2.4 is latest stable)?

I tried getting Guile Gnome (https://www.gnu.org/software/guile-gnome/)
to work, but failed multiple times. I liked GTK in Python 3, that's why
I looked for GTK bindings for Guile. If necessary I could try getting it
working again and then post any errors or problems I run into to the
mailing list and maybe someone will know how to get it working.

Which good alternatives (stable?) exist in the Guile ecosystem?

I know I could write a web app instead, but the web server, while being
nice and minimalistic, is also still a bit in the beginning and leaves
things to be desired. Some people think GUI is not needed any longer,
but I feel sometimes I want to write a program with desktop GUI and not
running in the browser.

Regards,
Zelphir

Mike Gran

2018-10-08 16:20:32 UTC

Permalink

Post by Zelphir Kaltstahl
Hello Guile Users,
Is there somewhere a list of all GUI frameworks one can use with Guile
2.2.3 or 2.2.4 (I think 2.2.4 is latest stable)?
I tried getting Guile Gnome (https://www.gnu.org/software/guile-gnome/)
to work, but failed multiple times. I liked GTK in Python 3, that's why
I looked for GTK bindings for Guile. If necessary I could try getting it
working again and then post any errors or problems I run into to the
mailing list and maybe someone will know how to get it working.
Which good alternatives (stable?) exist in the Guile ecosystem?

The short answer is that there is nothing of production quality at the
moment, if the GTK2 bindings are insufficient. The GTK2 bindings are
reportedly pretty good, but, I haven't tried them.

There has been some work on reviving the GTK3 or GObject bindings, and
there are many pieces that are complete; but, there is no complete,
documented, and tested library that you can import today.

Regards,

Mike Gran

David Pirotte

2018-10-08 19:12:53 UTC

Permalink

Hello,

Post by Zelphir Kaltstahl
Is there somewhere a list of all GUI frameworks one can use with Guile
2.2.3 or 2.2.4 (I think 2.2.4 is latest stable)?

As Mike said, nothing usable at the moment if you 'are looking for and 'absolutely
need' GTK3 bindings, but if GTK2 is ok for you, then you may indeed use Guile-Gnome:
though it binds (very) old version of GTK2 and some other gnome libs, it is 'rock
solid'.

Post by Zelphir Kaltstahl
I tried getting Guile Gnome (https://www.gnu.org/software/guile-gnome/)
to work, but failed multiple times.

Sorry to hear that, but I'd be very pleased to help you [1]:

what failed 'several times' ?

did you carefully read and implement the steps described in INSTALL, or on
the download page ?

Cheers,
David

[1] it would be easier, if you can, to solve this while chating on #guile on
freenode, where I hang most of the time, my alias is 'daviid'

Zelphir Kaltstahl

2018-10-08 21:06:02 UTC

Permalink

Post by David Pirotte
Hello,

Post by Zelphir Kaltstahl
Is there somewhere a list of all GUI frameworks one can use with Guile
2.2.3 or 2.2.4 (I think 2.2.4 is latest stable)?

As Mike said, nothing usable at the moment if you 'are looking for and 'absolutely
though it binds (very) old version of GTK2 and some other gnome libs, it is 'rock
solid'.

Post by Zelphir Kaltstahl
I tried getting Guile Gnome (https://www.gnu.org/software/guile-gnome/)
to work, but failed multiple times.

what failed 'several times' ?
did you carefully read and implement the steps described in INSTALL, or on
the download page ?
Cheers,
David
[1] it would be easier, if you can, to solve this while chating on #guile on
freenode, where I hang most of the time, my alias is 'daviid'

When I try to build the bindings again, I will go on IRC : )

Chris Vine

2018-10-08 22:55:48 UTC

Permalink

On Mon, 8 Oct 2018 16:12:53 -0300

Post by David Pirotte
Hello,

Post by Zelphir Kaltstahl
Is there somewhere a list of all GUI frameworks one can use with Guile
2.2.3 or 2.2.4 (I think 2.2.4 is latest stable)?

As Mike said, nothing usable at the moment if you 'are looking for and 'absolutely
though it binds (very) old version of GTK2 and some other gnome libs, it is 'rock
solid'.

Not that rock solid. When I last tested it, you still get segfaults
with repeated insertion and removal of idle timeouts. Did you ever fix
that?

David Pirotte

2018-10-12 17:56:35 UTC

Permalink

Hi Chris,

Post by David Pirotte

Post by Zelphir Kaltstahl
Is there somewhere a list of all GUI frameworks one can use with Guile
2.2.3 or 2.2.4 (I think 2.2.4 is latest stable)?

As Mike said, nothing usable at the moment if you 'are looking for and
'absolutely need' GTK3 bindings, but if GTK2 is ok for you, then you may indeed
use Guile-Gnome: though it binds (very) old version of GTK2 and some other gnome
libs, it is 'rock solid'.

Not that rock solid. When I last tested it, you still get segfaults with repeated
insertion and removal of idle timeouts. Did you ever fix that?

No I didn't. I do remember we talked about this, but I can't find the emails we've
exchanged about this, nor could I find a snipset to reproduce it (I must have lost
these emails): with absolutely no promise what so ever, please re-post the short
example you made at the time so we can reproduce it.

Also, patches welcome, I believe you are more competent then myself to track and
solve this one 'nasty' bug - I actually thought you solved this, one way or another
while working on guile-async and guile-async2.

Cheers,
David

David Pirotte

2018-10-12 22:38:35 UTC

Permalink

Hi again,

Post by David Pirotte
...
No I didn't. I do remember we talked about this, but I can't find the emails we've
exchanged about this, nor could I find a snipset to reproduce it (I must have lost
these emails): with absolutely no promise what so ever, please re-post the short
example you made at the time so we can reproduce it.
...

I found the thread that leaded to our conversation, and within it, here is the email
containing yor example ...:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2016-02/msg00104.html

I do not plan to work on this, but if anyone wants to fix it, well please do and let
us know ...

Cheers,
David

Chris Vine

2018-10-14 11:54:41 UTC

Permalink

On Fri, 12 Oct 2018 19:38:35 -0300

Post by David Pirotte
Hi again,

I found the thread that leaded to our conversation, and within it, here is the email
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2016-02/msg00104.html
I do not plan to work on this, but if anyone wants to fix it, well please do and let
us know ...

I have looked at it a couple of times and given up. I have found the
guile-gnome wrapper impenetrable.

There are other things wrong with guile-gnome which makes it (in my
view) not especially usable. One which comes to mind is that
g-io-add-watch won't compile in user code, nor will much else of the
GIOChannel stuff, which is quite a fail if you want to write callbacks
for asynchronous i/o events using the glib main loop. There is a work-
around for the first of those (g-io-add-watch) but not (as far as I can
tell) for the other related issues (you cannot for example get a
GIOCondition status). This is a wrapper problem, possibly caused by the
introduction of the gio namespace in glib some years ago (which has
nothing to do with GIOChannel).

Chris

Zelphir Kaltstahl

2018-10-08 21:05:00 UTC

Permalink

Post by Mike Gran

The short answer is that there is nothing of production quality at the
moment, if the GTK2 bindings are insufficient. The GTK2 bindings are
reportedly pretty good, but, I haven't tried them.
There has been some work on reviving the GTK3 or GObject bindings, and
there are many pieces that are complete; but, there is no complete,
documented, and tested library that you can import today.
Regards,
Mike Gran

Hey,

I've used GTK3 only before, but perhaps I've used little of the newer
features compared to GTK2. I will have to look up examples. I remember
the GTK3 demo application to be quite impressive though.

Thanks for your reply!

Regards,
Zelphir