[mercury-users] Does Mercury work with mono?

[Maurizio Colucci]

On Tuesday 13 July 2004 19:29, Ralph Becket wrote:
> > I am trying to see if it's possible to rewrite my app
> > (http://logicaldesktop.sf.net) in mercury.
>
> I suspect the application logic could be written trivially in Mercury.

I know. The original app was in prolog, then I had to switch to python because 
binding the Qt and KDE libraries by hand was too onerous.

Then I thought that maybe Mercury worked with mono... 

> > If I had access to mono's class libraries from mercury (GTKsharp,
> > gtkhtml, gnomesharp) I would be able to do it.
>
> Unfortunately the only GUI binding we have at present is for Tk.  

IMHO opinion you need at least qt and gtk to get mindshare. 
Look at the success of python: 90% derives from the class libraries.

> On the 
> other hand we do have a .NET backend for the compiler, but unfortunately
> it needs a little more work before it's ready for release and, at
> present, we have higher priorities.
>
> Julien, how hard would it be to knock up a GTK binding?

Very hard, I suspect. For GTK+Gnome, building a Mercury module for Swig could 
be considered. So the bindings could be generated automatically.

For Qt, I believe some automatic generator like SIP is needed:
   http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/sip/index.php
This is not trivial technology: qt is not pure C++.

But making Mercury use the mono library would be a bigger investment: you 
automatically gain access to gtk, gnome, gnome-panel, gecko, gtkhml, and all 
the huge .NET library, for "free". Nemerle is doing this (but unfortunately, 
the language is very poor).

Maurizio
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
mercury-users mailing list
post:  mercury-users at cs.mu.oz.au
administrative address: owner-mercury-users at cs.mu.oz.au
unsubscribe: Address: mercury-users-request at cs.mu.oz.au Message: unsubscribe
subscribe:   Address: mercury-users-request at cs.mu.oz.au Message: subscribe
--------------------------------------------------------------------------