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POVery simple, terse and easy GUI programming “frameworks”
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  1. POVery simple, terse and easy GUI programming “frameworks”
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    copied!<p>Please list GUI programming libraries, toolkits, frameworks which allow to write GUI apps <em>quickly</em>. I mean in such a way, that</p> <ul> <li>GUI is described entirely in a human-readable (and human-writable) plain text file (code)</li> <li>code is terse (1 or 2 lines of code per widget/event pair), suitable for scripting</li> <li>structure and operation of the GUI is evident from the code (nesting of widgets and flow of events)</li> <li>details about <em>how</em> to build the GUI are hidden (things like mainloop, attaching event listeners, etc.)</li> <li>auto-layouts are supported (vboxes, hboxes, etc.)</li> </ul> <p>As answers suggest, this may be defined as <em>declarative</em> GUI programming, but it is not necessarily such. Any approach is OK if it works, is easy to use and terse.</p> <p>There are some GUI libraries/toolkits like this. They are listed below. Please extend the list if you see a qualifying toolkit missing. Indicate if the project is crossplatform, mature, active, and give an example if possible.</p> <p>Please use this wiki to discuss <em>only Open Source</em> projects. </p> <p>This is the list so far (in alphabetical order):</p> <h3>Fudgets</h3> <p><a href="http://www.md.chalmers.se/Cs/Research/Functional/Fudgets/Intro/ex2.html" rel="noreferrer">Fudgets</a> is a Haskell library. Platform: Unix. Status: Experimental, but still maintained. An example:</p> <pre><code> import Fudgets main = fudlogue (shellF "Hello" (labelF "Hello, world!" &gt;+&lt; quitButtonF)) </code></pre> <p><a href="http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/02/40/1883597_93x80.gif" rel="noreferrer">Fudgets example screenshot http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/02/40/1883597_93x80.gif</a></p> <h3>GNUstep Renaissance</h3> <p><a href="http://www.gnustep.it/Renaissance/Screenshots.html" rel="noreferrer">Renaissance</a> allows to describe GUI in simple XML. Platforms: OSX/GNUstep. Status: part of GNUstep. An example below:</p> <pre><code>&lt;window title="Example"&gt; &lt;vbox&gt; &lt;label font="big"&gt; Click the button below to quit the application &lt;/label&gt; &lt;button title="Quit" action="terminate:"/&gt; &lt;/vbox&gt; &lt;/window&gt; </code></pre> <p><a href="http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/03/19/1884098_289x80.png" rel="noreferrer">Renaissance example screenshot http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/03/19/1884098_289x80.png</a></p> <h3>HTML</h3> <p>HTML-based GUI (HTML + JS). Crossplatform, mature. Can be used entirely on the client side.</p> <p>Looking for a nice “helloworld” example.</p> <p><a href="http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/02/44/1883635_264x60.png" rel="noreferrer">HTML GUI example http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/02/44/1883635_264x60.png</a></p> <h3>JavaFX</h3> <p><a href="http://hackety.org/2007/05/09/soGooeyCanYouSeeTheButton.html" rel="noreferrer">JavaFX</a> is usable for standalone (desktop) apps as well as for web applications. Not completely crossplatform, not yet completely open source. Status: 1.0 release. An example:</p> <pre><code> Frame { content: Button { text: "Press Me" action: operation() { System.out.println("You pressed me"); } } visible: true } </code></pre> <p><em>Screenshot is needed.</em></p> <h3>Phooey</h3> <p><a href="http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Phooey#One_example.2C_two_interfaces" rel="noreferrer">Phooey</a> is another Haskell library. Crossplatform (wxWidgets), HTML+JS backend planned. Mature and active. An example (a little more than a helloworld):</p> <pre><code> ui1 :: UI () ui1 = title "Shopping List" $ do a &lt;- title "apples" $ islider (0,10) 3 b &lt;- title "bananas" $ islider (0,10) 7 title "total" $ showDisplay (liftA2 (+) a b) </code></pre> <p><a href="http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/02/33/1883543_236x187.png" rel="noreferrer">Phooey example screenshot http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/02/33/1883543_236x187.png</a></p> <h3>PythonCard</h3> <p><a href="http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/index.html" rel="noreferrer">PythonCard</a> describes GUI in a Python dictionary. Crossplatform (wxWidgets). Some apps use it, but the project seems stalled. There is an active fork.</p> <p><em>I skip <a href="http://www.halfcooked.com/presentations/osdc/pythoncard.html" rel="noreferrer">PythonCard example</a> because it is too verbose for the contest.</em></p> <p><a href="http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/02/46/1883646_199x99.gif" rel="noreferrer">PythonCard example screenshot http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/02/46/1883646_199x99.gif</a></p> <h3>Shoes</h3> <p><a href="http://shoooes.net/tutorial/" rel="noreferrer">Shoes</a> for Ruby. Platforms: Win/OSX/GTK+. Status: Young but active. A minimal app looks like this:</p> <pre><code> Shoes.app { @push = button "Push me" @note = para "Nothing pushed so far" @push.click { @note.replace "Aha! Click!" } } </code></pre> <p><a href="http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/03/14/1884011_227x71.png" rel="noreferrer">Shoes example screenshot http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/03/14/1884011_227x71.png</a></p> <h3>Tcl/Tk</h3> <p><a href="http://wiki.tcl.tk/488" rel="noreferrer">Tcl/Tk</a>. Crossplatform (its own widget set). Mature (probably even dated) and active. An example:</p> <pre><code> #!/usr/bin/env wish button .hello -text "Hello, World!" -command { exit } pack .hello tkwait window . </code></pre> <p><a href="http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/02/51/1883672_111x58.png" rel="noreferrer">Tcl/Tk example screenshot http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/02/51/1883672_111x58.png</a></p> <h3>tekUI</h3> <p><a href="http://tekui.neoscientists.org/" rel="noreferrer">tekUI</a> for Lua (and C). Platforms: X11, DirectFB. Status: Alpha (usable, but API still evolves). An example:</p> <pre><code> #/usr/bin/env lua ui = require "tek.ui" ui.Application:new { Children = { ui.Window:new { Title = "Hello", Children = { ui.Text:new { Text = "_Hello, World!", Style = "button", Mode = "button", }, }, }, }, }:run() </code></pre> <p><a href="http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/03/01/1883821_290x55.png" rel="noreferrer">tekUI helloworld screenshot http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/03/01/1883821_290x55.png</a></p> <h3>Treethon</h3> <p><a href="http://code.google.com/p/treethon/" rel="noreferrer">Treethon</a> for Python. It describes GUI in a YAML file (<em>Python in a YAML tree</em>). Platform: GTK+. Status: work in proress. A simple app looks like this:</p> <pre><code> _import: gtk view: gtk.Window() add: - view: gtk.Button('Hello World') on clicked: print view.get_label() </code></pre> <p><a href="http://treethon.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/treethon_gtk_tutorial/base.png" rel="noreferrer">Treethon helloworld screenshot http://treethon.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/treethon_gtk_tutorial/base.png</a></p> <h3>Yet unnamed Python library by Richard Jones:</h3> <p>This one is not released yet. The idea is to use Python context managers (<code>with</code> keyword) to structure GUI code. See <a href="http://www.mechanicalcat.net/richard/log/Python/Something_I_m_working_on.3" rel="noreferrer">Richard Jones' blog</a> for details.</p> <pre><code>with gui.vertical: text = gui.label('hello!') items = gui.selection(['one', 'two', 'three']) with gui.button('click me!'): def on_click(): text.value = items.value text.foreground = red </code></pre> <h3>XUL</h3> <p><a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Getting_started_with_XULRunner" rel="noreferrer">XUL</a> + Javascript may be used to create stand-alone desktop apps with XULRunner as well as Mozilla extensions. Mature, open source, crossplatform.</p> <pre><code> &lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt; &lt;?xml-stylesheet href="chrome://global/skin/" type="text/css"?&gt; &lt;window id="main" title="My App" width="300" height="300" xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"&gt; &lt;caption label="Hello World"/&gt; &lt;/window&gt; </code></pre> <p><a href="http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/03/27/1884209_228x108.png" rel="noreferrer">XUL helloworld example http://www.picamatic.com/show/2009/01/28/03/27/1884209_228x108.png</a></p> <hr> <p>Thank your for contributions!</p>
 

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