Gtk2Hs is a GUI library for Haskell, based on GTK+, for creating graphical user interfaces. This page records some (trivial) notes about GUI programming in Haskell with the Gtk2Hs library.

Hello World with GTK

import Graphics.UI.Gtk

main :: IO ()
main = do
    initGUI
    window <- windowNew

    widgetShowAll window
    -- onDestroy window mainQuit
    onDelete window (const (mainQuit >> return True))
    mainGUI

The initGUI must be called once before any other Gtk2Hs functions. widgetsShowAll window completes the internal steps and allocations, and show window, as well as its children. mainGUI is the infinite event loop, and event loop will block until the window get destroyed since there’s a callback mainQuit for onDelete event of the window.

The Gtk main event loop can be put into another separate OS thread. In such scenarios, something like MVar may be involved to synchronize the Gtk thread and the main thread of the program.

Signal

In GTK+, events are called signals. The object, event and event handler can be connected with on:

on ::
  object
  -> Signal object callback -> callback -> IO (ConnectId object)
    -- Defined in ‘glib-0.13.6.0:System.Glib.Signals’

Unlike on, after has the same type signature and functionality with on, except that the callback is executed after Gtk’s default handler has run.

Packing Boxes

The horizontal box or vertical box can be created by hBoxNew or vBoxNew. A Bool parameter indicates whether gives all children equal space allotments. boxPackStart place objects into the container start from the top, or left, to the bottom, or right and boxPackEnd works along the reverse direction. A parameter with type Packing is required to determine how the child scales.

  • PackNatural means the child is as big as it requests.
  • PackRepel will be padded on both sides with additional space.
  • PackGrow increases the size of widgets so that it covers the available space.