Python not a Very High-Level Language?

[Denys Duchier]

I apologize for the delay in responding to your question, but our
newsfeed was out to lunch for about a week.

Frank Sergeant <frank.sergeant at redneck.net> writes:

> I think I saw that you have an interface to Tk.  Could you discuss
> GUI building in Mozart a little?

Drat!  Just the thing I know least about; how did you guess?  I am
forwarding this message to Christian Schulte who was responsible for
the development of our Tk interface and who is and has been
supervising a number of students in the general area of GUI
programming in Oz.  According to my agenda, we have a meeting
scheduled tomorrow where the current state of the GTK interface will
be presented.  I am eager to learn about that :-)

The Tk interface follows a fairly simple design: the Oz process starts
a Tk subprocess and communicates with it via a socket.  On the Oz
side, Tk widgets are represented by Oz objects.  The Oz/Tk interface
is actually a very thin OO flavored layer.

To be concrete, here is the functor (a bit like a Python module) for
an application that takes a message argument (using a --msg option)
and displays it in a label together with a quit button:

functor
import Tk Application
define
   Args = {Application.getArgs
           record(msg(single type:string optional:false))}
   proc {Exit} {Application.exit 0} end
   Top = {New Tk.toplevel tkInit}
   Msg = {New Tk.label    tkInit(parent:Top text:Args.msg)}
   But = {New Tk.button   tkInit(parent:Top text:'Quit' action:Exit)}
   {Tk.send pack(Msg But)}
end

Here Top, Msg and But are Oz objects that correspond to the obvious Tk
widgets.

A tutorial for Tk/GUI programming in Oz is available at:

         http://www.mozart-oz.org/documentation/wp/index.html

If you have a question about some more specific aspect of GUI
programming (or anything else for that matter) in Oz, Christian and I
would be delighted to elaborate.

Cheers,

-- 
Dr. Denys Duchier			Denys.Duchier at ps.uni-sb.de
Forschungsbereich Programmiersysteme	(Programming Systems Lab)
Universitaet des Saarlandes, Geb. 45	http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~duchier
Postfach 15 11 50			Phone: +49 681 302 5618
66041 Saarbruecken, Germany		Fax:   +49 681 302 5615