[Lvlug] gtk-server

[Hanuman]

http://www.gtk-server.org

This is probably one of the best things that ever happened to scripted
GUI programming ever. I'm not sh-tting you, and this isn't more of my
hyperbole.

The premise is, instead of writing a binary binding for every damn thing
out there (pygtk2, cl-gtk, guile-gnome, ad nauseum), here's this program
that does everything GTK related by proxy, through your choice of
standard input, TCP, UDP, and FIFO connections.  The interfaces are very
simple, and consequently gtk-server has exposed the full GTK API,
versions 1 and 2 to over two dozen programming languages. Theoretically
(and probably in practice), anything Turing complete can use gtk-server.
If it runs with crappy PHP and AWK, it might as well be ported to
PostScript and Brainfuck. Yes! Those fabled PostScript bindings for GTK!

I came across this because I've been trying to find a good starting
point for a doctor at my mom's work to learn programming, because he
expressed interest. I've been teaching this kid from school Lua, but he
wants to be an engineer and the minimalism works fine for him; he is
interested in theory. Now my doctor friend wants something he can relate
to, wants to be able to DO stuff. I wanted to get him started with
Scheme using a decent graphical interface. Mz wouldn't compile properly,
STk and guile are too old (STk is /still/ R4RS), and STklos is current,
but written for GNOME 1.4! What a crock. This is ideal though.  I can
use any damn implementation of scheme I want. So I figah I'll use MIT's
version, that's actively developed and has hella fine documentation.
scheme48 is also pretty nice.

Oh, yes, and lest I forget, it's also cross-platform. Runs on Linux and
Win32, unfortunately not in Ports yet, but hey, I'll give it a shot
anyway.

Whoever came up with dtksh (the inspiration) is a genius and deserves a
boatload of poontang.

- Hanu-mizzle