GSoC proposal: gtk+ bindings for prolog

[Ben Torfs <bentorfs gmail com>]

Hello, developers!

As a fan of both the prolog programming language and the GTK+ toolkit
(as a user), I was wondering why the GTK page makes no mention of any
prolog bindings. For those of you that are unfamiliar: prolog is a
declarative language (like haskell, but very different in the way it
works). Until now, it has mostly been used as a research tool in
artificial intelligence (theorem proving, knowledge representation,
etc.) However, I believe it has a lot of potential to be used for
desktop applications too. Haskell too, for example, has also proven to
be a success for end-user applications (gtk+ bindings exist). I think
prolog is just a breeze to program in, and I would love to push it
further! Specifically, by implementing GTK+ bindings for this language
myself, as a Google Summer of Code project. Implementing all functions
would probably be too much work for a 3-month project, but it could
certainly deliver a basic subset, as a basis for myself and other
developers to continue working on later.

About myself: I'm a computer science student at the catholic university
of leuven (Belgium). I should hopefully finish my studies in july 2009,
and I'd love to have some practical experience before then. My study
program heavily specialises in artificial intelligence techniques, so I
come into contact with the prolog language quite a lot. I have loved the
language since I learned it, but I think it's a real shame that it never
got the attention on the desktop that for example haskell has gotten.
Hence my proposal! I chose GTK+ for this project because that's the
toolkit I use on my computer every day, and I won't have it any other
way. Despite this, I'm unfamiliar with the internals of GTK+. This is of
course a problem that can be easily overcome.

I would love to send in this idea as a GSoC project, but not before
contacting this mailing-list. Do any other people think this would be a
good idea, and is anyone maybe willing to mentor this?

Thanks for reading everyone,

Ben Torfs