PropLang

A design for a GUI library which is more like Haskell and less like C. To be written over Gtk2Hs.

Link: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/haskell/ports/

Thoughts by

Neil Mitchell

From some discussions with Duncan Coutts

For a darcs repo see: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/darcs/proplang/

In particular check out Sample.hs, I am particularly proud of the word count:

sb!text =< with1 (txt!text) (\x ->
    "Word count: " ++ show (length $ words x))

Overview

There are events, you can register to be notified when an event fires by doing

event += handler

There are variables, which have events which fire, and a value which you can set and get.

variable <- newVar "value"
variable += handler
variable -< "value"
x <- getVal variable

There are objects, objects have properties. A property is just a variable.

window!text += handler
window!text -< "Titlebar text"

There are bindings which relate variables.

-- the window text is the variable
window!text =<= variable
-- the window text is the variable, but upppercase
window!text =< with1 variable (map toUpper)
-- combine the two texts to create the window text
window!text =< with2 variable1 variable2 (++)

If any of the values on the RHS of a binding change, then the LHS is updated.