[Haskell-beginners] FRP

[Heinrich Apfelmus]

Ertugrul Söylemez wrote:
> Wire is also an Alternative, which
> allows concise and efficient switching with very little cruft.  The
> following wire renders "yes" when the "keyDown Space" event happens and
> "no" otherwise:
> 
>     pure "yes" . keyDown Space <|> pure "no"
> 
> Or with the OverloadedStrings extension:
> 
>     "yes" . keyDown Space <|> "no"
> 
> All classic (non-wire) FRP implementations need switching or another
> ad-hoc combinator for this.  If you happen to need switching it's also a
> lot simpler using wires:
> 
>     "please press space" . notE (keyDown Space) --> "thanks"
> 
> This one waits for the Space key and then outputs "thanks" forever.  So
> far Netwire has the fastest and most elegant way of dealing with events
> compared to all other libraries I have tried.

These examples look neat!

I'm a bit confused about the model you are using, though. If I 
understand that correctly, you don't distinguish between events and 
behaviors; rather, you are working with data streams in discrete time 
steps. Still, I don't quite understand. What is

     pure "yes" . keyDown Space <|> pure "no"

supposed to mean? If it's a function  Time -> String , how long does it 
have the  "yes"  value? 439.7 milliseconds? If it's an event, how often 
does the "no" event fire?

Concerning the other example, I don't understand what the expression

    "please press space" . notE (keyDown Space)

means. If it's a function, what value does it have when the key was 
pressed? If it's an event, how often does it "fire" the string value?


Best regards,
Heinrich Apfelmus

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http://apfelmus.nfshost.com