[Haskell-cafe] Summer of Code idea: Haskell Web Toolkit

[Alejandro Serrano Mena]

I agree with you that maybe this proposal is vague for a GSoC, but I don't
think that websockets is a good option either, because not all browsers
support them. Indeed, web development has gone a long way without contant
communication with the server and I think Haskell should support this way
of working too.

My idea would rather go on the direction of using stablished Haskell
concepts to web development. Some ideas are:
- use an applicative interface like the one of Yesod for forms validation
and sending
- see the DOM via a Zipper interface, so widgets will "anchor" themselves
in some point of the tree and change things around them
- use FRP for Canvas interaction
- ...

Actually, thinking which Haskell concepts could behave well with
client-side development is an interesting discussion by its own :)


2012/3/7 Greg Weber <greg at gregweber.info>

> This is obviously a great concept. However, it may not be appropriate
> for a GSoC. The design space is far too open, and it is not clear if
> anything in that space will end up beating plain old javascript.
>
> I think my proposal for an awesome websockets library [1] shows that
> this is putting the cart before the horse. For some of the potential
> javascript solutions, websockets is a dependency anyways. Without
> being able to hold open a connection to the server, required server
> interaction will be too slow.
> Yesod has been successful by explicitly avoiding any new radical
> paradigms, but by instead just trying to get the basics of web
> development established correctly. Without websockets, we don't have
> the basics down for fluid client-side interaction.
> The groundwork for this ticket has been laid: it should be easy to
> accomplish with time left over.
> So we are guaranteed a clear win for the community. With the time left
> over, a solution to the javascript problem can be attempted. But there
> is no burden for it to be solved within the summer. Next year the
> landscape will be more mature and we can try to come up with a solid
> proposal for the javscript problem if the community hasn't already
> created a solution.
>
> [1] http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/summer-of-code/ticket/1607
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/attachments/20120307/8983bad4/attachment.htm>