[Haskell-cafe] The Good, the Bad and the GUI

[Heinrich Apfelmus]

Wojtek Narczyński wrote:
> Heinrich Apfelmus wrote:
>> Wojtek Narczyński wrote:
>>>
>>> I would really like to see a complex web form (think Facebook, VAT 
>>> Invoice, Tax forms) done in FRP. The harsh reality is that FRP for 
>>> GUIs still has to prove that its utility reaches beyond the game of 
>>> Pong.
>>
>> Like this?
>>
>>   http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Reactive-banana/Examples#crud
>>
>> It's still a toy model, but I think it captures the essential 
>> difficulties. A full blown tax form would just be more of the same.
>>
>>
> Is it live anywhere? I'd like to test it for HTML injection.

It's actually a wxHaskell applications, the screenshot is from a
temporary but now deprecated adaption to Threepenny-gui. So, the issue
of HTML injection does not arise. (It would not arise in a HTML context
either, because of strong typing.)

The key point about this CRUD example, which is not shown in the
screenshot, is that it has immediate feedback: values in the list box
change as you type. Editing the name on the right-hand side will change
the name in the list box, and changing the filter will immediately
update the available names in the list box.

> The #1 
> difficulty is validation. Is there any in this example? I can't see any. 
> This really does not qualify as a complex web form.
>
> You'll get _exponentially_ more of the same. See paper "Plato: A 
> Compiler for Interactive Web Forms", 
> http://www.cs.uic.edu/~hinrichs/papers/hinrichs2011plato.pdf

Validation is mainly a question of *how* to present feedback about
invalid data to the user -- for instance by making invalid data
impossible to enter, or by showing errors in red and retaining the last 
correct value, etc.

I would consider this as a narrow part of GUI programming. For me, GUI 
programming is about user interfaces and interaction design in general, 
including zoom, animation, games, and so on. FRP is a better tool at 
this than the traditional event-based style.

Of course, in the context of form validation, FRP would be a building 
block: It does not give any advice on which feedback to present to the 
user, but it does allow you to quickly implement whatever feedback you 
have chosen to present.


Still, even for the more narrow problem of forms and input validation, I 
don't see how you arrive at your claim that "Haskell is however not 
great for GUIs". This seems like a problem that can be solved with a 
traditional DSL approach, and I would be surprised if Haskell were 
unsuitable as a host language, contrary to what your claim seems to 
imply. Whether DSLs along these lines are already available is another 
question. Alberto mentioned one, another one would be [1].

  [1]: http://www.sandr.dds.nl/publications/FForms.pdf


Best regards,
Heinrich Apfelmus

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