[Haskell-cafe] Do you recognize this type?

[Corentin Dupont]

Hi guys,
I am making a DSL for event composition (inspired from digestive-functor &
reactive-banana) and I find myself wanting a primitive like that:

-- given a list of events, evaluate the function on those that have already
fired.
-- returns an event yelding the result when ready.
ListEvent  :: [Event a] -> ([a] -> Maybe b) -> Event b

Does this type tell you something? Is there a better abstraction that can
encompass it?
My DSL is like that:

-- | Composable events
data Event a where
   SumEvent   :: Event a -> Event a -> Event a        -- The first event to
fire will be returned
   AppEvent   :: Event (a -> b) -> Event a -> Event b -- Both events should
fire, and then the result is returned
   PureEvent  :: a -> Event a                         -- Create a fake
event. The result is useable with no delay.
   EmptyEvent :: Event a                              -- An event that is
never fired.
   BaseEvent  :: (Typeable a) => Field a -> Event a   -- Embed a base event

It's easy to define instances for Applicative and Alternative.
But then I have a use case that I cannot solve:
In the case of votations (which use this DSL), sometime you can end
prematuraly the voting, even if not everybody voted yet: for example if the
majority is already reached.
In this case no need to wait for everybody, we can end the vote.

This does not seem to be possible with Applicative or Monad interfaces:
things have to be sequenced in a monad, they cannot be evaluated in
parralel.
For example:

do
   v1 <- getVote1
   v2 <- getVote2
   v3 <- getVote3
   evalMajority(v1, v2, v3)

In this example I have to wait for all 3 votes to be completed, but in fact
only two would suffice to achieve majority.
That's why I added "ListEvent" to the DSL above which allow to achieve that
but I'm wondering if there is a better/bigger abstraction to put it in.

Thanks!!
Corentin
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