ANNOUNCE: Release of Vital, an interactive visual programming environment for Haskell

[Graham Klyne]

This looks like much fun.  I took a quick look at the screenshots, but 
don't see any provision for graphical display of *programs* -- is there?

I've sometimes thought that a functional language would be the ideal 
platform to usher in a purely graphical style of programming;  there have 
been a few attempts over the years to do purely graphical programming, but 
they seem to founder somewhat on impedance mismatch between static visual 
presentation and dynamic behaviour of an imperative program, and I could 
see referential transparency eliminating some of these difficulties.  Also, 
one could very easily imagine a graphical representation of a "point free" 
style of programming, with its emphasis on combination of functions.  The 
Lego Mindstorms system is representative of the kind of environment where I 
think graphical and functional styles could merge very neatly.

#g
--

At 18:34 11/11/03 +0000, Keith Hanna wrote:
>Dear Haskellers,
>
>I am pleased to announce the release of Vital, an interactive visual
>programming environment based on Haskell.
>
>Vital provides the user with a workspace within which Haskell expressions
>and declarations can be located and their values displayed textually or
>graphically. The display is 'live' in the sense that the effects of
>graphical Copy and Paste operations carried out displayed values are
>automatically reflected in the Haskell source code.
>
>The long-term aim of the Vital project is to make Haskell available in a
>form that supports the open-ended, incremental style of program development
>that end users (engineers, scientists, analysts, etc.) often prefer. It may
>also be useful in teaching Haskell.
>
>This release of the Vital system is available from:
>     http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/vital/
>
>The site includes screenshots and a downloadable implementation with demo
>programs.
>
>If you happen to have Java installed on your machine, you can (in
>principle!) run the Vital interpreter and these demo programs simply by
>clicking on this link
>     http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/vital/download/start.jnlp
>
>Enjoy!
>
>Keith Hanna
>
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------------
Graham Klyne
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