Fruit is a new graphical user interface library for Haskell based on a formal model of user interfaces. The model identifies signals (continuous time-varying values) and signal transformers (pure functions mapping signals to signals) as core abstractions, and defines GUIs compositionally as signal transformers. In this paper, we describe why we think a formal denotational model of user interfaces is useful, present our model and prototype library implementation, and show some example programs that demonstrate novel features of our library.

The powerful abstraction mechanisms of functional programming languages provide the means to develop domain-specific programming languages within the language itself. Typically, this is realised by designing a set of combinators (higher-order reusable programs) for an application area, and by constructing individual applications by combining and coordinating individual combinators. This paper is concerned with a successful example of such an embedded programming language, namely Fudgets, a library of combinators for building graphical user interfaces in the lazy functional language Haskell. The Fudget library has been used to build a number of substantial applications, including a web browser and a proof editor interface to a proof checker for constructive type theory. This paper develops a semantic theory for the non-deterministic stream processors that are at the heart of the Fudget concept. The interaction of two features of stream processors makes the development of such a semantic theory problematic: (i) the sharing of computation provided by the lazy evaluation mechanism of the underlying host language, and (ii) the addition of non-deterministic choice needed to handle the natural concurrency that reactive applications entail We demonstrate that this combination of features in a higher-order functional language can be tamed to provide a tractable semantic theory and induction principles suitable for reasoning about contextual equivalence of Fudgets.

ABSTRACT: The paper addresses the formal specification, design and implementation of the behavioral component of graphical user interfaces. The complex sequences of visual events and actions that constitute dialogs are speci-fied by means of modular, communicating grammars called VEG (Visual Event Grammars), which extend traditional BNF grammars to make them more convenient to model dialogs. A VEG specification is independent of the actual layout of the GUI, but it can easily be integrated with various layout design toolkits. Moreover, a VEG specification may be verified with the model checker SPIN, in order to test consistency and correctness, to detect deadlocks and unreachable states, and also to generate test cases for validation purposes. Efficient code is automatically generated by the VEG toolkit, based on compiler technology. Realistic applica-tions have been specified, verified and implemented, like a Notepad-style editor, a graph construction library and a large real application to medical software. It is also argued that VEG can be used to specify and test voice interfaces and multi-modal dialogs. The major contribution of our work is blending together a set of features coming from GUI design, compilers, software engineering and formal verification. Even though we do not claim novelty in each of the techniques adopted for VEG, they have been united into a toolkit supporting all GUI design phases, i.e., specification, design, verification and validation, linking to applications and coding. 1

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We extend the proof assistant Agda/Alfa for dependent type theory with a modi ed version of Claessen and Hughes' tool QuickCheck for random testing of functional programs. In this way we combine testing and proving in one system. Testing is used for debugging programs and speci cations before a proof is attempted. Furthermore, we demonstrate by example how testing can be used repeatedly during proof for testing suitable subgoals. Our tool uses testdata generators which are de ned inside Agda/Alfa. We can therefore use the type system to prove properties about them, in particular surjectivity stating that all possible test cases can indeed be generated.

A limited form of dependent types, called Generalized Algebraic Data Types (GADTs), has recently been added to the list of Haskell extensions supported by the Glasgow Haskell Compiler. Despite not being full-fledged dependent types, GADTs still offer considerably enlarged scope for enforcing important code and data invariants statically. Moreover, GADTs offer the tantalizing possibility of writing more efficient programs since capturing invariants statically through the type system sometimes obviates entire layers of dynamic tests and associated data markup. This paper is a case study on the applications of GADTs in the context of Yampa, a domainspecific language for Functional Reactive Programming in the form of a self-optimizing, arrow-based Haskell combinator library. The paper has two aims. Firstly, to explore what kind of optimizations GADTs make possible in this context. Much of that should also be relevant for other domain-specific embedded language implementations, in particular arrow-based ones. Secondly, as the actual performance impact of the GADT-based optimizations is not obvious, to quantify this impact, both on tailored micro benchmarks, to establish the effectiveness of individual optimizations, and on two fairly large, realistic applications, to gauge the overall impact. The performance gains for the micro benchmarks are substantial. This implies that the Yampa API could be simplified as a number of “pre-composed ” primitives that were there mainly for performance reasons are no longer needed. As to the applications, a worthwhile performance gain was obtained in one case whereas the performance was more or less unchanged in the other.

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We derive a combinator library for non-deterministic parsers with a monadic interface. The choice operator is implemented as a breadth-first search rather than the more common depth-first search, and can be seen as a parallel composition between two parsing processes. The resulting library is simple and ecient for "almost deterministic" grammars, which are typical for programming languages and other computing science applications.

This paper presents Biglook, a widget library for an extended version of the Scheme programming language. It uses classes of a Clos-like object layer to represent widgets and Scheme closures to handle graphical events. Combining functional and object-oriented programming styles yields an original application programming interface that advocates a strict separation between the implementation of the graphical interfaces and the userassociated commands, enabling compact source code.

. The full details of a parallel computation can be very complex. To understand and improve performance one useful resource is a log-file recording all the computational events that change the number or status of parallel tasks. Raw log-files are not easy reading for the programmer, so profiling tools present only graphical summary charts. These charts sometimes show just what the programmer needs to know, but they often become too crowded, or fail to show enough, or both. Moreover, the charts are static so the programmer has little control over what is displayed. In this paper we discuss a tool that combines the advantages of graphical representation of computations with a query interface. The programmer interactively extracts specific information about the computation. Results of queries can be displayed in a graphical form; and parameters of subsequent queries can be specified by pointing within a past display. 1 Introduction It is often claimed that as functional languages are ref...