I was looking into Gloss examples for usage of Repa arrays. For example the Snow example (http://code.ouroborus.net/gloss/gloss-stable/gloss-examples/raster/Snow/Main.hs). What I do not get is that there is qualified import of the Repa package, but the "Z" and ":." are used without the prefix. When I some times accidentally omit the prefix the ghc always yell at me. What em I missing?
It's not a fully qualified import (no "qualified" keyword), so names are available both with and without the prefix. This means that you can use names that don't collide with other local or imported bindings without the prefix, but you need to use the prefix if you do need to disambiguate names that colide.
For one example, Data.Array.Repa exports a binding "zipWith" --- but so does the Prelude, so you can't use that name unqualified because the compiler doesn't know which one you mean. (:.), on the other hand, is specific to Repa (at least with the imports in your example) so does not need qualification. (You could also get around this by explicitly importing the Prelude with a "hiding (zipWith)" clause.)