Dear haskell-cafe patrons, I've been working through an exercise in Hudak's _The Haskell School of Expression_ (ex. 3.2, creating a snowflake fractal image), and am seeing some strange drawing behavior that I'm hoping somebody can shed some light on. My initial solution is below (it requires HGL for Graphics.SOE): module Main where import Graphics.SOE main = runGraphics ( do w <- openWindow "Snowflake Fractal" (600, 600) fillStar w 300 125 256 (cycle $ enumFrom Blue) spaceClose w ) spaceClose w = do k <- getKey w if k == ' ' then closeWindow w else spaceClose w minSize = 2 :: Int fillStar :: Window -> Int -> Int -> Int -> [Color] -> IO () fillStar w x y h clrs | h <= minSize = return () fillStar w x y h clrs = do drawInWindow w (withColor (head clrs) (polygon [t1p1,t1p2,t1p3,t1p1])) drawInWindow w (withColor (head clrs) (polygon [t2p1,t2p2,t2p3,t2p1])) sequence_ $ map recur [t1p1,t1p2,t1p3,t2p1,t2p2,t2p3] where tanPiOverSix = tan(pi/6) :: Float halfSide = truncate $ tanPiOverSix * fromIntegral h hFrag = truncate $ tanPiOverSix * tanPiOverSix * fromIntegral h (t1p1,t1p2,t1p3) = ((x, y), (x-halfSide, y+h),(x+halfSide, y+h)) (t2p1,t2p2,t2p3) = ((x-halfSide, y+hFrag),(x, y+h+hFrag),(x+halfSide, y+hFrag)) reVert y = y - ((h - hFrag) `div` 3) recur pnt = fillStar w (fst pnt) (reVert (snd pnt)) (h`div`3) (tail clrs) This basically works, in that it does exactly what I want in Hugs, but GHC sometimes pauses partway through rendering, and does not continue rendering until I type any key (except space, which exits) or unfocus/refocus the window, or move the mouse pointer across the window. Sometimes, more often the first time in a GHCI session, it renders completely with no pauses, and it seems to pause more and more if I evaluate main, then close the window, evaluate again in the same GHCI session, repeatedly. The same pausing behavior is observed in a GHC-compiled executable. When the problem occurs, there is a message to the console that says: "thread blocked indefinitely". Versioning info: CPU: Pentium M OS: Gentoo GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.18 GCC: 4.1.1 GHC: 6.6 HGL: 3.1 HUGS: March 2005 [all software compiled from source using gentoo ebuilds] Is anybody else familiar with this behavior? If not, any suggestions as to where I should file this as a potential bug? GHC? HGL? Both? Elsewhere? Thanks in advance for any information. Calvin p.s. Any stylistic or other comments about the code welcome too.