In the book "Haskell School of Expression", streams are nicely explained using a graphical flow graph. This is also done more or less in http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/marktoberdorf/Marktoberdorf.pp t to explain monads and other concepts. I would like to create a program that allows you to create such flow graphs, and then let GHC generate the code and do type inference. I found a paper where Haskell is used to create a GUI application with undo/redo etc for creating graphical Basian networks (http://www.cs.uu.nl/dazzle/f08-schrage.pdf), so this gave me confidence that I could it do all in Haskell. Now, instead of generating Haskell code (which I could do first, would be easier to debug), I would like to directly create an AST, and use an Haskell API to communicate with GHC. I already found out that GHC indeed has such an API, but how possible is this idea? Has this been done before? I only found a very old attempt at this, confusingly also called "Visual Haskell", see http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/%7Ejohnr/papers/visual.html, but I can't find any source code for that project. I did a similar project in C# that generated C++ code, so I've done it before, just not in Haskell. Thanks a lot, Peter
Hi, Since nobody gave an answer on this topic, I guess it is insane to do it in Haskell (at least for a newbie)? :) Thanks for any info, Peter -----Original Message----- From: haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org [mailto:haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of peterv Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 21:48 To: haskell-cafe@haskell.org Subject: [Haskell-cafe] "Graphical Haskell" In the book "Haskell School of Expression", streams are nicely explained using a graphical flow graph. This is also done more or less in http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/marktoberdorf/Marktoberdorf.pp t to explain monads and other concepts. I would like to create a program that allows you to create such flow graphs, and then let GHC generate the code and do type inference. I found a paper where Haskell is used to create a GUI application with undo/redo etc for creating graphical Basian networks (http://www.cs.uu.nl/dazzle/f08-schrage.pdf), so this gave me confidence that I could it do all in Haskell. Now, instead of generating Haskell code (which I could do first, would be easier to debug), I would like to directly create an AST, and use an Haskell API to communicate with GHC. I already found out that GHC indeed has such an API, but how possible is this idea? Has this been done before? I only found a very old attempt at this, confusingly also called "Visual Haskell", see http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/%7Ejohnr/papers/visual.html, but I can't find any source code for that project. I did a similar project in C# that generated C++ code, so I've done it before, just not in Haskell. Thanks a lot, Peter _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.9.1/857 - Release Date: 20/06/2007 14:18 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.9.1/857 - Release Date: 20/06/2007 14:18
This might be of interest: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ Best, titto On Friday 22 June 2007 11:15:49 peterv wrote:
Hi,
Since nobody gave an answer on this topic, I guess it is insane to do it in Haskell (at least for a newbie)? :)
Thanks for any info, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org [mailto:haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of peterv Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 21:48 To: haskell-cafe@haskell.org Subject: [Haskell-cafe] "Graphical Haskell"
In the book "Haskell School of Expression", streams are nicely explained using a graphical flow graph.
This is also done more or less in http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/marktoberdorf/Marktoberdorf.p p t to explain monads and other concepts.
I would like to create a program that allows you to create such flow graphs, and then let GHC generate the code and do type inference.
I found a paper where Haskell is used to create a GUI application with undo/redo etc for creating graphical Basian networks (http://www.cs.uu.nl/dazzle/f08-schrage.pdf), so this gave me confidence that I could it do all in Haskell.
Now, instead of generating Haskell code (which I could do first, would be easier to debug), I would like to directly create an AST, and use an Haskell API to communicate with GHC.
I already found out that GHC indeed has such an API, but how possible is this idea? Has this been done before? I only found a very old attempt at this, confusingly also called "Visual Haskell", see http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/%7Ejohnr/papers/visual.html, but I can't find any source code for that project.
I did a similar project in C# that generated C++ code, so I've done it before, just not in Haskell.
Thanks a lot, Peter
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On Fri, 22 Jun 2007, peterv wrote:
Since nobody gave an answer on this topic, I guess it is insane to do it in Haskell (at least for a newbie)? :)
It's certainly an interesting project. Since signal processing is much like functional programming, a graphical Haskell editor could also serve as a nice signal processing graph editor.
On Friday 22 June 2007 11:21:31 Henning Thielemann wrote:
On Fri, 22 Jun 2007, peterv wrote:
Since nobody gave an answer on this topic, I guess it is insane to do it in Haskell (at least for a newbie)? :)
It's certainly an interesting project. Since signal processing is much like functional programming, a graphical Haskell editor could also serve as a nice signal processing graph editor.
An existing example of which is CAL's Gem Cutter: http://resources.businessobjects.com/labs/cal/gemcutter-techpaper.pdf titto
Since nobody gave an answer on this topic, I guess it is insane to do it in Haskell (at least for a newbie)? :)
not necessarily; we're all waiting for your first release?-)
I would like to create a program that allows you to create such flow graphs, and then let GHC generate the code and do type inference.
spun off from dazzle, which you've found, there's also blobs: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/darcs/Blobs/
Now, instead of generating Haskell code (which I could do first, would be easier to debug), I would like to directly create an AST, and use an Haskell API to communicate with GHC.
one thing to consider: things get a little more tricky when the generated haskell and dynamically loaded code is meant to do graphics (such as updating the original diagram with the state of the simulation). in particular, check that the gui framework actually works via that more circuituous route (similar problems to running in ghci instead of ghc).
I already found out that GHC indeed has such an API, but how possible is this idea? Has this been done before?
the ghc api is meant to support this kind of endeavours, and it isn't frozen yet, either: the ghc team is happy to receive feedback about things that work or things that could work better. before the ghc api, before blobs (after dazzle, though;), i did an embedding of haskell-coloured petri nets in haskell, with a very simplistic graphical net editor on top of wxhaskell, which generated haskell code for the net, then called ghci to type-check and run the resulting code with a copy of the original net graphics to update during simulation (poor man's reflection:): http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/cr3/HCPN/ it worked, but some things were annoying: - no high-level support for writing graph editors in wxhaskell; blobs aims to fix that - awkward meta-programming and runtime reflection; ghc api should help a lot (but i can't see anything wrong with letting it work on generated source code first; optimization can come latter) - wxhaskell encourages low-level dependencies, at least when you're writing your first wxhaskell programs, because it can be rather difficult just to find the function you need, you're tempted to use it right there, just to see if it works, and leave cleaning up for later, which never comes; gui frameworks are worse than the io monad; try to abstract and limit your uses of gui lib features to as few modules as possible; nicer code, easier to switch to different framework - abi incompatibility!!^*L"$W&%*^"%*! sorry,-) but that has become the deal breaker for me; it is bad enough that there are two major haskell gui libs out there, as it means that your clients may have the wrong one or none at all, and need to install the one you need; but, worse than that, whenever there's a new ghc release, everybody needs to rebuild their gui libs, and if you have the latest ghc release and a recent ghc head installed, you even need separate copies of the gui lib, etc, etc. so you use a nice high-level language to get a lot done in very little very portable code, but instead of distributing a few pages of haskell, with build as simple as ghc --make, you have to worry about rather huge gui lib installations, and you have to worry anew for each ghc release.. btw, i am thinking about reviving my hcpn project, to make use of the ghc api, but i'd like to get rid of the binary gui lib dependency first. my current take on this is "gui lib? no, thanks, i'm just browsing", if you know what i mean?-) hth, claus
Wow thanks for all the info! This certainly can get me started. And yet I have some more questions (sorry!): - Unfortunately this project won't be open source; if my first tests are successful, I will try to convince my employer (who wants to develop such a graphical language) to use Haskell for building a prototype instead of C#/F#/Java. Can Haskell be used for creating commercial projects? When the product is released, it *will* be downloadable for free, but the source code won't be (most likely). - If my employer agrees on Haskell, and when our first round of investment is completed, we will be looking for a couple of good Haskell developers. What would be the best place to look for good Haskell developers? This mailing list? Ideally development will have to take place in Antwerp/Belgium, although we might work with remotely located freelancers. We prefer agile development (SCRUM, and maybe we will be doing extreme programming, to be decided) with a small group of capable people. To get an idea of what my employer is doing, visit http://www.nazooka.com. My colleagues and I wrote most of the software for doing this back in the 1990s, and of course the real work is done by 3D graphics artists. - Regarding GUIs, does a real FP-style GUI exist instead of those wrappers around OO GUIs? I did some searches but besides some research papers about FranTk and wxFruit I only found wrappers such as Gtk2Hs and wxHaskell that use a lot of monadic IO. It's very hard for an old school OO style programmer like myself to switch my mind into lazy functional programming (although I think I've seen the light yesterday when digging deep into the FRP of the SOE book, LOL ;-). - Functional reactive programming like looks cool (I only looked at the SOE book, must still look at Yampa), but somehow I feel this is still an active area of research. What is the latest work on FRP (for GUIs / games / animation / simulations...)? What are the major open issues? - Regarding performance (for real-time simulations, not GUIs), I think the garbage collector will get really stressed using FRP because of all those infinite lazy streams; my gut feeling says a generational garbage collector like Microsoft's .NET could help here (but the gut is often wrong, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF3m3f9iMRc for an laugh ;). Regarding the GC, is http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/GarbageCollectorNotes still up-to-date? Okay, that's enough for now. More is less... - Peter -----Original Message----- From: haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org [mailto:haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of Claus Reinke Sent: Friday, June 22, 2007 14:02 To: haskell-cafe@haskell.org Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] "Graphical Haskell"
Since nobody gave an answer on this topic, I guess it is insane to do it in Haskell (at least for a newbie)? :)
not necessarily; we're all waiting for your first release?-)
I would like to create a program that allows you to create such flow graphs, and then let GHC generate the code and do type inference.
spun off from dazzle, which you've found, there's also blobs: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/darcs/Blobs/
Now, instead of generating Haskell code (which I could do first, would be easier to debug), I would like to directly create an AST, and use an Haskell API to communicate with GHC.
one thing to consider: things get a little more tricky when the generated haskell and dynamically loaded code is meant to do graphics (such as updating the original diagram with the state of the simulation). in particular, check that the gui framework actually works via that more circuituous route (similar problems to running in ghci instead of ghc).
I already found out that GHC indeed has such an API, but how possible is this idea? Has this been done before?
the ghc api is meant to support this kind of endeavours, and it isn't frozen yet, either: the ghc team is happy to receive feedback about things that work or things that could work better. before the ghc api, before blobs (after dazzle, though;), i did an embedding of haskell-coloured petri nets in haskell, with a very simplistic graphical net editor on top of wxhaskell, which generated haskell code for the net, then called ghci to type-check and run the resulting code with a copy of the original net graphics to update during simulation (poor man's reflection:): http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/cr3/HCPN/ it worked, but some things were annoying: - no high-level support for writing graph editors in wxhaskell; blobs aims to fix that - awkward meta-programming and runtime reflection; ghc api should help a lot (but i can't see anything wrong with letting it work on generated source code first; optimization can come latter) - wxhaskell encourages low-level dependencies, at least when you're writing your first wxhaskell programs, because it can be rather difficult just to find the function you need, you're tempted to use it right there, just to see if it works, and leave cleaning up for later, which never comes; gui frameworks are worse than the io monad; try to abstract and limit your uses of gui lib features to as few modules as possible; nicer code, easier to switch to different framework - abi incompatibility!!^*L"$W&%*^"%*! sorry,-) but that has become the deal breaker for me; it is bad enough that there are two major haskell gui libs out there, as it means that your clients may have the wrong one or none at all, and need to install the one you need; but, worse than that, whenever there's a new ghc release, everybody needs to rebuild their gui libs, and if you have the latest ghc release and a recent ghc head installed, you even need separate copies of the gui lib, etc, etc. so you use a nice high-level language to get a lot done in very little very portable code, but instead of distributing a few pages of haskell, with build as simple as ghc --make, you have to worry about rather huge gui lib installations, and you have to worry anew for each ghc release.. btw, i am thinking about reviving my hcpn project, to make use of the ghc api, but i'd like to get rid of the binary gui lib dependency first. my current take on this is "gui lib? no, thanks, i'm just browsing", if you know what i mean?-) hth, claus _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.9.1/857 - Release Date: 20/06/2007 14:18 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.9.1/857 - Release Date: 20/06/2007 14:18
bf3:
Wow thanks for all the info! This certainly can get me started.
And yet I have some more questions (sorry!):
- Unfortunately this project won't be open source; if my first tests are successful, I will try to convince my employer (who wants to develop such a graphical language) to use Haskell for building a prototype instead of C#/F#/Java. Can Haskell be used for creating commercial projects? When the product is released, it *will* be downloadable for free, but the source code won't be (most likely).
It can, and is used. See the industry page, http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_in_industry they're the big players, there's numerous small groups that have maybe a few in house Haskell tools.
- If my employer agrees on Haskell, and when our first round of investment is completed, we will be looking for a couple of good Haskell developers.
Wonderful.
What would be the best place to look for good Haskell developers? This mailing list? Ideally development will have to take place in Antwerp/Belgium, although we might work with remotely located freelancers. We prefer agile development (SCRUM, and maybe we will be doing extreme programming, to be decided) with a small group of capable people. To get an idea of what my employer is doing, visit http://www.nazooka.com. My colleagues and I wrote most of the software for doing this back in the 1990s, and of course the real work is done by 3D graphics artists.
I suspect the best place to advertise is still haskell-cafe@haskell.org. Most jobs seems to be sent here, and its also cheap :-) You have access to a few thousand competent Haskell people directly.
- Regarding GUIs, does a real FP-style GUI exist instead of those wrappers around OO GUIs? I did some searches but besides some research papers about FranTk and wxFruit I only found wrappers such as Gtk2Hs and wxHaskell that use a lot of monadic IO. It's very hard for an old school OO style programmer like myself to switch my mind into lazy functional programming (although I think I've seen the light yesterday when digging deep into the FRP of the SOE book, LOL ;-).
gtk2hs is probably the most 'industrial' UI lib.
- Functional reactive programming like looks cool (I only looked at the SOE book, must still look at Yampa), but somehow I feel this is still an active area of research. What is the latest work on FRP (for GUIs / games / animation / simulations...)? What are the major open issues?
- Regarding performance (for real-time simulations, not GUIs), I think the garbage collector will get really stressed using FRP because of all those infinite lazy streams; my gut feeling says a generational garbage collector like Microsoft's .NET could help here (but the gut is often wrong, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF3m3f9iMRc for an laugh ;). Regarding the GC, is http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/GarbageCollectorNotes still up-to-date?
Well, best to find out. In practice i've not found GC to be an issue. Premature optimisation and all that.
Okay, that's enough for now. More is less...
-- Don
Hello Donald, Saturday, June 23, 2007, 8:46:06 AM, you wrote:
- Regarding performance (for real-time simulations, not GUIs), I think the garbage collector will get really stressed using FRP because of all those infinite lazy streams; my gut feeling says a generational garbage collector
... which was implemented in GHC 15 years ago :) read "Generational garbage collection for Haskell": http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/Papers/gen-gc-for-haskell.ps.gz -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com
On Friday 22 June 2007 16:38:18 peterv wrote:
- Unfortunately this project won't be open source; if my first tests are successful, I will try to convince my employer (who wants to develop such a graphical language) to use Haskell for building a prototype instead of C#/F#/Java. Can Haskell be used for creating commercial projects? When the product is released, it *will* be downloadable for free, but the source code won't be (most likely).
We are developing both OCaml and F# into graphical platforms for technical computing: http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/smoke_vector_graphics/ http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/fsharp_for_visualization/ and are also interested in doing this with Haskell. Our projects are also closed source but Smoke is freely available in platform-independent bytecode.
... - Regarding performance (for real-time simulations, not GUIs), I think the garbage collector will get really stressed using FRP because of all those infinite lazy streams; my gut feeling says a generational garbage collector like Microsoft's .NET could help here (but the gut is often wrong, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF3m3f9iMRc for an laugh ;). Regarding the GC, is http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/GarbageCollectorNotes still up-to-date?
To the best of my knowledge, OCaml is head and shoulders above the alternatives in this respect. It is certainly several times faster than F# for GC-intensive work. The main reason is that .NET imposes concurrent GC, which introduces locks around every allocation and cripples performance when value lifetime distributions are typical of a functional language. The Unix approach of forking processes seems to be far better suited to functional languages (this is not dissimilar to Erlang's GC-per-thread approach). For example, the time taken to solve the 11 queens problem with the same program that filters out int pairs from a list of all board positions: OCaml: 5s F#: 30s Also, the worst case performance of our visualization tools is 5x faster in OCaml than it was in C++. Assuming the same is true of Haskell, I think it is probably premature to be worrying about GC performance. -- Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. The OCaml Journal http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_journal/?e
participants (7)
-
Bulat Ziganshin -
Claus Reinke -
dons＠cse.unsw.edu.au -
Henning Thielemann -
Jon Harrop -
Pasqualino 'Titto' Assini -
peterv