I like to discuss some issues about the Haskell package 'fft' package with
you.
I am thinking for long about ix-shapable and its use in 'fft'. I find it
pretty counter-intuitive that FFT.dftRC transforms the outermost dimension
of an array and that the dimension list passed to FFT.dftRCN counts from
the outermost to the innermost dimension. I guess that the reason is how
Shapable methods convert between tuples and lists. In a tuple (a,b,c), 'a'
is the zeroth element of the tuple but as an index it counts the outermost
dimension. Shapable methods 'sShape' and 'sBounds' convert that tuple to
the list [a,b,c] and back. Of course, [a,b,c]!!0 == a.
With the working of Shapable in mind, the current convention of counting
dimensions in FFT.dftRCN makes sense but most of the time I only use a
certain tuple type like (Int,Int,Int) and do not care about its Shapable
instance. I do not spell Shapable in the source code, at all.
Other problems are: Shapable instances are overly strict in that they
allow only tuples that consist entirely of Ints. But e.g. it would be no
problem to have the index type (Char, Int, Integer) if we only transform
the middle dimension. Additionally the current Shapable instances for
tuples require FlexibleInstances, which I find ugly and unnecessary. On
the other hand FFT.dftRCN lacks type safety: You can easily specify
non-existent dimensions for transformation.
The last problem can be overcome by replacing the list of transform
dimensions by a Bool tuple. How about a call like this:
FFT.dftRCN (False, True, False) array3d
?
A fine solution is not as simple as a tuple of Bools, but here is
something close to it:
~~~~
import Data.Complex (Complex)
import Data.Monoid (Monoid, (<>))
data IndexMagic = InsertMagicHere
data Dim ix = Dim IndexMagic
instance Monoid IndexMagic where
keep :: Dim ix
keep = Dim InsertMagicHere
trans :: Dim Int
trans = Dim InsertMagicHere
mask2 :: Dim ix0 -> Dim ix1 -> Dim (ix0,ix1)
mask2 (Dim op0) (Dim op1) = Dim (op0 <> op1)
mask3 :: Dim ix0 -> Dim ix1 -> Dim ix2 -> Dim (ix0,ix1,ix2)
mask3 (Dim op0) (Dim op1) (Dim op2) = Dim (op0 <> op1 <> op2)
dftRCN :: Dim i -> array i a -> array i (Complex a)
dftRCN = undefined
example ::
array (Char, Int, Integer) a ->
array (Char, Int, Integer) (Complex a)
example = dftRCN (mask3 keep trans keep)
~~~~
IndexMagic would be a dictionary of functions for doing the necessary
index processing. With this solution we would not need a Shapable class
nor a ix-shapable package, and we stay Haskell 98.
For some time I prefered a solution using nested Int dimensions as in
'repa' and 'accelerate'. But maybe the tuple approach sketched above isn't
so bad.
Since the 'fft' package is in use for a rather long time now I hesitate to
change something. I will certainly start a new module providing the same
function names with new types.
