Fudgets - FPCA 93 Abstract

This paper describes an implementation of a small window-based graphical user interface toolkit for the X Window System written in the lazy functional language LML. By using this toolkit, a Haskell or LML programmer can create a user interface with menus, buttons and other graphical interface objects, without conforming to more or less imperative programming paradigms imposed if she were to use a traditional (imperative) toolkit. Instead, the power of the abstraction methods provided by Haskell or LML are used.

The main abstraction we use is the fudget. Fudgets are combined in a hierarchical structure, and they interact by message passing. The current implementation is based on a sequential evaluator, but by using nondeterminism and oracles, we suggest how fudgets can evaluate in parallel. We believe that the toolkit can be extended to a full-feathered and practically useful high level graphical toolkit.

The full paper in responsive HTML: fudgets-fpca93.html, with some errata fixed and hopefully not too many new typos. Created in June 2023, 30 years after the original publication.
The original full paper in PDF format: fudgets-fpca93.pdf (534KB).
The original full paper in postscript format: fudgets-fpca93.ps (458KB).
Citations (Google Scholar).

@inproceedings{carlsson:fudgetsfpca,
  TITLE = {{{\sc Fudgets} - A Graphical User Interface in a Lazy Functional Language}} ,
  AUTHOR = {M. Carlsson and T. Hallgren} ,
  PAGES = {321--330} ,
  BOOKTITLE = {FPCA '93 - Conference on Functional Programming
	       Languages and Computer Architecture} ,
  PUBLISHER = {ACM Press} ,
  MONTH = {June} ,
  YEAR = "1993" ,
  ISBN = {0-89791-595-X} ,
}