Graphical User Interfaces for Declarative Languages

The problems with performing I/O in purely declarative languages are well known. Work has been going on for several years to alleviate these problems. In this thesis we look at some of the techniques devised for performing I/O without losing referential transparency. We then look at how these techniques can be used to create highly abstract declarative toolkits for constructing graphical user interfaces. We present a case study of three of these toolkits that each use very different techniques and require very different programming styles. We then evaluate how each of the toolkits makes use of the features of declarative languages and how they compare to traditional imperative graphical user interface toolkits. 1 Introduction Over the past decade or so there has been a trend in the computer industry towards producing software that interacts with its users via a graphical user interface (GUI). This typically involves the user manipulating graphical objects on a screen using a pointing ..