Question

I am trying to work with FranTK in order to make some examples to work for class. But cant go further the installation process (cabal install may be to mainstream).
I’ve gotten it from http://src.gnu-darwin.org/ports/x11-toolkits/hs-frantk/work/

in the readme a directory above it says i need to compile TclHaskellSrc, then FranSrc, then FranTkSrc. but i dont know how.

It also says it works with ghc-5, will it work with ghc-7?

has someone already use it successfully?

Answer 1

FRAN is outdated, bitrotted, and will almost certainly not compile under GHC 7. (See Conal Elliott’s page for confirmation of this.) It was supposed to have been followed up with successors Reactive and FieldTrip, but, if I remember correctly, these projects hit a snag over OpenGL implementation issues.

If you’re looking for good demos of FRP animation, then you’ll be better off with one of the following:

• elerea – it’s simple, and has several good examples
• sodium – also simple, and also has several good examples
• reactive-banana – More complex than the other two, and more intended for GUI programming than for animation. Still worth a look, as it is well-documented and actively maintained.

The state of the art for FRP used to be Yampa, but I’d recommend against using either it or its recent fork Animas, not because they’re bad in any way, but rather because they use Arrows, which tend to overcomplicate an already-difficult subject.

Hope this helps.