EditorArrow: An arrow-based model for editor-based programming

Abstract

AbstractState-based interactive applications, whether they run on the desktop or as a web application, can be considered as collections of interconnected editors of structured values that allow users to manipulate data. This is the view that is advocated by theGECandiDatatoolkits, which offer a high level of abstraction to programming desktop and web GUI applications respectively. Special features of these toolkits are that editors haveshared,persistentstate, and that theyhandle eventsindividually. In this paper we cast these toolkits within theArrowframework and presentEditorArrow: a single, unified semantic model that defines shared state and event handling. We study the properties ofEditorArrow, and of editors in particular. Furthermore, we present the definedness properties of the combinators. A reference implementation of theEditorArrowmodel is given with some small program examples. We discuss formal reasoning about the model using the proof assistantSparkle. The availability of this tool has proved to be indispensable in this endeavor.