Re: Using continuations in user-interfaces

["Jamie Elliott" <jamie-e@blueyonder.co.uk>]

Matthias wrote:

> Jamie, please contact Shriram and/or Paul Graunke concerning this topic.
> They just generalized our Web-interfaces from continuation techniques to
> GUI wizards. I think you want to know about this stuff.

That's great news!

> You may wish to start with Graunke's papers on Web serving and Web
> scripting via cps/callcc compilation. They are available from PLT's
> site. Their generalization was just accepted at ICSE and they are
rewriting
> it over the break.

I've just started to read a paper by Graunke et al which seems to advocate
the exact technique I had in mind.  However, since posting my original
message to the list I've come to realise that continuations probably aren't
as neccessary in GUI applications as I thought they were, given the
existence of window creation procedures that block until the window is
destroyed.  I just sort of assumed that all UI creation procedures would
terminate immediately, resulting in problems when the window in question is
just one part of a larger sequential computation.

Mind you, I suppose that a continuation-based structuring mechanism would
allow an application much greater control over the routes the user could
take through the application, even permitting very long "jumps" to previous
computations, a la exception handling.  Whether such a facility would be
useful or not....

Jamie