Implement DropAction

[Xitian9]

This separates the measurement phase from the building phase.

The tests currently fail, but I'm putting this up as draft to solicit feedback on whether this was what you had in mind. The reasons test fail is that buildCell $ dropLeft n s is no longer guaranteed to have the expected width, since it will no longer add padding to get up to the expected width. Correcting this is either a matter of changing the trimming logic elsewhere, or reimplementing the padding logic for now.

[Xitian9]

There's a question of whether we should require a Monoid instance for all DropActions. This is necessary in order to define a Cell instance for Formatted, but doesn't strictly have to be part of the class definition.

Option 1: class (Monoid (DropAction a)) => Cell a

Advantages

• Conceptually it makes sense that we should be able to combine DropActions.
• It slightly simplifies the instances instance Cell a => Cell (Maybe a) and instance (Cell a, Cell b) => Cell (Either a b). The fact that we can use mempty avoids having to introduce a couple of Maybes.
• This allows the instance Cell a => Cell (Formatted a) without any extra hassle.

Disadvantages

• Not needed for most simple instances.
• Implementations need to make sure there are Monoid instances for all DropActions.
• Requires FlexibleContexts in Cell.hs.

Option 2: instance (Monoid (DropAction a), Cell a) => Cell (Formatted a)

Alternatively, we could leave it out of the class definition and just add it in to the instance declaration instance (Monoid (DropAction a), Cell a) => Cell (Formatted a).

Advantages

• Don't have to implement Monoid instances for DropActions if you don't want to.

Disadvantages

• Requires FlexibleContexts and UndecidableInstances in Formatted.hs.
• If you don't define Monoid instances, then you can't use Formatted.
• Slightly less clean implementations of instance Cell a => Cell (Maybe a) and instance (Cell a, Cell b) => Cell (Either a b).

I think option 1 has the advantage of being conceptually cleaner and with cleaner code, at the cost of a tiny bit of boilerplate for instance definers (which is probably a good idea to do anyway). The fact that option 2 requires UndecidableInstances is a big point against it in my opinion, and I'd strongly recommend the former.

[Xitian9]

I'll have some free time over the next couple of weeks, if you wanted to make suggestions.

[muesli4]

I'm sorry to leave you hanging again. I know exactly what it feels like from your perspective and it is unfair. Basically any change that takes me more than an hour to review is difficult. I can't make any promises there.

[Xitian9]

There's no rush or urgency, and there are no consequences on my side if you want to forget about this entirely. But if you ever have the time and energy I'd be happy to offer whatever help I can to get this through.