Past exam of the year 1 of the computer science course of the University of Oxford / 2019 / Imperative programming resit / 8 / c

In Scala Swing, a Publisher is the observable subject and a Reactor supplies an observer's reactions. A reactor calls listenTo(pounds, euros, rate) to subscribe to the relevant publishing components. It adds a partial function from events to actions with reactions += { case ... => ... }; unmatched event types need no action. When a publisher calls publish(e), subscribed reactions that handle that event are notified. Calling deafTo removes subscriptions that are no longer wanted.^[ref]

The publisher does not need to know the concrete frame or its currency-conversion code. A TextField supplies the relevant editing events, and the frame's reaction distinguishes the source field using EditDone(source). Both registration and a matching reaction are needed: installing a case handler without subscribing does not establish the notification path. The observer logic should update the conversion model once and then refresh the other fields from that coherent state.