With the Haskell graphics library Gloss, is it possible to mask a picture to only display in a certain extent (ie within a rectangle)

Question

I have been using the Gloss Library for some game programming, and have got to the point where I am having the most difficulty laying out different elements on the screen. I was wondering whether it was possible to limit a Picture type to display only a certain rectangular area of the screen. The library already has the concept of a rectangular area with the Extent type, but there does not appear to be any way to 'subtract' from pictures.

If there was a way of doing this then it seems like creating a View type or similar that takes over responsibility for a certain area of the screen — which can also contain additional views, and with suitable coordinate substitutions between them etc — would be an achievable and sensible goal. But without a way to limit drawing areas it doesn't seem like this would be possible within the Gloss framework.

Answer 1

It seems that clipping is not supported in Gloss.

Nevertheless the recursive drawing of views each with their own relative coordinate system does still seem to be a viable and useful goal, and I am part way through writing code for this now.