User preferences lost between Hugs upgrades on Windows

[Claus Reinke]

>> while on the subject of user preferences, does the current round
>> of Hugs/GHC releases on Windows do away with that "we take
>> over the handling of Haskell files, no matter what the user wanted"?
> 
> Nope :) I emailed off to people about this offering to cooperate
> nicely with GHC and Hugs, but no one ever got back to me, so both
> WinHugs and GHC steal the preferences. ..

well, you can't change what other people do, but you can make 
sure that Hugs doesn't steal ;) 

- register file type handlers optionally (I think Hugs already does 
    this, but GHC doesn't?)

- only _add_ file type handlers, never override existing ones
    nor change the default handler without user confirmation

Haskell beginners will not have any Haskell file type handlers 
registered, but even then the installers should ask before setting
defaults, shouldn't they?
 
>>   (and no, going via WinHugs :e is not an option,
>>     eg when browsing files from some darcs repo on the web)
> 
> Have you used a recent copy of WinHugs? 

oops. I was sure I had, and had encountered problems with 
starting the editor (:e) on internet files which WinHugs was not 
equipped to handle (non-standard extensions, missing imports, ..). 
something like messed up temporary files paths to the downloaded
file, which the editor couldn't find when called from WinHugs, I 
seem to recall.. - but I can't reproduce the problem with  
"Version: 20051031".

offering to call an editor via WinHugs looks nice and convenient
when there are no editors registered, but isn't really the way to 
go otherwise, is it? There was a time when I needed to open
Haskell files with several editors, for testing, and in any case,
why should editor actions go via other software?

> I'd love to make Edit be the default, i.e. rename it to Open, and then
> add Open with WinHugs. However, this is a change in how WinHugs
> operates. Initially I tried to adhere quite closely to how WinHugs
> worked before I hacked on it, now I think the time has come to have
> Open be Edit and add Open in WinHugs.

why not make that "Open with WinHugs" and "Edit via WinHugs"
and let the user decide which, if any, of these should be default?
 
>> any chance of Haskell implementations being less greedy and more
>> cooperative on Windows this time round?-)
> 
> This time around, no - you just missed the boat on WinHugs and you're
> probably too late for GHC 6.6. Next time around, perhaps. 

oh, you mean I should have mentioned this earlier, as in 

http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/glasgow-haskell-users/2004-March/006402.html
http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/hugs-users/2006-February/000656.html

for instance?-)

cheers,
claus