tweaking text on the ghc downloads page

[Simon Peyton Jones]

I’m ok with all of this, but I’d like just to check with Mark L to see how he suggests signposting the HP

Simon

From: Glasgow-haskell-users [mailto:glasgow-haskell-users-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Michael Snoyman
Sent: 26 June 2015 15:59
To: Gershom B; Glasgow-Haskell-Users users
Subject: Re: tweaking text on the ghc downloads page

One point I've seen users confused about in the past is that some guides recommend downloading GHC directly as part of setting up a full distribution, e.g.:

https://www.haskell.org/downloads/linux (manual install)
I'd take the STOP out entirely, and just give a link to the /downloads page, to avoid this confusion. The rest of your text looks spot on to me, it's literally the one word "STOP" that seems to have people out of sorts most often.

On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 5:54 PM Gershom B <gershomb at gmail.com<mailto:gershomb at gmail.com>> wrote:
I know there is a plan for some broader ghc webpage redesign.

In the meantime, apparently people find the current "Stop" text terribly troublesome. This is because, of course, it points to the platform and now some people believe that a minimal distribution is more usable, etc.

Just to take this issue off the agenda, I would like, if there are no objections, to just change that text as follows.

Current:

"Stop!

For most users, we recommend installing the _Haskell Platform_ instead of GHC. The current Haskell Platform release includes a recent GHC release as well as some other tools (such as cabal), and a larger set of libraries that are known to work together."

Proposed:

"Stop!

For most users, we recommend installing _a proper distribution_ instead of just GHC. A distribution includes a recent GHC release as well as other important tools (such as cabal, for installing libraries), and potentially a broader set of libraries known to work together."

And where before the "Haskell Platform" text would link to of course the platform page, the new "proper distribution" text would now link to https://www.haskell.org/downloads where we could then argue to our heart's content about the best way to present the various download and installation options as we go forward.

So, this doesn't resolve any controversy, but it at least centralizes it.

If there's no objection, I'll try to get to this tomorrow?

--Gershom
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