[Haskell-cafe] Haskell Weekly News: December 20, 2006

Donald Bruce Stewart dons at cse.unsw.edu.au
Tue Dec 19 20:22:11 EST 2006


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Haskell Weekly News
http://sequence.complete.org/hwn/20061220
Issue 54 - December 20, 2006
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Welcome to issue 54 of HWN, a weekly newsletter covering developments
   in the Haskell community.

   A new release of the Edison data structures library, along with
   several other new libraries, and some new Haskell articles in the
   blogspace.

Announcements

   Edison 1.2.1. Robert Dockins [1]announced the 1.2.1 release of
   [2]Edison. Edison is a famous library of efficient, purely-functional
   data structures in Haskell. Notable changes from the previous version
   include: a new sequence implementation based on finger trees;
   documentation fixes dealing with the licence; added a few methods to
   EnumSet for wrapping and unwrapping the underlying Word

   1. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14662
   2. http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~rdocki01/

   Basic serialisation library using SYB. Stefan O'Rear [3]announced
   GenericSerialize, [4]a library for serialization using the existing
   generic-programming framework. It is often advocated that support for
   serialization should be added to the compiler (e.g. in the form of a
   deriving(Binary)). With this project Stefan wants to show that the
   existing infrastructure is sufficient, and has some advantages over a
   dedicated serialization interface. GenericSerialize supports multiple
   serialization modes.

   3. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14656
   4. http://members.cox.net/stefanor/genericserialize

   vty 1.0. Stefan O'Rear [5]announced vty 1.0, a simple [6]terminal
   interface library. It provides: handling of suspend/resume, window
   resizes, computation of minimal differences, minimizes repaint area,
   automatically decodes keyboard keys into (key,modifier) tuples, and
   more!

   5. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14670
   6. http://members.cox.net/stefanor/vty

   Monad.Reader call for copy. Wouter Swierstra [7]reminded us that its
   still not too late to write something for the next issue of [8]The
   Monad.Reader! We have a nice issue slowly shaping up, but your
   contribution is still very welcome. Get in touch with Wouter if you
   intend to submit something -- the sooner you let him know what you're
   up to, the better.

   7. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14638
   8. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/TheMonadReader

   Ranged Sets. Paul Johnson [9]announced that Ranged Sets now have a
   Monoid instance, and singletons (i.e. a range holding a single value),
   thanks to Jean-Philippe Bernardy.

   9. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14663

   CalDims 1.0 (RC 1). schneegloeckchen [10]announced CalDims, a
   calculator aware of units. Its available from [11]the Haskell wiki. It
   includes support for user defined basic units and derrived units; user
   defined functions; work sheets can be modified/saved via shell;
   (1/3)*3 == 1 (No rounding errors); built-in feature to simplify units
   and easy unit-conversion.

  10. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14671
  11. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/CalDims

   JoinCabal. Dougal Stanton [12]announced an alternative to mkcabal, for
   initialising new cabal projects: [13]JoinCabal, available [14]via
   darcs. JoinCabal will create stub sources files with a license header,
   and appropriate license for you code, making it easier to set up a
   valid cabal build system.

  12. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/17600
  13. http://brokenhut.no-ip.org/~dougal/cgi-bin/darcsweb.cgi?r=JoinCabal;a=summary
  14. http://brokenhut.no-ip.org/~dougal/darcs/joincabal/

   Haskell Vim plugin. Arthur van Leeuwen [15]announced a new [16]vim
   plugin for Haskell providing some preliminary folding support, easy
   insertion of type signatures into programs, and support for handling
   .hi files.

  15. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/17675
  16. http://www.cs.uu.nl/~arthurvl/haskell.vba

Haskell'

   This section covers the [17]Haskell' standardisation process.

     * [18]Strictly matching monadic let and overloaded Bool

  17. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime
  18. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.prime/1956/focus=1974

Discussion

   Automonadization of code. Adam Megacz [19]asked if there any work on
   automatic translation of code in some tiny imperative language into
   Haskell code that uses the ST and/or IO monads (or perhaps even pure
   functional code)?

  19. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/17326/focus=17326

   What are the points in pointfree style?. Steve Downey [20]wondered
   about the origin of the term 'points' in pointfree style.

  20. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/17560/focus=17560

   Rebinding >>= for restricted monads. David Roundy [21]pondered
   rebinding the >>= syntax in order to provide a more restricted monad.

  21. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/17646/focus=17646

   #haskell reaches 300 users. Don Stewart [22]noticed that the
   [23]#haskell IRC channel has now reached the 300 user mark, making it
   one of the top 15 channels on the freenode network.

  22. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/17705/focus=17705
  23. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/IRC_channel

Blog noise

   [24]Haskell news from the blogosphere.

     * [25]Do-notation considered harmful
     * [26]Reddit discussion considered productive
     * [27]The Dot-Matrix Printhead: a Haskell Toy
     * [28]The Revised Dot-Matrix Printhead
     * [29]The monad laws
     * [30]On documentation
     * [31]Software requirements do not change
     * [32]Haskell and the web: some ideas in progress
     * [33]Using Haskell in Python: haskellembed
     * [34]Literate programming
     * [35]The lambda revolution, Episode V, the deb strikes back
     * [36]On syntax
     * [37]Syntax: adding Lisp macros
     * [38]More on syntax
     * [39]UCBLogo and the Fibonacci sequence
     * [40]Linguistic comparisons: string reversal
     * [41]New Software Technology: Blockage On Line
     * [42]More silver bullets
     * [43]Preventing NullPointerExceptions, Maybe
     * [44]Adventures in Haskell: the Parsec magic weapon
     * [45]Advertising Haskell
     * [46]Programming Haskell: part 1
     * [47]Programming Haskell: part 2
     * [48]Programming Haskell: part 3
     * [49]Introductory Haskell Programming in the UNIX Environment
     * [50]On Haskell, Intuition And Expressive Power
     * [51]Your order is ready sir
     * [52]It's alive (the French Haskell community)
     * [53]Maybe monad in Java
     * [54]Secret Santas in Haskell I: Preliminaries
     * [55]Secret Santas in Haskell II: Orbits and Lists
     * [56]Why Closures in Dolphin is a Good Idea
     * [57]Haskell Stacks : Two Different Ways
     * [58]Haskell Golf Scores
     * [59]Languages
     * [60]Questions on Haskell Style (and Polynomials redux)
     * [61]A simple RSS aggregator in 50 lines of Haskell using HXT

  24. http://planet.haskell.org/
  25. http://syntaxfree.wordpress.com/2006/12/12/do-notation-considered-harmful/
  26. http://syntaxfree.wordpress.com/2006/12/13/reddit-discussion-considered-productive/
  27. http://praisecurseandrecurse.blogspot.com/2006/12/dot-matrix-printhead-haskell-toy.html
  28. http://praisecurseandrecurse.blogspot.com/2006/12/revised-dot-matrix-printhead.html
  29. http://cale.yi.org/index.php/The_Monad_Laws
  30. http://blog.milkfarmsoft.com/?p=29
  31. http://blog.tmorris.net/software-requirements-do-not-change/
  32. http://haskell-web.blogspot.com/2006/12/some-ideas-in-progress_13.html
  33. http://www.kuarepoti-dju.net/index.php?p=86
  34. http://benjisimon.blogspot.com/2006/12/programs-as-stories.html
  35. http://pupeno.com/blog/the-lambda-revolution-episode-v-the-deb-strikes-back
  36. http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2006/12/14#on-syntax
  37. http://nominolo.blogspot.com/2006/12/syntax.html
  38. http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2006/12/15#on-syntax-again
  39. http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=171
  40. http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=170
  41. http://cogito.blogthing.com/2006/12/14/new-software-technology-blockage-on-line/
  42. http://clabs.org/blogki/blogki.cgi?page=/ComputersAndTechnology/AndTheNomineesAre
  43. http://rickyclarkson.blogspot.com/2006/09/using-strong-typing-to-eliminate.html
  44. http://jpmoresmau.blogspot.com/2006/12/adventures-in-haskell-parsec-magic.html
  45. http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2006/12/advertising-haskell.html
  46. http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2006/12/16#programming-haskell-intro
  47. http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2006/12/17#programming-haskell-part-2
  48. http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2006/12/18#ph-3
  49. http://blog.kfish.org/software/haskell/intro-haskell-unix.html
  50. http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/haskell-productivity.html
  51. http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1905#comment-23273
  52. http://koweycode.blogspot.com/2006/12/its-alive.html
  53. http://blog.tmorris.net/maybe-monad-in-java/
  54. http://mult.ifario.us/articles/2006/12/18/secret-santas-in-haskell-i-preliminaries
  55. http://mult.ifario.us/articles/2006/12/18/secret-santas-in-haskell-ii-orbits-and-lists
  56. http://rickyclarkson.blogspot.com/2006/12/why-closures-in-dolphin-is-good-idea-on.html
  57. http://progexpr.blogspot.com/2006/11/haskell-stacks-two-different-ways.html
  58. http://progexpr.blogspot.com/2006/11/haskell-golf-scores.html
  59. http://computativestylings.blogspot.com/2006/12/languages.html
  60. http://sambangu.blogspot.com/2006/12/questions-on-haskell-style-and
  61. http://cale.yi.org/index.php/HRSS

Quotes of the Week

     * Cale: I spent a whole summer being paid to write a
       nondeterministic search program in the list monad

     * monochrom: 007 titles for Haskellers: fromForeignPtr withCString;
       You Only lift Twice; Bottoms Are Forever; The Monad with the Pure
       Function; For Your Types Only; A view to A seq; Licence to
       killThread; iterate Never Dies; unsafePerformIO Is Not Enough.

     * DavidRoundy: ... fun of haskell-cafe is that it's where all the
       cool people hang out

     * dons: Coding drunk in Haskell is ok though, its like drinking on a
       passenger plane flight -- the stewards will prevent you from
       hurting anyone. However, coding drunk in C is just scary, DUI
       territory, and should not be allowed.

     * JulianMorrison: Small startup companies are the expendable sensory
       and feeding apparatus of the mainstream.

     * droundy: With a higher-kinded monad and phantom existential
       witness types, darcs would be very fun...

     * dons: The alien rulers of the galaxy must surely use a statically
       typed language with type inference

     * dibblego: Java programmers prefer referential transparency too,
       they just call it 'design patterns' or something

     * tessier: After the last newbies head exploded trying to read
       everything on that monad link there was a lot of paperwork. We'd
       like to avoid doing that again.

Code Watch

   Fri Dec 8 21:03:34 PST 2006. Andy Gill. [62]Adding tracing support (HPC)

  62. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cvs.ghc/18263

   Wed Dec 13 08:45:38 PST 2006. simonpj. [63]You can now have an MVar
   with a polymorphic contents

  63. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cvs.ghc/18279

About the Haskell Weekly News

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  64. http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
  65. http://sequence.complete.org/
  66. http://planet.haskell.org/
  67. http://sequence.complete.org/node/feed
  68. http://haskell.org/
  69. http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/code/hwn/archives/20061220.pdf
  70. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HWN/es
  71. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HWN
  72. http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/code/hwn


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