[Haskell-cafe] expanded standard lib

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi

> - The packages seem to be of quite variable quality. Some are excellent,
> some are rather poor (or just not maintained any more).

The problem is that only one person gets to comment on the quality of
a library, the author, who is about the least objective person.

> - Almost all packages seem to require a long list of dependencies.

Cabal-install will turn this from being a negative to being a
positive, if it ever delivers on its promise.

> - There seems to be an awful lot of packages that do the same thing but
> with incompatible interfaces (and varying limitations). It seems we're
> not very coordinated here.

Variety is good. Hopefully at some point people will start to
standardise. For example, there are at least 4 libraries for working
with HTML (TagSoup, HaXml, HXT, ...brain freeze...) - eventually
someone will write a nice summary tutorial on when to use which one.
In Haskell the interface is usually the most important bit, so making
different libraries use the same interface eliminates their
advantages.

> - (And, since I'm on Windows, I can't seem to get anything to install
> with Cabal...)

Windows, the Operating System no one in the Haskell community loves...
Make sure you point all the bugs and even little annoyances that you
encounter, and hopefully things will head in the right direction.

Thanks

Neil