[Haskell-cafe] Call for Contributions - Haskell Communities and Activities Report, May 2009 edition

[Janis Voigtlaender]

Dear Haskellers,

so much has happened in the Haskell world in the past months.
Therefore, I would very much like to collect contributions for
the 16th edition of the

================================================================
             Haskell Communities & Activities Report
               http://www.haskell.org/communities/

                 Submission deadline: 1 May 2009

      (please send your contributions to hcar at haskell.org,
                  in plain text or LaTeX format)
================================================================

This is the short story:

* If you are working on any project that is in some way related
   to Haskell, please write a short entry and submit it. Even if
   the project is very small or unfinished or you think it is not
   important enough -- please reconsider and submit an entry anyway!

* If you are interested in any project related to Haskell that has not
   previously been mentioned in the HC&A Report, please tell me, so that
   I can contact the project leaders and ask them to submit an entry.

* Feel free to pass on this call for contributions to others that
   might be interested.

More detailed information:

The Haskell Communities & Activities Report is a bi-annual overview of
the state of Haskell as well as Haskell-related projects over the
last, and possibly the upcoming six months. If you have only recently
been exposed to Haskell, it might be a good idea to browse the
November 2008 edition -- you will find interesting topics described as
well as several starting points and links that may provide answers to
many questions.

Contributions will be collected until the submission deadline. They
will then be compiled into a coherent report that is published online
as soon as it is ready. As always, this is a great opportunity to
update your webpages, make new releases, announce or even start new
projects, or to talk about developments you want every Haskeller to
know about!

Looking forward to your contributions,

Janis (current editor)


FAQ:

Q: What format should I write in?

A: The required format is a LaTeX source file, adhering to the template
that is available at:

     http://haskell.org/communities/05-2009/template.tex

There is also a LaTeX style file at

     http://haskell.org/communities/05-2009/hcar.sty

that you can use to preview your entry. If you do not know LaTeX, then
use plain text. If you modify an old entry that you have written for an
earlier edition of the report, you should receive your old entry as a
template soon (provided I have your valid email address). Please modify
that template, rather than using your own version of the old entry as a
template.

Q: Can I include images?

A: Yes, you are even encouraged to do so. Please use .jpg format, then.

Q: How much should I write?

A: Authors are asked to limit entries to about one column of text. This
corresponds to approximately one page, or 40 lines of text, with the
above style and template.

A general introduction is helpful. Apart from that, you should focus on
recent or upcoming developments. Pointers to online content can be given
for more comprehensive or ``historic'' overviews of a project. Images do
not count towards the length limit, so you may want to use this
opportunity to pep entries up. There is no minimum length of an entry!
The report aims at being as complete as possible, so please consider
writing an entry, even if it is only a few lines long.

Q: Which topics are relevant?

A: All topics which are related to Haskell in some way are relevant. We
usually had reports from users of Haskell (private, academic, or
commercial), from authors or contributors to projects related to
Haskell, from people working on the Haskell language, libraries, on
language extensions or variants. We also like reports over distributions
of Haskell software, Haskell infrastructure, books and tutorials on
Haskell. Reports on past and upcoming events related to Haskell are also
relevant. Finally, there might be new topics we do not even think about.
As a rule of thumb: if in doubt, then it probably is relevant and has a
place in the HCAR. You can also ask the editor.

Q: Is unfinished work relevant? Are ideas for projects relevant?

A: Yes! You can use the HCAR to talk about projects you are currently
working on. You can use it to look for other developers that might help
you. You can use it to write ``wishlist'' items for libraries and
language features you would like to see implemented.

Q: If I do not update my entry, but want to keep it in the report, what
should I do?

A: Tell the editor that there are no changes. The old entry will be
reused in this case, but it might be dropped if it is older than a year,
to give more room and more attention to projects that change a lot.
Do not resend complete entries if you have not changed them.

-- 
Dr. Janis Voigtlaender
http://wwwtcs.inf.tu-dresden.de/~voigt/
mailto:voigt at tcs.inf.tu-dresden.de