[Haskell-cafe] Haskell Weekly News: Issue 110 - March 21, 2009
Brent Yorgey
byorgey at seas.upenn.edu
Sat Mar 21 10:01:02 EDT 2009
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Haskell Weekly News
http://sequence.complete.org/hwn/20090321
Issue 110 - March 21, 2009
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Welcome to issue 110 of HWN, a newsletter covering developments in the
[1]Haskell community.
[2]Facebook apps with Happstack, [3]Sudoku with Cryptol, what next?
Tic-tac-toe with darcs? Anyway, lots of neat stuff this week, including
new releases of [4]GHC, [5]jhc, and the [6]Monad.Reader, some [7]fun
[8]visualizations, and more. Also, students: apply to work on a
[9]Haskell project for the Google Summer of Code!
Announcements
GHC 6.10.2 Release Candidate 1. Ian Lynagh [10]announced the [11]first
release candidate for GHC 6.10.2. Please test as much as possible; bugs
are much cheaper if we find them before the release!
jhc 0.6.0 Haskell Compiler. John Meacham [12]announced the release of
[13]jhc 0.6.0.
Safe Lazy IO in Haskell. Nicolas Pouillard [14]announced the
[15]safe-lazy-io package that provides special types and combinators
for performing safe lazy I/O.
game-tree - a library for searching game trees. Colin Paul Adams
[16]announced [17]game-tree 0.1.0.0, which provides a class for dynamic
game trees, and purely functional algorithms for searching them.
random-shuffle package. Manlio Perillo [18]announced the availability
of the [19]random-shuffle package, which is based on [20]Oleg's
description.
random-stream package. Manlio Perillo [21]announced the
[22]random-stream package, which provides a portable interface for the
operating system source of pseudo random data. Supported sources are
Unix /dev/urandom, Win32 CryptGenRandom and OpenSSL pseudo random
numbers generator.
language-python. Bernie Pope [23]announced the [24]language-python
package, which provides a parser (and lexer) for Python, written in
Haskell. Currently it only supports version 3 of Python (the most
recent version), but it will support version 2 in the future.
Google Summer of Code. Malcolm Wallace [25]announced that haskell.org
has once again been accepted as a mentoring organisation for the 2009
Google Summer of Code. Student applications open on Monday (23rd March)
at 1900 UTC, for a period of 12 days (until Fri 3rd April, also at 1900
UTC). Students applicants are encouraged to interact with the community
via mailing lists, prior, during, and after the submission of their
ideas for projects. Because (sadly) the darcs community did not get
accepted as a separate organisation this year, haskell.org will be
willing to accept proposals relating to darcs.
regex-tdfa-1.1.0. ChrisK [26]announced the release of
[27]regex-tdfa-1.1.0. This version is a small performance update to the
old regex-tdfa-1.0.0 version. Previously all text (e.g. ByteString)
being search was converted to String and sent through a single engine;
the new version uses a type class and SPECIALIZE pragmas to avoid
converting to String. This should make adding support for searching
other Char containers easy to do.
Haskell on your system? Information wanted!. Don Stewart [28]announced
that haskell.org now features links to wiki pages explaining how to
obtain Haskell on windows, mac osx and linux and bsd. If you're a
distro maintainer for these systems, please consider adding relevant
pointers to the pages, so that users of these systems can find all the
info they need.
libffi 0.1 released. Remi Turk [29]announced the release of [30]libffi
0.1, bindings to the C library libffi, allowing C functions to be
called whose types are not known before run-time.
Haskell Logo Voting has started!. Eelco Lempsink [31]announced that
voting has begun to choose the new Haskell logo. All subscribed to
haskell-cafe should have received a ballot; if you are not directly
subscribed, you can still send ballot requests until the end of the
competition (March 24, 12:00 UTC). Make sure the message contains
'haskell logo voting ballot request' in the subject. A long discussion
of what color to paint the bike shed and why this particular bike shed
will not do for storing bikes ensued.
The Monad.Reader (13). Wouter Swierstra [32]announced that a new issue
of [33]The Monad.Reader, a quarterly magazine about functional
programming, is now available. Issue 13 consists of the following four
articles: "Rapid Prototyping in TEX" by Stephen Hicks; "The
Typeclassopedia" by Brent Yorgey; a Real World Haskell book review by
Chris Eidhof and Eelco Lempsink; and "Calculating Monads with Category
Theory" by Derek Elkins.
dzen-utils 0.1. Felipe Lessa [34]announced the release of
[35]dzen-utils 0.1, which contains various utilities for creating dzen
input strings in a type-safe way using some combinators, including the
ability to apply colors locally (instead of applying for everything
beyond some point). It can also emulate dbar and gdbar, do automatic
padding, and more.
Discussion
transformers versus mtl. Ganesh Sittampalam began a [36]discussion on
the relative status of the 'transformers' and 'mtl' packages.
least fixed points above something. Jens Blanck [37]asked about a
function to compute fixed points starting from a seed value (as opposed
to computing the least defined fixed point).
Type equality proof. Martijn van Steenbergen [38]requested feedback on
a proposed module collecting utilities for working with type equality
proofs.
What unsafeInterleaveIO is unsafe. Yusaku Hashimoto began a
[39]discussion by asking why unsafeInterleaveIO is considered unsafe,
or under what circumstances its use can be considered safe.
Jobs
How do students learn Haskell? Postgraduate project at University of
Kent. S.J.Thompson [40]announced that funding is available for a
[41]postgraduate project to study how students learn Haskell, based on
the wealth of data collected through the instrumented version of the
[42]Helium system for Haskell. The project will be supervised by Simon
Thompson and Sally Fincher, in collaboration with Jurriaan Hage,
Utrecht University.
Blog noise
[43]Haskell news from the [44]blogosphere.
* Neil Mitchell: [45]Concise Generic Queries. Neil compares solving a
query problem with several different generic programming libraries.
* Jeff Heard: [46]Preview: Data Waves. A neat new type of data
visualization, built using Hieroglyph.
* >>> necrobious: [47]A fun example of Haskell's newtype.
* GHC / OpenSPARC Project: [48]Peak issue rate is 18.64 Gig
instrs/sec.
* happstack.com: [49]Jeremy Shaw creates first Facebook App with
Happstack.
* GHC / OpenSPARC Project: [50]Peak performance.
* Galois, Inc: [51]Solving Sudoku Using Cryptol.
* Xmonad: [52]xmonad on ubuntu. A tutorial on getting started with
xmonad on Ubuntu.
* Don Stewart (dons): [53]Visualising the Haskell Universe. Pretty
dependency graphs of ten thousand Haskell modules!
* >>> Sean Chapel: [54]Haskell.
* >>> Dean Berris: [55]The Haskell Experiment: HaskellDB, HTTP, and
Monads.
* Holumbus: [56]Hayoo! Update. The Hayoo! package index has been
updated to include everything currently on Hackage!
* >>> John Wiegley: [57]Journey into Haskell, Part 1. John ventures
down the rabbit hole.
* Bjorn Buckwalter: [58]Blogging with Pandoc, literate Haskell, and a
bug.
* Bjorn Buckwalter: [59]Extended sessions with the Haskell Curl
bindings.
* Brent Yorgey: [60]Monad.Reader #13 is out!.
* Manuel M T Chakravarty: [61]Final version of "GPU Kernels as
Data-Parallel Array Computations in Haskell"..
* Xmonad: [62]Visualising xmonad.
* Darcs: [63]darcs weekly news #21.
* mightybyte: [64]Transactional Integrity Problem.
* >>> Dean Berris: [65]The Haskell Experiment: Learning a New
Programming Language.
* >>> John Wiegley: [66]Hello Haskell, Goodbye Lisp.
Quotes of the Week
* ray: three dimensional zippers make my scalp hurt when i get my
hair caught in them
* dolio: [regarding a paypal spam message on #haskell] Take that,
Harrop! Does OCaml have illegal cracking utilities?
* lament: I think I speak for everyone in this channel when I say
haskell is absolutely horrible and nobody would ever want to use it
* MiguelMitrofanov: The first glimpse of this [logo] vote scared me
so much that I've closed the page, stopped the browser, and shut my
computer down.
* osfameron: <ImInYourMonad> can I store gtk2hs-Buttons in a
datastructure? <osfameron> ImInYourMonad: I think you have to sew
them on with gtk2hs-Thread
* chrisdone: I think you mean Peyton `Simon` Jones.
About the Haskell Weekly News
New editions are posted to [67]the Haskell mailing list as well as to
[68]the Haskell Sequence and [69]Planet Haskell. [70]RSS is also
available, and headlines appear on [71]haskell.org.
To help create new editions of this newsletter, please see the
information on [72]how to contribute. Send stories to byorgey at cis
dot upenn dot edu. The darcs repository is available at darcs get
[73]http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/ .
References
1. http://haskell.org/
2. http://blog.happstack.com/2009/03/18/jeremy-shaw-creates-first-facebook-app-with-happstack/
3. http://www.galois.com/blog/2009/03/18/solving-sudoku-using-cryptol/
4. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.glasgow.user/16506
5. http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/haskell/2009-March/021116.html
6. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/The_Monad.Reader
7. http://vis.renci.org/jeff/2009/03/20/preview-data-waves/
8. http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/visualising-the-haskell-universe/
9. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/55109
10. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.glasgow.user/16506
11. http://www.haskell.org/ghc/dist/6.10.2-rc1/
12. http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/haskell/2009-March/021116.html
13. http://repetae.net/computer/jhc/
14. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16977
15. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/safe%2Dlazy%2Dio
16. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16976
17. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/game%2Dtree
18. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/55159
19. http://haskell.mperillo.ath.cx/random-shuffle-0.0.2.tar.gz
20. http://okmij.org/ftp/Haskell/perfect-shuffle.txt
21. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/55143
22. http://haskell.mperillo.ath.cx/random-stream-0.0.1.tar.gz
23. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/55116
24. http://projects.haskell.org/language-python/
25. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/55109
26. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/55073
27. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/regex%2Dtdfa
28. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/55036
29. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/54959
30. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/libffi
31. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/54958
32. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/54880
33. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/The_Monad.Reader
34. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/54835
35. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/dzen-utils
36. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/10807
37. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/55132
38. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/54946
39. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/54840
40. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16967
41. http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/research/pg/
42. http://www.cs.uu.nl/wiki/Helium
43. http://planet.haskell.org/
44. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Blog_articles
45. http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2009/03/concise-generic-queries.html
46. http://vis.renci.org/jeff/2009/03/20/preview-data-waves/
47. http://necrobious.blogspot.com/2009/03/fun-example-of-haskells-newtype.html
48. http://ghcsparc.blogspot.com/2009/03/peak-issue-rate-is-1864-gig-instrssec.html
49. http://blog.happstack.com/2009/03/18/jeremy-shaw-creates-first-facebook-app-with-happstack/
50. http://ghcsparc.blogspot.com/2009/03/peak-performance.html
51. http://www.galois.com/blog/2009/03/18/solving-sudoku-using-cryptol/
52. http://xmonad.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/xmonad-on-ubuntu/
53. http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/visualising-the-haskell-universe/
54. http://seanchapel.blogspot.com/2009/03/haskell.html
55. http://www.deanberris.com/mental-blabberings/2009/3/17/the-haskell-experiment-haskelldb-http-and-monads.html
56. http://holumbus.fh-wedel.de/blog/?p=19
57. http://www.newartisans.com/2009/03/journey-into-haskell-part-1.html
58. http://flygdynamikern.blogspot.com/2009/03/blogging-with-pandoc-literate-haskell.html
59. http://flygdynamikern.blogspot.com/2009/03/extended-sessions-with-haskell-curl.html
60. http://byorgey.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/monadreader-13-is-out/
61. http://justtesting.org/post/86905420
62. http://xmonad.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/visualising-xmonad/
63. http://blog.darcs.net/2009/03/darcs-weekly-news-21.html
64. http://softwaresimply.blogspot.com/2008/02/transactional-integrity-problem.html
65. http://www.deanberris.com/mental-blabberings/2009/3/14/the-haskell-experiment-learning-a-new-programming-language.html
66. http://www.newartisans.com/2009/03/hello-haskell-goodbye-lisp.html
67. http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
68. http://sequence.complete.org/
69. http://planet.haskell.org/
70. http://sequence.complete.org/node/feed
71. http://haskell.org/
72. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HWN
73. http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/
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