GUI Library Task Force

[Manuel M. T. Chakravarty]

Ian Lynagh <igloo@earth.li> wrote,

> On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 10:59:55PM +1000, Manuel M. T. Chakravarty wrote:
> > 
> > Currently, there doesn't seem to be much interest in going
> > for a completely new version of Haskell.  The idea of adding
> > addenda to H98 and so slowly and in incremental steps move
> > to more functionality seems to be more popular.
> 
> The preface of the report says
> 
>     Haskell has evolved continuously since its orignal publication.
>     By the middle of 1997, there had been four versions of the
>     language (the latest at that point being Haskell 1.4). At the
>     1997 Haskell Workshop in Amsterdam, it was decided that a stable
>     variant of Haskell was needed; this stable language is the
>     subject of this Report, and is called "Haskell 98".
> 
>     Haskell 98 was conceived as a relatively minor tidy-up of Haskell
>     1.4, making some simplifications, and removing some pitfalls for
>     the unwary. It is intended to be a "stable" language in sense the
>     implementors are committed to supporting Haskell 98 exactly as
>     specified, for the foreseeable future.
> 
> I don't think this is compatible with things like adding support
> for the library hierarchy with multiple dots to Haskell 98 as you
> will then be able to write a program that is valid Haskell 98 by
> todays definition but not yesterdays. OTOH if what you mean is
> adding support incrementally to todays *tools* and declaring H98
> with a set of the new features to be Haskell 2 at some point in
> the future then I don't have a problem with that.

The latter.  H98 as such will remain untouched.

Cheers,
Manuel