[Haskell] Call for Contributions - HC&A Report (May 2004 edition)

[Arthur van Leeuwen]

Dear Haskellers,

two changes of season and one of editor later, we strongly suspect
the Haskell community has also moved along admirably. Thus comes
the need to refresh our list of all things Haskell, and give *you*
the opportunity to tell all the world about your passion. 
We invite your contributions to the imminent sixth edition of the

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

                Submission deadline: 7 May 2004

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

The Haskell Communities & Activities Reports biannually report on
the state of Haskell over the last 6 months, and sometimes on plans 
for the next 6 months. If you have only recently joined the Haskell
world, browse the November 2003 edition -- you will find an overview
of what's going on as well as starting points and links that may
provide many answers.

We would much like you to send your contributions in by the first week
of May, and will then endeavor to publish the collective report roughly
a month before the start of summer. Note that this is a great opportunity
to gauge the state of your research, update your web pages, release new
versions, announce entirely new projects, summarize developments in
sub-communities for every Haskeller to see, etc. :)

The way we like to do things is have you update all existing summaries,
as the purpose of these reports is to show *recent/current* activities.
We will drop any topics that haven't had any activity since May 2003,
so if you haven't updated your topic since then, now is a good time!
Ofcourse, if you have new things to share, so much the better. We
would love to hear of it, and include it in the report. Please
keep your contributions short though, a couple hundred words maximum,
as we would like to keep the size of the report reasonable. It is
intended as an overview after all.

Looking forward to your contributions,

Arthur (interim editor, May 2004 edition)

----------------------------------- topics

New suggestions for current hot topics, activities, projects, etc.
are welcome - especially with names and addresses of potential    
contacts, but here is a non-exclusive list of likely topics
(see also http://www.haskell.org/communities/topics.html ):

General Haskell developments; Haskell implementations; Haskell      
  extensions; Standardization and documentation; Haskell tutorials,
  howtos and wikis; Organisation of Haskell tool and library    
  development; Haskell-related projects and publications; new
  research, fancy tools, long-awaited libraries, cool applications;

Feedback from specialist mailing lists to the Haskell community
  as a whole; Haskell announcements;  all (recent) things Haskell

Announcements: if you've announced anything new on the Haskell
  list over the last six months, you'll want to make sure that is
  reflected in this edition!

Project pings: if you're maintaining a Haskell tool or library or 
  somesuch, you'll want to let everyone know that it is still alive 
  and actively maintained, even if there have been no new additions,
  but all the more if there have been new developments.

Tutorials: if you've fought with some previously undocumented     
  corner of Haskell, and have been kind enough to write down how you
  did manage to build that graphical user interface, or if you'
  ve written a tutorial about some useful programming techniques, 
  this is your opportunity to spread the word (short, topic-specific,  
  and hands-on tutorials that only show how to achieve a certain   
  practical task would do a lot to make things easier for new    
  Haskellers - please write some!)

Applications: if you've been working quietly, using Haskell for      
  some interesting project or application (commercial or otherwise),
  you might want to let others know about what you're using Haskell
  for, and about your experiences using the existing tools and   
  libraries; are you using Haskell on your job?

  An interesting thread about using Haskell and more generally functional 
  programming for non-Haskell things seems to recur with reasonable
  frequency - why not write a sentence or two about your use of Haskell 
  for our report?

Feedback: if you're on one of the many specialist Haskell mailing
  lists, you'll want to report on whatever progress has been made 
  there (GUI API discussions, library organisation, etc.)


If you're unsure whether a contact for your area of work has come   
forward yet, have a look at the report's potential topics page, or 
get in touch with me.  I've contacted last time's contributors,  
hoping they will volunteer to provide updates of their reports, and
will update the contacts on the topics page fairly regularly.  But 
where you don't yet see contacts listed for your own subject of
interest, you are very welcome to volunteer, or to remind your local 
community/project team/mailing list/research group/etc. that they  
really ought to get their act together and let the Haskell community
as a whole know about what they've been doing! :-)

-------------------------- what should I write?

That depends on your topic, but as a general rule, it shouldn't take
you long. A simple sentence or two about your use of Haskell could
go into the "Individual Haskellers and their projects" section. If
you're a company, or if you're working on a project using Haskell as
the implementation language, a paragraph on that could go into the
"Commercial Applications" and "Non-Commercial Applications" sections.

A typical summary report about a tool/library/project/application/..
would be between 1 and 3 paragraphs of ASCII text (what's it about? 
major topics and results since the last report?  current hot topics?
major goals for the next six months?) plus pointers to material for
further reading (typically to a home page, or to mailing list      
archives, specifications and drafts, implementations, meetings,    
minutes,..).

For those who prefer templates to fill in, the report is edited in  
LaTeX, and an entry template might look something like this:


  \subsubsection{<MYSTUFF>}
  \report{<MY NAME}\\

  <WHAT IS IT?>

  <WHAT IS ITS STATUS? / WHAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE LAST TIME?>

  <CAN OTHERS GET IT?>

  <WHAT ARE THE IMMEDIATE PLANS?>

  <FURTHER READING>

  \url{<PROJECT URL>}


Browsing through previous editions should give you a good idea of
the variety of possibilities, ranging from very brief to extensive. 

-- 
Haskell Communities and Activities Report (May 2004 edition)
All contributions are due in by the 7th of May 2004!
http://www.haskell.org/communities/