[Haskell] Haskell Weekly News: August 23, 2005

Tue Aug 23 10:37:11 EDT 2005

                      Haskell Weekly News: August 23, 2005

   Greetings, and thanks for reading the fourth issue of HWN, a weekly
   newsletter for the Haskell community. Each Tuesday, new editions will be
   posted (as text) to [1]the Haskell mailing list and (as HTML) to [2]The
   Haskell Sequence.

   1. http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
   2. http://sequence.complete.org/

New Releases

     * ghc-src 0.2.0. Lemmih [3]announced ghc-src. ghc-src is a Haskell
       parser with full support for every GHC extension. It is based on the
       GHC source and is meant as a replacement for haskell-src-exts, though
       it could of course have other ueses. ghc-src is available via a Darcs
       [4]repository.
     * Cairo binding. Not a formal release, but [5]great progress is being
       made on the binding to the [6]Cairo vector graphics toolkit, including
       some working code.

   3. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/11987
   4. http://scannedinavian.org/~lemmih/ghc-src/
   5. http://haskell.org/gtk2hs/archives/category/cairo/
   6. http://www.cairographics.org/introduction

Discussion

   Category theory monads. Cale Gibbard began a [7]discussion comparing the
   monads from category theory with the implementation of monads in Haskell.
   Michael Vanier [8]suggested some of Phil Wadler's [9]papers on monads.
   Michael went on to say that Haskell monads are very similar to those from
   category theory.

   7. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/8044
   8. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/8046
   9. http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/topics/monads.html

   More on FFI and callbacks. The [10]thread on FFI and callbacks was revived
   this week. Among other things, Duncan Coutts [11]noted that there is no
   easy way to do a really correct binding to wxWidgets from Haskell when
   Haskell programs are multithreaded, due to limitations in Haskell's
   threading model.

  10. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/7862
  11. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/8065

   Oracle on Haskell. Brian Strand [12]asked about using Oracle on Haskell,
   and more generally, about the suitability of Haskell for database
   programming. Alistair Bayley [13]mentioned that [14]takusen has Oracle
   support. John Goerzen [15]suggested using HSQL's ODBC support, with
   unixODBC on *nix platforms. He went on to say that HSQL has been used in
   production environments. Krasimir Angelov, author of HSQL, [16]added that
   he's been wanting to add Oracle support to HSQL for awhile. Finally, Brian
   Strand later [17]followed up and said that takusen has been working well
   for him so far.

  12. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/8032
  13. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/8033
  14. http://cvs.sf.net/viewcvs.py/haskell-libs/libs/takusen/
  15. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/8041
  16. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/8042
  17. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/8047

   Pros and cons of static typing. Keean Schupke [18]revived an [19]earlier
   discussion about the pros and cons of static typing and side effects.

  18. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/8020
  19. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/11950

   Static typing and interactivity. On a similar note, Ketil Malde [20]wrote
   about not being able to load modules with type errors into ghci. Bernard
   Pope [21]suggested the type debugger in [22]Chameleon.

  20. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/8037
  21. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/8045
  22. http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~sulzmann/chameleon/

   Argument ordering. A [23]thread about the order of arguments to functions
   entertained many different viewpoints this week. Too many to really
   summarize here.

  23. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/3622

   Decoupling and encapsulation. Terrence Brannon [24]wrote about decoupling
   program elements from presentation, as in HTML generators. He included a
   link to his document describing architectural flaws in Perl's HTML::Mason.

  24. http://sequence.complete.org/node/88

   Future of The Monad.Reader. Shae Erisson wrote on #haskell today that he
   is looking for someone to either take over, or help with, editing [25]The
   Monad.Reader, Haskell's monthly online magazine. Anyone that would like to
   help should contact him.

  25. http://www.haskell.org/hawiki/TheMonadReader

   How is HWN material found? I've received some questions this week about
   how I find material for HWN. The most obvious way is if someone sends it
   to me; see the link at the bottom of each HWN for contribution
   information. Other than that, I read the main Haskell mailing lists, the
   Haskell Sequence, and IRC looking for things to write about. I prefer to
   have stories linked in at least one of these places before covering them
   in HWN, since it gives readers a convenient place to follow discussion.

Haskell Toolchain

   Cabal design. Frederik Eaton started another [26]discussion about Cabal,
   this time focusing on run time vs. configure time issues, the usage of
   custom package.conf files, and multiple cabal files in one package. Isaac
   Jones [27]commented on most of those items. Duncan Coutts [28]suggested
   the ability to register a package "in place".

  26. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/3625
  27. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/3629
  28. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/3632

Darcs Corner

   Colordiff. Dmitriy Morozov [29]asked about using colordiff with darcs.
   Timo Savola [30]suggested a shell function to accomplish this.

  29. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.darcs.user/8065
  30. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.darcs.user/8066

   Linus and git. Juliusz Chroboczek [31]posted a link to a discussion about
   Git, and mentioned that it looks like they're re-inventing some Darcs
   features.

  31. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.darcs.user/8081

   Success with trac. Pedro Melo [32]posted about his success using trac (a
   SourceForge-like system) with Darcs.

  32. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.darcs.user/8073

Quotes of the Week

   Seen on #haskell today...

   <tuomov>	define drug
   <Itkovian>	anything that gets you addicted to
   <Itkovian>	potentially
   <Itkovian>	and that messes with yr senses
   <Lemmih>	Haskell?

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  33. http://sequence.complete.org/hwn-contrib