[Haskell] Haskell Weekly News: November 1, 2005

[John Goerzen]

                     Haskell Weekly News: November 1, 2005

   Greetings, and thanks for reading the 13th 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

     * Time Library 0.2. Ashley Yakeley [3]announced a draft of a new time
       library and solicited comments.

   3. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/3882

Calls for participation

   HCAR entries due TODAY. Andres Loeh posted a [4]reminder that entries for
   the Haskell Communities and Activities Report are due today.

   4. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/8876

Discussion

   Undecidable instances. In a [5]thread about the need for undecidable
   instances, Johannes Waldmann [6]suggested the use of termination
   analyzers.

   5. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/12334
   6. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/12343

   Finding the character frequency in a string. Jon Fairbairn started an
   interesting [7]thread about calculating the frequency each character in a
   string occurs.

   7. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/8869

   FFI and modifying Haskell memory. Joel Reymont [8]asked about proper FFI
   design for programs that read data in.

   8. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/8834

Haskell Toolchain

   GHC assembly. John Meacham [9]posted an analysis of GHC's assembly output,
   a comparison to jhc, and some suggestions for improving GHC's output.

   9. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.glasgow.user/8827

   Data.* collections maintenance. This large [10]thread on the libraries
   list covered potential future directions for the Data.* libraries.

  10. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/3813

Quotes of the Week

   For those that adhere to learn one new language per year which other
   languages should we learn?
   Matz suggests io (or Haskell but he admits it makes his brain explode).
   -- From RubyConf 2005 Roundtable discussion with Yukihiro "Matz"
   Matsumoto, creator of Ruby.

The Meta-FAQ

   Q: What happened to HWN last week?

   A: The answer to this question really goes back to the 16th century and
   the first movements in Europe to modernize astronomy away from the
   earth-centric view. But it wasn't really until Newton's time (late 17th
   and early 18th centuries) that we started to have the more advanced
   understanding necessary to begin answering this question. Modern
   astronomers have been able to calculate the period of the earth at
   86164.09053 seconds, which is a few minutes shorter than the apparent day
   due to the earth's simultaneous orbit around the sun.

   The second part of the answer to this question dates back even farther to
   ancient Egypt. The Egyptians used a duo-decimal numbering system, and
   found it convenient to separate each day into 24 equal units. Since then,
   other definitions for the hour have come in to play, usually based on the
   apparent solar day or the time between sunrise and sunset. These days, the
   hour is defined at 3600 seconds.

   While each day appears to consist of approximately 24 hours, the period of
   the earth really is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.09053 seconds. (I for one
   am pleased to receive the extra 4 minutes per day.)

   So, we can see that the problem really is that there just weren't enough
   hours in a day for your HWN editor to get the issue out on time last week.
   I blame it on the ancient Egyptians.

   Q: Would HWN have come out on time if you hadn't had to prepare a lengthy
   explanation for why it was late?

   A: Good question. You should medidate on that for awhile and let us know
   for next week's HWN.

   Q: Does this issue cover two weeks of fascinating Haskell news then?

   A: Of course!

About Haskell Weekly News

   Thanks to Jim Apple and Josef Svenningsson for contributing to this week's
   HWN.

   Want to continue reading HWN? Please help us create new editions of this
   newsletter. Please see the [11]contributing information, or send stories
   to hwn -at- complete -dot- org. There is also a Darcs repository
   available.

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