[Haskell] Haskell': Kicking off the process of defining the next Haskell standard.

[Isaac Jones]

let haskell' = succ haskell98 in

Announcing the Haskell' ("Haskell-Prime") process.  A short time ago,
I asked for volunteers to help with the next Haskell standard.  A
brave group has spoken up, and we've organized ourselves into a
committee in order to coordinate the community's work.  It will be the
committee's task to bring together the very best ideas and work of the
broader community in an "open-source" way, and to fill in any gaps in
order to make Haskell' as coherent and elegant as Haskell 98.

Our task is broadly defined by our mission statement:

    The Haskell programming language is more-or-less divided into two
    "branches".  The Haskell 98 standard is the "stable" branch of the
    language, and that has been a big success.  A lot of progress has been
    made over the last few years in the "research" branch of the Haskell
    language.  It is constantly advancing, and we feel that it is time for
    a new standard which reflects those advancements.

    Haskell' will be a conservative refinement of Haskell 98. It will
    be the work of this committee to adopt a set of language
    extensions and modifications and to standardize a new set of
    libraries.

    We will strive to only include tried-and-true language features,
    and to define them at least as rigorously as Haskell 98 was
    defined. This standard will reflect the realities of developing
    practical applications in the Haskell language. We will work closely
    with the rest of the Haskell community to create this standard.

Your Haskell' Committee is as follows (slightly munged email addresses
follow):

 * Manuel M T Chakravarty <chak at cse.unsw.edu.au>
 * John Goerzen <jgoerzen at complete.org>
 * Bastiaan Heeren <bastiaan at cs.uu.nl>
 * Isaac Jones <ijones at galois.com>
 * John Launchbury <john at galois.com>
 * Andres Loeh <loeh at iai.uni-bonn.de>
 * Simon Marlow <simonmar at microsoft.com>
 * John Meacham <john at repetae.net>
 * Ravi Nanavati <ravi at bluespec.com>
 * Henrik Nilsson <nhn at cs.nott.ac.uk>
 * Ross Paterson <ross at soi.city.ac.uk>
 * Simon Peyton-Jones <simonpj at microsoft.com>
 * Don Stewart <dons at cse.unsw.edu.au>
 * Audrey Tang <autrijus at gmail.com>
 * Simon J. Thompson <S.J.Thompson at kent.ac.uk>
 * Malcolm Wallace <Malcolm.Wallace at cs.york.ac.uk>
 * Stephanie Weirich <sweirich at cis.upenn.edu>

The editors are Isaac Jones and John Launchbury.

Feel free to contact any of us with any concerns or questions.  If you
don't know who to direct your questions to, email Isaac Jones
ijones at syntaxpolice.org.

Community involvement is vital to our task, and there will be a way
for members of the community to make formal proposals.  In the opening
phases, please use these more informal resources to help us coordinate
Haskell':

 * The haskell-prime mailing list.  All technical discussion will take
   place here, or (if other meetings take place) be reported here.  Anyone
   can subscribe, and any subscriber can post questions and comments,
   and participate in discussions.  Anyone can read the list archives.
   http://haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-prime

 * A wiki / issue tracking system to document consensus and to track
   ongoing tasks.  This system is publicly readable, but only
   committee writable so that we may present it as the "official"
   output of the committee.  If you ever feel that the wiki is not
   accurate as to the consensus, please alert the committee!
   http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime

 * A darcs code repository for experiments, proposed libraries,and
   complex examples.  darcs is a decentralized system, so anyone can use
   it, but patches should be sent to Isaac Jones:
   http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime/wiki/SourceCode

Please join us in making Haskell' a success.


your,

  Haskell' Committee


p.s. Please feel free to forward this announcement to appropriate forums.