[Haskell] Haskell Weekly News: Issue 92 - November 8, 2008

Brent Yorgey byorgey at seas.upenn.edu
Sat Nov 8 14:53:37 EST 2008


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Haskell Weekly News
http://sequence.complete.org/hwn/20081108
Issue 92 - November 08, 2008
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   Welcome to issue 92 of HWN, a newsletter covering developments in the
   [1]Haskell community.

   GHC 6.10 is released!! Go forth and drool over its new features. Be
   sure to have the editline libraries (libedit-dev on Debian/Ubuntu, for
   example) installed before you try building it.

Announcements

   GHC version 6.10.1. Ian Lynagh [2]announced the release of [3]GHC
   version 6.10.1! This new major release features a number of significant
   changes, including wild-card patterns, punning, and field
   disambiguation in record syntax; generalised quasi-quotes; generalised
   SQL-like list comprehensions; view patterns; a complete
   reimplementation of type families; parallel garbage collection; a new
   extensible exception framework; a more user-friendly API; included Data
   Parallel Haskell (DPH); and more! See [4]the full release notes for
   more information.

   new community.haskell.org features: webspace, mailing lists. Ian Lynagh
   [5]announced that the community server, http://community.haskell.org/,
   has two new features for hosted projects: project webspace, and project
   mailing lists.

   GHC blog. Simon Marlow [6]has set up a [7]GHC blog. This is for all
   things related to GHC, particularly people working on GHC to blog about
   what they're up to. If you want a write-bit, sign up for a [8]wordpress
   account, let Simon know your account name, and blog away! The GHC blog
   should be syndicated on [9]Planet Haskell soon.

   Haddock 2.4.0. David Waern [10]announced a [11]new release of
   [12]Haddock, the Haskell documentation tool. This is a later version
   than the one shipped with GHC 6.10.1, which is version 2.3.0. That
   version will not be released on Hackage since it only builds with GHC
   6.10.1 (by accident, actually). Besides adding back support for earlier
   GHC versions, this release contains some more fixes and support for
   HTML frames.

   htags-1.0. David Sankel [13]announced the [14]htags package, a tag file
   generator to enable extra functionality in editors like vim. It expands
   upon hasktags by using a full Haskell 98 parser and options for
   recursion.

   Haskell Quick Reference (1-page PDF). Malcolm Wallace [15]sent a 1-page
   Haskell quick reference prepared for a recent Haskell tutorial.
   Permission is granted for anyone to distribute it more widely as they
   wish, in the hope that it might be useful. Editable sources can be
   passed along if anyone would like to extend it.

   Proposal for associated type synonyms in Template Haskell. Thomas van
   Noort [16]submitted a proposal for adding associated type synonyms to
   Template Haskell. Comments are welcomed.

   announce [("InfixApplicative", 1.0), ("OpenGLCheck", 1.0), ("obj",
   0.1)]. Thomas Davie [17]announced the upload of a few packages to
   Hackage which he has produced while working at Anygma. [18]obj-0.1 is a
   library for loading and writing obj 3D models; [19]OpenGLCheck-1.0 is a
   micro-package containing instances of Arbitrary for the data structures
   provided in Graphics.Rendering.OpenGL; and [20]InfixApplicative-1.0 is
   a second micro-package containing a pair of functions (<^) and (^>)
   which can be used to provide an infix version of liftA2 applied to an
   operator.

   Graphalyze-0.5 and SourceGraph-0.3. Ivan Lazar Miljenovic [21]announced
   the latest versions of [22]Graphalyze and [23]SourceGraph, which fix a
   couple of bugs in the previous versions.

   zlib and bzlib 0.5 releases. Duncan Coutts [24]announced updates to the
   [25]zlib and [26]bzlib packages, featuring a slightly nicer extended
   API. The simple API that most packages use is unchanged. There is also
   a new parameter to control the size of the first output buffer; this
   lets applications save memory when they happen to have a good estimate
   of the output size.

Discussion

   Efficient parallel regular expressions. Martijn van Steenbergen
   [27]asked about efficiently running multiple regular expressions in
   parallel, leading to an interesting discussion of regular expressions
   and various parsing methods and libraries.

   Problems with strictness analysis?. Patai Gergely started an
   informative [28]discussion about strictness, laziness, strictness
   analysis, and compiler optimization. If you don't know a lot about
   these topics but would like to learn, this thread is a good starting
   point!

Jobs

   1-year postdoc position in Chalmers Functional Programming group. John
   Hughes [29]announced a position for a post-doctoral researcher with the
   Chalmers Functional Programming Group, with a one-year tax-free stipend
   funded by Intel. The funded project will develop a Domain Specific
   Language (DSL) for high level modelling, design and analysis of
   hardware and microarchitectures.

Blog noise

   [30]Haskell news from the [31]blogosphere.
     * Edward Kmett: [32]Still Alive. Edward is still alive but sadly lost
       a few recursion scheme posts. =(
     * >>> Max Rabkin: [33]Beautiful folding. A very cool post about
       composable folds!
     * Eric Kow (kowey): [34]timesheet helper.
     * Philip Wadler: [35]A bizarre function over streams.
     * David Sankel: [36]Introducing Reactive: Events. A very readable
       introduction to the Reactive library. I look forward to reading
       more!
     * "FP Lunch": [37]Numbers vs Sets.
     * Mark Jason Dominus: [38]Addenda to recent articles 200810.
     * Darcs: [39]darcs weekly news #11.
     * >>> Ken G.: [40]Haskell?. Ken shares some thoughts on Real World
       Haskell.
     * Real-World Haskell: [41]Some early reviews.
     * David Sankel: [42]freeglut + Windows + HOpenGL + HGLUT.
     * GHC mutterings: [43]GHC 6.10.1 is out!.
     * Chung-chieh Shan: [44]Cognitive jobs.
     * London Haskell Users Group: [45]Duncan Coutts: The Haskell
       Platform. The abstract for Duncan's talk at the London HUG.
     * Well-Typed.Com: [46]GHC 6.10.1 released!.
     * Well-Typed.Com: [47]Haskell Platform talk at the London Haskell
       Users Group.
     * Mark Wassell: [48]GIS with Haskell 1.
     * >>> phoenix: [49]Haskell Tricks: Indexing a List. Getting the index
       of an element satisfying a predicate by zipping.
     * JP Moresmau: [50]Haskell for counting votes!. JP illustrates five
       different voting methods with some Haskell implementations.
     * Ivan Lazar Miljenovic: [51]Graph Theoretic Analysis of
       Relationships within Discrete Data.
     * Braden Shepherdson: [52]Pimp Your XMonad #1: Status bars. The first
       in a planned series of articles on not-so-well-known ways to extend
       your xmonad configuration.
     * >>> Cory: [53]Euler and Haskell. Cory just started learning Haskell
       (a "fun, slightly ridiculous language") via Project Euler.
     * >>> Sadek Drobi: [54]Code Safety and Correctness is a matter of
       Mindset Cultured by the Language.
     * Well-Typed.Com: [55]zlib and bzlib package updates.
     * >>> Bryan St. Amour: [56]Haskell Solution To The Farmer Problem.
     * >>> Nathan Hartman: [57]Haskell, Lambert, and the Clarke Ellipsoid.
       Nathan has started porting a map projection library to Haskell.
     * David Sankel: [58]Analysis of lazy-stream programs..

Quotes of the Week

     * Cory: Any language which makes frequent use of monads, functors and
       has a wikibook describing its relation to category theory is the
       result of an evil genius (or several, to be precise).
     * mmorrow: in langs with dependent types, you can just map numbers
       directly to types instead of having to ride a unicycle along a
       tightrope while battling an unruly gang of monkeys with knives.
     * conal: -fsemantics-shemantics
     * roconnor: all sorts of wonderful things could be done if we are
       less anal about bottoms. No pun intended.

About the Haskell Weekly News

   New editions are posted to [59]the Haskell mailing list as well as to
   [60]the Haskell Sequence and [61]Planet Haskell. [62]RSS is also
   available, and headlines appear on [63]haskell.org.

   To help create new editions of this newsletter, please see the
   information on [64]how to contribute. Send stories to byorgey at cis
   dot upenn dot edu. The darcs repository is available at darcs get
   [65]http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/ .

References

   1. http://haskell.org/
   2. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.glasgow.user/15591
   3. http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
   4. http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/6.10.1/html/users_guide/release-6-10-1.html
   5. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16600
   6. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.glasgow.user/15603
   7. http://ghcmutterings.wordpress.com/
   8. http://wordpress.com/
   9. http://planet.haskell.org/
  10. http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/haskell-cafe/2008-November/050271.html
  11. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/haddock-2.4.0
  12. http://www.haskell.org/haddock
  13. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16582
  14. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/htags
  15. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/47344
  16. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/47301
  17. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/47241
  18. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/obj
  19. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/OpenGLCheck
  20. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/InfixApplicative
  21. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/47171
  22. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/Graphalyze
  23. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/SourceGraph
  24. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/47144
  25. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/zlib
  26. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/bzlib
  27. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/47242
  28. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/47183
  29. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16596
  30. http://planet.haskell.org/
  31. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Blog_articles
  32. http://comonad.com/reader/2008/still-alive/
  33. http://squing.blogspot.com/2008/11/beautiful-folding.html
  34. http://koweycode.blogspot.com/2008/11/timesheet-wishlist.html
  35. http://wadler.blogspot.com/2008/11/bizarre-function-over-streams.html
  36. http://netsuperbrain.com/blog/posts/introducing-reactive-events/
  37. http://sneezy.cs.nott.ac.uk/fplunch/weblog/?p=114
  38. http://blog.plover.com/addenda/200810.html
  39. http://blog.darcs.net/2008/11/darcs-weekly-news-11.html
  40. http://monolith149daily.blogspot.com/2008/11/haskell.html
  41. http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/2008/11/06/some-early-reviews/
  42. http://netsuperbrain.com/blog/posts/freeglut-windows-hopengl-hglut/
  43. http://ghcmutterings.wordpress.com/2008/11/05/ghc-6101-is-out/
  44. http://conway.rutgers.edu/~ccshan/wiki/blog/posts/Cognitive_jobs/
  45. http://www.londonhug.net/2008/11/04/duncan-coutts-the-haskell-platform/
  46. http://blog.well-typed.com/2008/11/ghc-6101-released/
  47. http://blog.well-typed.com/2008/11/haskell-platform-talk-at-the-london-haskell-users-group/
  48. http://pound-stone.blogspot.com/2008/11/gis-with-haskell-1.html
  49. http://phoenixblitz.blogspot.com/2008/11/haskell-tricks-indexing-list.html
  50. http://jpmoresmau.blogspot.com/2008/11/haskell-for-counting-votes.html
  51. http://ivanmiljenovic.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/graph-theoretic-analysis-of-relationships-within-discrete-data/
  52. http://braincrater.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/pimp-your-xmonad-1-status-bars/
  53. http://onag.blogspot.com/2008/11/euler-and-haskell.html
  54. http://sadekdrobi.com/2008/11/02/code-safety-and-correctness-is-a-matter-of-mindset-cultured-by-the-language/
  55. http://blog.well-typed.com/2008/11/zlib-and-bzlib-package-updates/
  56. http://bryanstamour.com/?p=49
  57. http://parsemymonad.blogspot.com/2008/10/haskell-lambert-and-clarke-ellipsoid.html
  58. http://netsuperbrain.com/blog/posts/analysis-of-lazy-stream-programs/
  59. http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
  60. http://sequence.complete.org/
  61. http://planet.haskell.org/
  62. http://sequence.complete.org/node/feed
  63. http://haskell.org/
  64. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HWN
  65. http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/


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