raw machine standard

Jan Skibinski jans@numeric-quest.com
Wed, 31 Jan 2001 18:54:55 -0500 (EST)


	I sympathize with Henrik idea about the developing
	the "raw", rich, machine interface standard. I appreciate it
	because I already experienced the impact of incompatibilities
	on development of Haskell Module Browser.

	I use NHC and Hugs interfaces as helpers an guidelines 
	even though I do extract other information directly
	from sources. From this perspective I consider it one of
	the priorities, especially because Henrik made me realize
	that the incompatibilities could multiply when an implementor
	decided one day to switch to a new format. And this looks
	quite probable - vide the announcement of the new version of Hugs.
	It appears that Johan Nordlander is taking over the Hugs
	maintenance.

	Examples of incompatibilities between NHC and Hugs
	interfaces are numerous. One good example is different
	representation of function signatures:
	f :: a -> a -> Int		   - Hugs
	f :: (a -> (a -> Prelude.Int))     - NHC

	Jan