Backward compatibility (was: patch for `interact')

[Sigbjorn Finne]

"Malcolm Wallace" <Malcolm.Wallace@cs.york.ac.uk> writes:
> >
> > Thanks, this is a long-standing and known feature of Hugs' interact
> > implementation, [...] are there 'important' resources
> > (e.g., textbooks and tutorials) based around Hugs98 that depend on
> > the current non-echoing behaviour?
>
> Bird (2nd ed) makes use of the non-echoing interact, and describes
> another, programmed, solution to restore echoing, all on a single page
> (pp.230).
>

ok, thanks - i'll look this up once back from the holidays. As one half of
the new Hugs maintainer duo (Galois Connections is taking over maintenance
of Hugs -- Jeff Lewis being the other half), I think it is important we pay
special attention to the needs of book authors and teachers of Haskell, as
we go forward.

There are a number of changes I'd like to see Hugs adopt: better Haskell98
compliance (e.g., clean up the Prelude, adopt your change to
Prelude.interact),
move over to use the new hierachic library structure etc.

These changes are likely to have a number of minor upsetting effects on
existing
code, so finding ways to minimise or avoid these alltogether needs to be
considered
first. My current thinking is to try stabilise the current sources until we
end up with
a release that proves to be stable, and then probably fork the development
tree.

If anyone using Hugs for teaching or rely on it for a textbook have feedback
on
how Hugs could better serve their needs, I'd be really interested to hear
from
them.

--sigbjorn