>>>>> "Bas" == Bas van Dijk <v.dijk....@gmail.com> writes:
Bas> On 6 April 2011 17:34, Colin Paul Adams <co...@colina.demon.co.uk>
wrote:
>> Allowed? Allowed for what?
Bas> Allowed to be called a Haskell file.
Well, what the report says on that is irrelevant. If I see a file
containing Haskell code, I shall call it a Haskell file, irrespective. I
suspect I will be in the majority.
Bas> If the report doesn't specify what a Haskell file is then we
Bas> can't reliably exchange Haskell source files by only looking at
Bas> the files themselves.
Sure we can.
>> What does it achieve? Nothing, as far as I can see. Authors will
>> still be able to write their Haskell code in any encoding they
>> like. And any compiler can have a front-end script with an option
>> to specify the encoding used by source files, which simply uses
>> iconv on the fly to translate.
Bas> Suppose I give you MyHaskellFile.hs. But before telling you how
Bas> it's encoded I go gliding (a hobby of mine). Unfortunately I
Bas> crash my glider and die :-(. Now what encoding option do you
Bas> give to your front-end script?
Whatever the encoding happens to be. That won't be hard to find out. And
presumably Haskell programmers don't dies so very frequently that it
will become a time-consuming affair.
>> I think the real place to mandate UTF-8 would be for
>> Hackage. That's where it matters (an alternative design would be
>> to add an encoding field in the .cabal file, but I don't think
>> this has much merit).
Bas> That would only allow users of Hackage and Cabal to reliably
Bas> exchange their Haskell files. If we specify it in the report
Bas> every user can benefit.
There is no benefit that I see. Anyone is free to write Haskell code in
whatever encoding they fancy. Irrespective of what the report says. It's
not going to have the force of law.
--
Colin Adams
Preston Lancashire
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