Ignoring the issue of whether the current Prelude would be improved
using a more general class heirarchy, let me point out the real
failing of Haskell here. The problem is not so much that the prelude
doesn't work the way you want it to, but rather that there is no way
to build your own prelude using the conventional names for things such
as + or -. Quite a bit of the basic Haskell vocabulary is in
PreludeCore, including the entire class structure of the Prelude and
all associated class methods. Once in PreludeCore, these names cannot
be redefined or hidden.
There is no compelling reason for this - I think at the very least the
1.3 folks should eliminate PreludeCore in some way so that the system
no longer reserves all of the numeric operators for it's own. At
least this way we will not be forced into this `one Prelude fits all'
situation.
John Peterson
Yale Haskell Project
