Folks
This message is to update you on the state of play so far
as Standard Haskell is concerned. I'm circulating to three
Haskell-related mailing lists; in future I'll mail only
the "haskell" list, so pls subscribe to it if you want to
see anything more.
You may remember that John Hughes has been running the
Standard Haskell process, but he's been unable to devote much
time to it lately, so I've agreed to take on that role.
I've summarised the current state of play at
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~simonpj/std-haskell.html
The introductory paragraphs from that page appear below,
but the details don't. As you'll see, the idea is that
Standard Haskell should be a rather small increment (or decrement)
from Haskell 1.4, and I'm keen to get the thing done fairly
quickly. (I'd be more precise, only my summer is a bit uncertain
because of my move to Cambridge.)
The summary page says what's decided, what's about to be decided,
and what isn't decided. I'd be interested in your opinions about
any of these things. Please send them to me or any other member
of the Std Haskell committee (below). You're also free to send
messages to the Haskell mailing list, of course.
Simon
==============================================
Standard Haskell: State of Play
Following the 1997 Haskell Workshop, much intervening work by the
Standard Haskell committee, and then an informal meeting at
Working Group 2.8 (Oregon, April 1998),
there are now two separate Haskell language-design efforts:
Standard Haskell, and Haskell 2.
* Standard Haskell is, as was originally agreed at the 1997 Haskell
Workshop, a minor revision of Haskell 1.4, cleaning up traps but NOT adding
major new functionality. and thereby give Haskell the stability that has so far
been lacking.
* Over the past year it has become clear that there are a large number
of interesting proposed developments to Haskell: multi-parameter type
classes, pattern guard, scoped type variable, local universal and
existential quantification, and so on. John Launchbury is
leading the development of <b>Haskell 2</b>, which will embody
these extensions. Much of the discussion among the Standard Haskell committee
will transfer into the Haskell 2 effort.
Standard Haskell will therefore by no means be the last revision of Haskell. On
the contrary, we design it knowing that it will be superceded within one or two
years. But it will have a special status: <b>the intention is that Haskell
compilers will continue to support Standard Haskell (given an appropriate flag)
even after later versions of the language have been defined</b>, and in that
sense the name `Standard Haskell' won't refer to a moving target.
It's clear that those of us who want to keep up with the latest developments
will soon move to Haskell 2, but it also seems clear that there is a
substantial user community who will not. This strategy serves both. I think
another advantage is that the `dusty deck' problem will be much less of an
issue in the design of Haskell 2.0, because the dusty decks will remain in
Standard Haskell. So this strategy also gives a once-only opportunity to make
language changes (in the step to Haskell 2) which <i>do</i> break a lot of old
code. Strict pattern matching may yet raise its ugly head again...!
==================================================
John Hughes, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Lennart Augustsson , [EMAIL PROTECTED]
David Barton , [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Richard Bird , [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ralf Hinze , [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Paul Hudak , [EMAIL PROTECTED]
John Launchbury, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
David Lester , [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Jeff Lewis, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Erik Meijer , [EMAIL PROTECTED]
John Peterson , [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Simon Peyton-Jones , [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Colin Runciman , [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Simon Thompson , [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phil Wadler , [EMAIL PROTECTED]
