[Haskell] Haskell Weekly News: Issue 181

2011-05-11 Thread Daniel Santa Cruz 
   Welcome to issue 181 of the HWN, a newsletter covering developments
   in the Haskell community. This release covers the week of May 1 to
   7, 2011.

Announcements

   Last week I failed to note the announcement [http://goo.gl/ApClU]
   of a new version of Leksah (0.10.0). If you haven't yet, give
   Leksha a test run and send some feedback!

   Ketil Malde started a thread [http://goo.gl/Prlu2] about Robert
   Harper's thoughts on monads and laziness.

   Hakim Cassimally extended an invitation [http://goo.gl/QIjcF] to
   anyone living in the Northwest UK for Tuesday May 31st to Geekup's
   first ever "Functional Programming Night".

   Andy announced [http://goo.gl/uCEn1] a new release of Manatee
   (0.2.1).

Quotes of the Week

   * hpc: [SPOILER] You can check wikipedia for the definition of
 fibonacci sequences if you get stuck after half an hour

   * pmetzger: it is always possible to make an algorithm
 slower. just give it to a CS freshman to code up.

   * kmc: ghc -XMixfixOperators -XDependentTypes -XMakeMeASandwich

   * pmetzger: I have my password tattooed to my forehead. that way
 when I forget it others can tell me what it is.

   * alexbagel: i find that my first 26 variables are always easy to
 name. after that it becomes a bit harder.

   * Eric Kow: Haskell is a good fit for me because I tend to
 practise Doh!-oriented programming

Top Reddit Stories

   * More points for lazy evaluation
 Domain: augustss.blogspot.com, score: 56, comments: 24
 On Reddit: http://goo.gl/qecQ1
 Original: http://goo.gl/OnJXx

   * iterIO: iteratee-based IO with pipe operators, courtesy David
 Mazieres
 Domain: haskell.org, score: 43, comments: 15
 On Reddit: http://goo.gl/YzPJn
 Original: http://goo.gl/6WQAk

   * Monad comprehensions are finally in GHC
 Domain: self.haskell, score: 37, comments: 32
 On Reddit: http://goo.gl/1Rjnw

   * Horner's Rule
 Domain: patternsinfp.wordpress.com, score: 34,
 Comments: 2
 On Reddit: http://goo.gl/A1wYo
 Original: http://goo.gl/zeC1f

   * Patent 5,893,120 reduced to mathematical formulae (via Haskell)
 Domain: paulspontifications.blogspot.com, score: 31, comments: 13
 On Reddit: http://goo.gl/PmB4K
 Original: http://goo.gl/QknmV

   * Custom Haskell mug!
 Domain: imgur.com, score: 31, comments: 6 On
 Reddit: http://goo.gl/lD388
 Original: http://goo.gl/bzZR8

   * Differences between 'data' and 'newtype' ... in pictures
 Domain: stackoverflow.com, score: 31, comments: 2
 On Reddit: http://goo.gl/5YaSo
 Original: http://goo.gl/KQiJv

   * Haskell: not pure enough?
 Domain: blog.ezyang.com, score: 30, comments: 19
 On Reddit: http://goo.gl/6v28x
 Original: http://goo.gl/zsfSq

   * Galois is hiring computer scientists
 Domain: corp.galois.com,score: 27, comments: 28
 On Reddit: http://goo.gl/ToeJ0
 Original: http://goo.gl/osjJY

   * Fancy comparison of Data values
 Domain: pnyf.inf.elte.hu, score: 26, comments: 18
 On Reddit: http://goo.gl/BlFVl
 Original: http://goo.gl/RuMKT

Top StackOverflow Questions

   * Ordering of parameters to make use of currying
 votes: 43, answers: 3
 Read on SO: http://goo.gl/7LnBJ

   * Difference between 'data' and 'newtype' in Haskell
 votes: 29, answers: 2
 Read on SO: http://goo.gl/KQiJv

   * Haskell: why the convention to name a helper function "go"?
 votes: 24, answers: 3
 Read on SO: http://goo.gl/CE1O7

   * How do you design programs in Haskell or other functional
 programming languages? [migrated]
 votes: 24, answers: 0
 Read on SO: http://goo.gl/IW7Z5

   * Haskell Graphics Library that works in GHCi on MacOS X
 votes: 19, answers: 3
 Read on SO: http://goo.gl/VZGAK

About the Haskell Weekly News

   To help create new editions of this newsletter, please send stories
   to dstc...@gmail.com.

   Until next time, Daniel Santa Cruz

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Re: [Haskell] Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org

2011-05-11 Thread Ganesh Sittampalam 
On 11/05/2011 10:33, Yitzchak Gale wrote:
> Don Stewart wrote:
>> The haskell.org committee... has decided to
>> incorporate haskell.org as a legal entity. This email outlines our
>> recommendation, and seeks input from the community on this decision.
> 
> Thanks, good news! And thanks for posting to multiple
> lists for maximum public notification to the community.
> 
> Can the committee now designate a single list for further discussion
> please?

Sorry about the noise. I think haskell-cafe is the best choice for
further discussion.

Please, everyone send further followups to any message in this thread to
just haskell-c...@haskell.org and commit...@haskell.org, or just to
commit...@haskell.org if you want to respond privately.

Ganesh
(haskell.org committee member)

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Re: [Haskell] Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org

2011-05-11 Thread Yitzchak Gale 
Don Stewart wrote:
> The haskell.org committee... has decided to
> incorporate haskell.org as a legal entity. This email outlines our
> recommendation, and seeks input from the community on this decision.

Thanks, good news! And thanks for posting to multiple
lists for maximum public notification to the community.

Can the committee now designate a single list for further discussion
please?

Thanks,
Yitz

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Re: [Haskell] Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org

2011-05-11 Thread Simon Peyton-Jones 
Dear haskell.org committee

Great stuff.  Thanks for getting this together.

Things I wondered about are:
- who will run the haskell.org entity?
- how are they chosen?  do they have fixed terms? 
- how are they accountable to the Haskell Community
  (eg an a brief annual report would be good; 
 since money is involved, accounts perhaps)

None of these look like being problems to me, but I think we should have a page 
that sets out these matters -- a kind of constitution for haskell.org, if you 
like -- as part of the process.

Simon

| -Original Message-
| From: libraries-boun...@haskell.org [mailto:libraries-boun...@haskell.org] On 
Behalf
| Of Don Stewart
| Sent: 10 May 2011 23:45
| To: haskell@haskell.org; Haskell Libraries; GHC Users Mailing List; 
haskell-cafe;
| commit...@haskell.org
| Subject: Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org
| 
| Hello everyone.
| 
| The haskell.org committee[1], in the interest of the long-term stability
| of the open source Haskell community infrastructure, has decided to
| incorporate haskell.org as a legal entity. This email outlines our
| recommendation, and seeks input from the community on this decision.
| 
| The committee's proposal is that haskell.org incorporate as an entity
| under the Software Freedom Conservancy umbrella organization (the same group
| that Darcs joined recently):
| 
| http://sfconservancy.org/
| 
| If we proceed with this move, haskell.org will be a legal entity, and
| registered as a non-profit, allowing us to more directly accept
| (US tax-deductible) donations, and to invest in assets that benefit the
| Haskell open source community.
| 
| We welcome your feedback on the proposal attached below.
| 
| -- Don Stewart (on behalf of the Haskell.org committee)
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| = A proposal for the incorporation of Haskell.org =
| 
| In recent years, haskell.org has started to receive assets, e.g. money from
| Google Summer Of Code, donations for Hackathons, and a Sparc machine for use 
in
| GHC development. We have also started spending this money: in particular, on
| hosting haskell.org itself. There is also interest in running fundraising
| drives for specific things such as Hackathon sponsorship and hosting fees.
| 
| However, haskell.org doesn't currently exist as a legal entity, meaning that
| these assets have had to be held on our behalf by other entities, such as
| Galois and various universities. This leads to tricky situations, with no-one
| being sure who should decide how the haskell.org assets can be used.
| 
| To solve these problems, we propose that haskell.org applies to become a 
member
| project of the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC)
| . The SFC is a non-profit 
organization
| that provides free financial and administrative services to open source
| projects. Additionally, it has 501(c)(3) status, meaning donations from the US
| are tax-deductible. The SFC would hold haskell.org's money and other assets,
| and would be able to accept donations on behalf of haskell.org.
| 
| The haskell.org committee, as described here [2], will make decisions on
| spending assets and other decisions related to governing the non-profit.
| 
| 
| Before proceeding, we are inviting input from the community in the form
| of specific objections or queries regarding the plan.
| 
| We've tried to answer some of the most likely questions:
| 
| Q: Does this mean that my Haskell project must now be covered by a
|  copyleft licence such as GPL?
| A: No, but Haskell projects using haskell.org resource should use an
| Open Source licence
|  .
| 
| Q: Will it still be possible to use community.h.o to host
|  non-open-source material, such as academic papers?
| A: An overall minority of such content, as is the current situation, is
| not a problem.
| 
| Q: Will it still be possible to have job ads on the haskell.org mailing
| lists and website?
| A: Yes.
| 
| Q: Will this affect our ability to host the Haskell Symposium
|   and Industrial Haskell
| Group  webpages within haskell.org?
| A: No.
| 
| Q: What will be the relationship between haskell.org and other
| organizations such as the Haskell Symposium and Industrial Haskell
| Group?
| A: Those organisations will continue to exist as separate entities.
| 
| Q: If an umbrella non-profit organisation "The Haskell Foundation" was
| created, would haskell.org be able to join it?
| A: Yes. It's likely that in such a scenario, the Haskell Foundation
| would become the owner of the haskell.org domain name, with the cost
| divided between the members. The entity that is part of the SFC would
| be renamed "community.haskell.org" in order to avoid confusion.
| 
| [1]: http://www.ha

[Haskell] ANNOUNCE: time-1.2.0.5

2011-05-11 Thread Ashley Yakeley 
I've uploaded time-1.2.0.5 to Hackage. Version 1.2.0.5 fixes two parsing 
issues in 1.2.0.4.


Firstly, the default century (in the absence of %C or %Y) is 1969-2068. 
Formerly it was 1900-1999.

http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/2671

Secondly, %-, %_ and %0 specifiers can now be used. For instance,

parseTime defaultTimeLocale "%-m/%e/%Y" "3/9/2011" :: Maybe Day =
 Just 2011-03-09

-- Ashley


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