Prelude and Library Issues in Haskell 1.3
Currently, the Haskell language does not mention any libraries or facilities for using them. The standard prelude is meant to serve as a library but it lacks many important features. All Haskell implementations have begun to haphazardly include various libraries. However, these libraries have not yet been standardized across the different implementations and cannot always be used in a portable manner. We have produced a document which discusses some of the issues involved in designing a standard Haskell library and describes what we think the library should look like. We welcome any comments or suggestions teh Haskell community care to make. The document is available in postscript format by anonymous ftp: /pub/haskell/yale/libs.ps on haskell.cs.yale.edu and over the web: http://www.cs.yale.edu/HTML/YALE/CS/HyPlans/reid-alastair/libs/libs.html Alastair Reid and John Peterson Yale Haskell Project
Re: Process for Change
Regarding "A Process for Change": Simon said: > I'm not sure we're ready yet to embark on a formal "let's > design Haskell 2.0" exercise. I favour something a bit more > informal, perhaps focussed round an annual workshop, in > which we explore design options. Then, when it's become > clear who are the active contributors, we lock them all up > in a room together for a year and hey-presto: Haskell 2. I think this is a good idea! As Simon mentioned, a few of us discussed this at POPL, and I've alredy cleared with Dennis Volpano the idea of having a Haskell Workshop in conjunction with FPCA in June -- I'll be sending an announcement about this soon. -Paul
Re: Happy New Year!
Regarding standardization: My suggestion to standardize Haskell was not a near-term thing, but rather long-term; in particular there's no sense putting a lot of effort into standardizing 1.X if we know that 2.0 is less than a few years away. In any case, the process is tedious and is guaranteed to burn out anyone involved (:-). Will Partain suggested to me an interesting alternative: An alternative might be to have a "Haskell Consortium", analogous to the "X Consortium". A non-profit, vendor-neutral, etc., etc., organization that companies, etc., etc., can be "members" of (pay money to). The Consortium shepherds proposals through various well-defined stages, produces "reference implementations", and so on. My impression is that it has worked for the X world (and the consortium continues to push the "X envelope"). Will Food for thought... -Paul
