Hello, in my program i have a function which can be simplified like this: writeProgramInfo :: Handle -> ProgramInfo -> IO () writeProgramInfo handle program = do hPrintf handle "hello" This is using the hPrintf from Text.Printf. Unfortunately that hPrintf works on String parameters which is not good enough because I need unicode character support (if I use unpack it works on linux but complains about invalid characters on windows, I guess because my locale on linux is utf-8 but on windows it's a local codepage). So I found the Text.Format library: http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/text-format/0.3.0.7/doc/html/Dat... Which appears to solve exactly that problem (out of the box Text support). However I can't just install the library, add the import statements, and replace hPrintf by TF.hprint and change the format string, that doesn't work; if I change this function to: import qualified Data.Text.Format as TF writeProgramInfo :: Handle -> ProgramInfo -> IO () writeProgramInfo handle program = do TF.hprint handle "hello" I get this error message at build time: Couldn't match expected type `IO ()' with actual type `ps0 -> m0 ()' In the return type of a call of `TF.hprint' In the expression: TF.hprint handle "hello" In the expression: do { TF.hprint handle "hello" } Now this clearly results from the type of hprint, which is: hprint :: (MonadIO<http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/transformers/0.2.2.0/doc/html/Control-Monad-IO-Class.html#t:MonadIO>m, Params<http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/text-format/0.3.0.7/doc/html/Data-Text-Format-Params.html#t:Params>ps) => Handle<http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/base/4.4.1.0/doc/html/GHC-IO-Handle.html#t:Handle>-> Format<http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/text-format/0.3.0.7/doc/html/Data-Text-Format.html#t:Format>-> ps -> m ()<http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/ghc-prim/0.2.0.0/doc/html/GHC-Unit.html#t:-40--41-> while the type of hPrintf is: hPrintf<http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/base/4.2.0.1/doc/html/Text-Printf.html#v%3AhPrintf>:: HPrintfType<http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/base/4.2.0.1/doc/html/Text-Printf.html#t%3AHPrintfType>r => Handle<http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/base/4.2.0.1/doc/html/GHC-IO-Handle.html#t%3AHandle>-> String<http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/base/4.2.0.1/doc/html/Data-Char.html#t%3AString>-> r with the precision: The return type is restricted to (IO<http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/base/4.2.0.1/doc/html/System-IO.html#t%3AIO>a) . Well I didn't completely 'get' the monad thing yet. I think I'm pretty close.. but not there yet. I'm pretty sure understanding this specific example will take me one step closer... What am I missing here? Thank you! Emmanuel