Actually, I looked at the SORF page again:
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Records/OverloadedRecordFields
There is now an 'Alternative Proposal' section that claims to solve polymorphic update. If anyone has comments on this please let us know!
Yes, Greg the quasifunctor stuff has been there for some time. You seem to be confused between polymorphic fields vs type-changing update. Quasifunctor is talking about type-changing update. (Look at the example given for `data R a`: there's no polymorphic field.) DORF already has a working approach to type-changing update. I make reference to quasifunctor in the DORF proposal. Essentially, if quasifunctor can be made to work for SORF, it can also be made to work for DORF. (Because what underlies both is to use a Has class with methods get/set.) No, I don't think anybody has a satisfactory approach to updating polymorphic/higher-ranked fields. (DORF mentions one, but it's a ghastly hack. In addition to higher-ranked types, SPJ is also concerned about h-r's with constraints. I've added a very speculative piece in DORF's comparison to SORF that considers using Constraint Kinds. (It's probably piling ghastliness upon ghastliness.)
... and not automatically abstract over fields. This leaves all of our future options open while satisfying the narrow issue at hand.
What on earth do you mean by "not automatically abstract over fields"? AntC