From: Yitzchak Gale

Erik Hesselink wrote:

...

I don't think IsString should be dismissed so easily.

I'm just saying I don't want to be forced to use it. If others like it, I'm not dismissing it.

...

we have a couple of newtypes over Text that do different kinds of normalization. An IsString instance for these is useful and total.

True. Perhaps you'd be able to get IsBuiltinString instances for those too, using newtype deriving, if only the method names of IsBuiltinString are hidden and the class name is exported.

If that doesn't work, I'm fine with using a quasiquoter for those instead. Or even just the usual newtype unwrapping and wrapping. And again, if you provide IsString and others want to use it, that's fine.

I don't see how it would be possible to use a hidden IsBuiltinString as you describe without bringing Text into base (or alternatively not providing Text support). Perhaps unfortunately, I think that makes this solution a non-starter. I think a neater solution would be some sort of modular String typing, as I'm pretty sure somebody else on this list already mentioned. Perhaps a pragma like "DefaultString Data.Text.Text", which would mean that string literals would be treated as the provided monomorphic type, on a per-module basis? John Lato