andrewcoppin:
Interesting. I've never even heard of Data.Text. When did that come into existence?
More importantly: How does the average random Haskeller discover that a package has become available that might be relevant to their work?
In this case, Data.Text has been announced on this very list several times: Text 0.7 announcement http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2009-December/070866.html Text 0.5 announcement http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2009-October/067517.html Text 0.2 announcement http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2009-May/061800.html Text 0.1 annoucnement http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2009-February/056723.html As well as on Planet Haskell several times: Finally! Fast Unicode support for Haskell http://www.serpentine.com/blog/2009/02/27/finally-fast-unicode-support-for-h... Streaming Unicode support for Haskell: text 0.2 http://www.serpentine.com/blog/2009/05/22/streaming-unicode-support-for-hask... Case conversion and text 0.3 http://www.serpentine.com/blog/2009/06/07/case-conversion-and-text-03/ As well as being presented at Anglo Haskell http://www.wellquite.org/non-blog/AngloHaskell2008/tom%20harper.pdf It is mentioned repeatedly in the quarterly Hackage status posts: "vector and text are quickly rising as the preferred arrays and unicode libraries" http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/the-haskell-platform-q1-2010-report/ "text has made it into the top 30 libraries" http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/popular-haskell-packages-q2-2010-rep... Ranked 31st most popular package by June 2010. http://code.haskell.org/~dons/hackage/Jun-2010/popular.txt Ranked 41st most popular package by April 2010. http://www.galois.com/~dons/hackage/april-2010/popularity.csv Ranked 345th by August 2009 http://www.galois.com/~dons/hackage/august-2009/popularity-august-2009.html And discussed on Reddit Haskell many times: http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/8qfvw/doing_unicode_case_conversion... http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/80smp/datatext_fast_unicode_bytestr... http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/80smp/datatext_fast_unicode_bytestr... http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/ade08/the_performance_of_datatext/ So, to stay up to date, but without drowning in data. Do one of: * Pay attention to Haskell Cafe announcements * Follow the Reddit Haskell news. * Read the quarterly reports on Hackage * Follow Planet Haskell -- Don