[Haskell-cafe] Haskell Weekly News: Issue 104 - February 7, 2009

7 Feb 2009

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Haskell Weekly News
http://sequence.complete.org/hwn/20090207
Issue 104 - February 07, 2009

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   Welcome to issue 104 of HWN, a newsletter covering developments in the
   [1]Haskell community.

Community News

   Andre Pang (ozone) will be soon [2]moving to San Fransisco to begin
   work with [3]Pixar!

Announcements

   Mutually recursive modules. Henning Thielemann [4]announced a [5]small
   writeup explaining how mutually recursive modules are currently
   supported, and how they can be avoided. Please add information about
   other compilers and more ideas on breaking cycles.

   UrlDisp, a friendly URL dispatching library. Artyom Shalkhakov
   [6]announced the first release of [7]UrlDisp, a small library for URL
   dispatching (aka routing). Right now it works with CGI, and should be
   compatible with FastCGI as well (not tested); Happstack compatibility
   is planned. [8]Documentation and usage examples are available.

   Purely functional LU decomposition. Rafael Gustavo da Cunha Pereira
   Pinto [9]released some code to perform purely functional LU
   decomposition.

   Ready for testing: Unicode support for Handle I/O. Simon Marlow
   [10]announced that proper Unicode support in Handle I/O is ready for
   testing in GHC. Just download the [11]set of patches, compile GHC with
   them, and test away! Comments and discussion welcome.

   HaskellWiki Accounts. Ashley Yakeley can [12]create a HaskellWiki
   account for anyone who wants one (account creation has been disabled as
   a spam-fighting measure).

   multiplicity 0.1.0 released. Dino Morelli [13]announced the release of
   [14]multiplicity 0.1.0, a configuration file driven wrapper around
   [15]duplicity. It allows you to easily define backup sets as config
   files and avoid long, repetitive command lines.

   Happstack 0.1 Released!. Matthew Elder [16]announced the [17]0.1
   release of [18]Happstack, the successor for the HAppS project.

   #haskell-in-depth IRC channel. Philippa Cowderoy [19]announced the
   creation of a new IRC channel, #haskell-in-depth. The new channel is
   open to everyone, just like #haskell, but is intended for more in-depth
   conversations, to allow the #haskell channel to be a more
   newbie-friendly place.

   regex-posix-unittest-1.0 AND regex-posix-0.94.1 AND regex-tdfa-0.97.1.
   ChrisK [20]announced an update to the [21]regex-posix package which
   provides better semantics for multiple matches; an update to the
   [22]regex-tdfa package, which provides the same new multiple match
   semantics and fixes a bug; and finally, a new package,
   [23]regex-posix-unittest, along with an [24]accompanying wiki page; it
   runs a suite of unit tests which regex-tdfa passes, but reveals bugs in
   the standard glibc, OS X, FreeBSD, and NetBSD implementations!

   Jane Street Summer Project 2009. Yaron Minsky [25]announced the
   [26]Jane Street Summer Project for 2009, the goal of which is to make
   functional programming languages into better practical tools for
   programming in the real world. Students will be funded over the summer
   to work on open-source projects which aim at improving the practical
   utility of their favorite functional language.

   gitit 0.5.1. John MacFarlane [27]announced the release of [28]gitit
   0.5.1, a wiki program that uses git or darcs as a filestore and HAppS
   as a server. Changes include major code reorganization, bug fixes, new
   debugging features, and more.

   regex-xmlschema. Uwe Schmidt [29]announced the [30]release of
   [31]regex-xmlschema, (yet another) package for processing text with
   regular expressions, containing a complete implementation of the W3C
   XML Schema specification language for regular expressions.

   diagrams 0.2. Brent Yorgey [32]announced version 0.2 of the
   [33]diagrams package, an embedded domain-specific language for creating
   simple graphics in a compositional style. New features include support
   for arbitrary paths, text, multiple output formats, and support for the
   [34]colour library.

Discussion

   Haddock Markup. David Waern began a [35]discussion on Haddock markup
   syntax: should it support (La)TeX for embedded mathematics? Should it
   support other stuff?

   Elegant & powerful replacement for CSS. Conal Elliott began a
   [36]discussion on an elegant replacement for CSS that is consistent,
   composable, orthogonal, functional, and based on an elegantly
   compelling semantic model---what might such a thing look like?

   type metaphysics. Gregg Reynolds began a long and interesting
   [37]discussion on the type system, denotational semantics, and related
   matters.

Jobs

   Postdoc Positions at the CLIP group, Spain. CFP [38]announced the
   availability of [39]postdoctoral research positions within the [40]CLIP
   (Computational Logic, Implementation and Parallelism) group in Madrid,
   Spain. The application deadlines are February 13th and 18th; see the
   original email for more details.

   Multiple funded Ph.D. positions available. Martin Erwig [41]announced
   the availability of multiple funded Ph.D. positions in the [42]school
   of EECS at Oregon State University, in the areas of programming
   languages (focusing on DSLs and language design), software engineering,
   and HCI. If you are interested, email Martin with a resume and contact
   information by February 15.

Blog noise

   [43]Haskell news from the [44]blogosphere.
     * Erik de Castro Lopo: [45]libsndfile 1.0.18..
     * >>> Gregg Reynolds: [46]Moggi :: CT -> Hask. An interesting
       perspective on Haskell and category theory.
     * Osfameron: [47]Functional Pe(a)rls v2 (now with Monads!) at the
       London Perl Workshop 2008.
     * ezekiel smithburg: [48]google code project, google group, and darcs
       repository for WikimediaParser.
     * ezekiel smithburg: [49]releasing WikimediaParser 0.1.
     * Andre Pang (ozone): [50]Change.
     * Lennart Augustsson: [51]Is Haskell fast?.
     * Lennart Augustsson: [52]Regression. A library for writing embedded
       BASIC programs in Haskell? What is the world coming to?
     * Galois, Inc: [53]Equivalence and Safety Checking in Cryptol.
     * GHC / OpenSPARC Project: [54]Just Testing.
     * Jeff Heard: [55]Hieroglyph: Interactively graph a spreadsheet in 99
       lines of code..
     * Jeff Heard: [56]Snippet: sorting the elements of a map.
     * LHC Team: [57]Grin a little..
     * Alex Mason: [58]Other shootout news.
     * Xmonad: [59]contribs review: SpawnOn.
     * Jeff Heard: [60]Hieroglyph Haddock docs.
     * Alex Mason: [61]More n-bodies speedups.
     * Alex Mason: [62]N-bodies evolution.
     * Eric Kow (kowey): [63]practical quickcheck (wanted). Eric is
       seeking practical advice on how to effectively use QuickCheck.
     * Alex Mason: [64]TextMate haskell bundle improvements.
     * Haskell application server stack: [65]Happstack 0.1 Released (one
       day early!).
     * Haskell application server stack: [66]SOCALFP presentation:
       patch-tag as a startup using Happstack.
     * Neil Mitchell: [67]Monomorphism and Defaulting.
     * Jeff Heard: [68]Hieroglyph Part II, basic mouse/keyboard
       interactivity.
     * Jeff Heard: [69]Introducing Hieroglyph. Purely functional 2D
       visualization on top of Cairo.. The Hieroglyph library looks pretty
       cool!
     * Jeff Heard: [70]Hieroglyph HOWTO, part I: Sparklines.
     * Alex Mason: [71]N-bodies speedup (50%!).
     * >>> John Lato: [72]Build a better WAVE reader, pt 2.
     * GHC / OpenSPARC Project: [73]Join Points.
     * Luke Palmer: [74]Parallel Rewrite System.
     * >>> John Lato: [75]Build a better WAVE reader, pt 1. Notes on
       building an 'optimal audio I/O library in Haskell'.
     * Luke Palmer: [76]Dana update: System U-Box compiler is go.
     * Luke Palmer: [77]Dana needs a self-embedding of U-Box.
     * Beelsebob: [78]Simulating n-bodies and functional programming. A
       beautiful implementation of an n-bodies simulation using reactive.
     * Xmonad: [79]New layout: GridVariants.SplitGrid.
     * Lane: [80]Christopher Lane Hinson: MaybeArrow?. An arrow with
       possible failure, which still allows later effects to happen after
       failure.
     * Don Stewart (dons): [81]#haskell is a busy place. Some statistics
       on the #haskell IRC channel.
     * Alson Kemp: [82]Cabal-install is awesome. Enough said!
     * FP-Syd: [83]Sydney FP Group: FP-Syd #11..
     * Brent Yorgey: [84]Diagrams 0.2 release.
     * Dan Piponi (sigfpe): [85]Beyond Regular Expressions: More
       Incremental String Matching. More incremental brain expansion
       courtesy of Dan.
     * Don Stewart (dons): [86]Reviving the Gofer Standard Prelude (circa.
       1994). Haskell, retro-style!

Quotes of the Week

     * sigfpe: If I took some Ritalin, maybe I could write an entire book
       on Haskell and algebra.
     * cjb: It's all fun and games until somebody loses an IOVar.
     * Gracenotes: You are likely to be eaten by a poset
     * Gracenotes: A public service announcement: if you find yourself
       overusing the Writer monad, tell (Sum 1)
     * Anonymous: Haskell, the world's leading purely fictional
       programming language
     * ehird: 2009: The Year of the Combinatorial Explosion of Haskell Web
       Frameworks. Also, the Linux Desktop.
     * ehird: [on the previous quote] Someone re-remember that quote when
       lambdabot's back so I don't have to and thereby look egotistical,
       thanks
     * luqui: Hmph! My program which uses unsafeCoerce everywhere is not
       working properly! Who'd have thought...

About the Haskell Weekly News

   New editions are posted to [87]the Haskell mailing list as well as to
   [88]the Haskell Sequence and [89]Planet Haskell. [90]RSS is also
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   To help create new editions of this newsletter, please see the
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   [93]http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/ .

References

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   5. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Mutually_recursive_modules
   6. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/52045
   7. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/UrlDisp
   8. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/UrlDisp
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