On Thu, 2005-07-21 at 09:39 +0100, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
In fact there's a well established way to express the results of such an exercise: an Addendum to the Report. Two of the things you mention here already are Addenda http://haskell.org/definition/ namely FFI and hierarchical namespaces. [Actually, for the latter, the Addendum seems to be stuck at 0.0, and doesn't have any names attached to it. So it's in a kind of limbo, but there's a draft at least.]
These Addenda are useful for exactly the reasons you describe: to solidify and nail down the details of particular language extensions.
I have a small point, which has been raised in the past. Extensions are one thing to work on. Clarifications, improvements, deletions are another, which I think deserve equal attention (sometimes I find myself wishing for less features rather than more...) Is it better to have addenda which overrule parts of the report, or is it better to modify it in place? Perhaps there is also room for "proposals to modify" which if widely agreed upon get turned into actual changes. Bernie.