On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 01:46, Don Stewart wrote:
leather:
>
> 2. What is the difference between "Haskell" and the "Haskell Platform"? I see
> one or the other in various places. To get from www.haskell.org to downloading
> the Mac software, I go through "Download Haskell," "Get the Haskell Platform >
> Mac," and "Download Haskell for Mac OS X (intel)."

Well, for one, we have characterized the difference between GHC and the
Haskell Platform as:

   GHC is to the HP  as  Linux Kernel is to Linux

Now, "Haskell" for newcomers might mean "toolchain on my machine" --
which is the Haskell Platform. Or it might mean the language.

We try to ensure advertising for the HP makes it simple: "Download
Haskell", but documentation pages carefully describe the fact that the
HP is a development environment for the Haskell language.

It just occurred to me to check what Sun/Oracle does for Java. I guess what is on haskell.org is no worse than what is on http://java.com/en/download/ . But perhaps answering such questions as "What is Haskell?" or "Why download the Haskell Platform?" as well as a short blurb about the use of the terms Haskell and Haskell Platform would help.

Personally, I prefer to separate the name of the language from the name of the development tools, because I think that causes unnecessary confusion. End-users do not need to care about Haskell, unlike Java since they need the JRE, so potential developers and students are the audience. This group needs the Haskell Platform for developing with Haskell, and having the tools referred to as "Haskell Platform" is clear enough (imho) without having to call the tools "Haskell."

In the end, whatever the choice, the language on haskell.org should probably be somewhat more consistent.

Sean