--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Haskell Weekly News http://sequence.complete.org/hwn/20061220 Issue 54 - December 20, 2006 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to issue 54 of HWN, a weekly newsletter covering developments in the Haskell community. A new release of the Edison data structures library, along with several other new libraries, and some new Haskell articles in the blogspace. Announcements Edison 1.2.1. Robert Dockins [1]announced the 1.2.1 release of [2]Edison. Edison is a famous library of efficient, purely-functional data structures in Haskell. Notable changes from the previous version include: a new sequence implementation based on finger trees; documentation fixes dealing with the licence; added a few methods to EnumSet for wrapping and unwrapping the underlying Word 1. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14662 2. http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~rdocki01/ Basic serialisation library using SYB. Stefan O'Rear [3]announced GenericSerialize, [4]a library for serialization using the existing generic-programming framework. It is often advocated that support for serialization should be added to the compiler (e.g. in the form of a deriving(Binary)). With this project Stefan wants to show that the existing infrastructure is sufficient, and has some advantages over a dedicated serialization interface. GenericSerialize supports multiple serialization modes. 3. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14656 4. http://members.cox.net/stefanor/genericserialize vty 1.0. Stefan O'Rear [5]announced vty 1.0, a simple [6]terminal interface library. It provides: handling of suspend/resume, window resizes, computation of minimal differences, minimizes repaint area, automatically decodes keyboard keys into (key,modifier) tuples, and more! 5. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14670 6. http://members.cox.net/stefanor/vty Monad.Reader call for copy. Wouter Swierstra [7]reminded us that its still not too late to write something for the next issue of [8]The Monad.Reader! We have a nice issue slowly shaping up, but your contribution is still very welcome. Get in touch with Wouter if you intend to submit something -- the sooner you let him know what you're up to, the better. 7. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14638 8. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/TheMonadReader Ranged Sets. Paul Johnson [9]announced that Ranged Sets now have a Monoid instance, and singletons (i.e. a range holding a single value), thanks to Jean-Philippe Bernardy. 9. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14663 CalDims 1.0 (RC 1). schneegloeckchen [10]announced CalDims, a calculator aware of units. Its available from [11]the Haskell wiki. It includes support for user defined basic units and derrived units; user defined functions; work sheets can be modified/saved via shell; (1/3)*3 == 1 (No rounding errors); built-in feature to simplify units and easy unit-conversion. 10. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14671 11. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/CalDims JoinCabal. Dougal Stanton [12]announced an alternative to mkcabal, for initialising new cabal projects: [13]JoinCabal, available [14]via darcs. JoinCabal will create stub sources files with a license header, and appropriate license for you code, making it easier to set up a valid cabal build system. 12. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/17600 13. http://brokenhut.no-ip.org/~dougal/cgi-bin/darcsweb.cgi?r=JoinCabal;a=summar... 14. http://brokenhut.no-ip.org/~dougal/darcs/joincabal/ Haskell Vim plugin. Arthur van Leeuwen [15]announced a new [16]vim plugin for Haskell providing some preliminary folding support, easy insertion of type signatures into programs, and support for handling .hi files. 15. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/17675 16. http://www.cs.uu.nl/~arthurvl/haskell.vba Haskell' This section covers the [17]Haskell' standardisation process. * [18]Strictly matching monadic let and overloaded Bool 17. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime 18. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.prime/1956/focus=1974 Discussion Automonadization of code. Adam Megacz [19]asked if there any work on automatic translation of code in some tiny imperative language into Haskell code that uses the ST and/or IO monads (or perhaps even pure functional code)? 19. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/17326/focus=17326 What are the points in pointfree style?. Steve Downey [20]wondered about the origin of the term 'points' in pointfree style. 20. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/17560/focus=17560 Rebinding >>= for restricted monads. David Roundy [21]pondered rebinding the >>= syntax in order to provide a more restricted monad. 21. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/17646/focus=17646 #haskell reaches 300 users. Don Stewart [22]noticed that the [23]#haskell IRC channel has now reached the 300 user mark, making it one of the top 15 channels on the freenode network. 22. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/17705/focus=17705 23. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/IRC_channel Blog noise [24]Haskell news from the blogosphere. * [25]Do-notation considered harmful * [26]Reddit discussion considered productive * [27]The Dot-Matrix Printhead: a Haskell Toy * [28]The Revised Dot-Matrix Printhead * [29]The monad laws * [30]On documentation * [31]Software requirements do not change * [32]Haskell and the web: some ideas in progress * [33]Using Haskell in Python: haskellembed * [34]Literate programming * [35]The lambda revolution, Episode V, the deb strikes back * [36]On syntax * [37]Syntax: adding Lisp macros * [38]More on syntax * [39]UCBLogo and the Fibonacci sequence * [40]Linguistic comparisons: string reversal * [41]New Software Technology: Blockage On Line * [42]More silver bullets * [43]Preventing NullPointerExceptions, Maybe * [44]Adventures in Haskell: the Parsec magic weapon * [45]Advertising Haskell * [46]Programming Haskell: part 1 * [47]Programming Haskell: part 2 * [48]Programming Haskell: part 3 * [49]Introductory Haskell Programming in the UNIX Environment * [50]On Haskell, Intuition And Expressive Power * [51]Your order is ready sir * [52]It's alive (the French Haskell community) * [53]Maybe monad in Java * [54]Secret Santas in Haskell I: Preliminaries * [55]Secret Santas in Haskell II: Orbits and Lists * [56]Why Closures in Dolphin is a Good Idea * [57]Haskell Stacks : Two Different Ways * [58]Haskell Golf Scores * [59]Languages * [60]Questions on Haskell Style (and Polynomials redux) * [61]A simple RSS aggregator in 50 lines of Haskell using HXT 24. http://planet.haskell.org/ 25. http://syntaxfree.wordpress.com/2006/12/12/do-notation-considered-harmful/ 26. http://syntaxfree.wordpress.com/2006/12/13/reddit-discussion-considered-prod... 27. http://praisecurseandrecurse.blogspot.com/2006/12/dot-matrix-printhead-haske... 28. http://praisecurseandrecurse.blogspot.com/2006/12/revised-dot-matrix-printhe... 29. http://cale.yi.org/index.php/The_Monad_Laws 30. http://blog.milkfarmsoft.com/?p=29 31. http://blog.tmorris.net/software-requirements-do-not-change/ 32. http://haskell-web.blogspot.com/2006/12/some-ideas-in-progress_13.html 33. http://www.kuarepoti-dju.net/index.php?p=86 34. http://benjisimon.blogspot.com/2006/12/programs-as-stories.html 35. http://pupeno.com/blog/the-lambda-revolution-episode-v-the-deb-strikes-back 36. http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2006/12/14#on-syntax 37. http://nominolo.blogspot.com/2006/12/syntax.html 38. http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2006/12/15#on-syntax-again 39. http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=171 40. http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=170 41. http://cogito.blogthing.com/2006/12/14/new-software-technology-blockage-on-l... 42. http://clabs.org/blogki/blogki.cgi?page=/ComputersAndTechnology/AndTheNomine... 43. http://rickyclarkson.blogspot.com/2006/09/using-strong-typing-to-eliminate.h... 44. http://jpmoresmau.blogspot.com/2006/12/adventures-in-haskell-parsec-magic.ht... 45. http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2006/12/advertising-haskell.html 46. http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2006/12/16#programming-haskell-intro 47. http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2006/12/17#programming-haskell-part-2 48. http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2006/12/18#ph-3 49. http://blog.kfish.org/software/haskell/intro-haskell-unix.html 50. http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/haskell-productivity.html 51. http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1905#comment-23273 52. http://koweycode.blogspot.com/2006/12/its-alive.html 53. http://blog.tmorris.net/maybe-monad-in-java/ 54. http://mult.ifario.us/articles/2006/12/18/secret-santas-in-haskell-i-prelimi... 55. http://mult.ifario.us/articles/2006/12/18/secret-santas-in-haskell-ii-orbits... 56. http://rickyclarkson.blogspot.com/2006/12/why-closures-in-dolphin-is-good-id... 57. http://progexpr.blogspot.com/2006/11/haskell-stacks-two-different-ways.html 58. http://progexpr.blogspot.com/2006/11/haskell-golf-scores.html 59. http://computativestylings.blogspot.com/2006/12/languages.html 60. http://sambangu.blogspot.com/2006/12/questions-on-haskell-style-and 61. http://cale.yi.org/index.php/HRSS Quotes of the Week * Cale: I spent a whole summer being paid to write a nondeterministic search program in the list monad * monochrom: 007 titles for Haskellers: fromForeignPtr withCString; You Only lift Twice; Bottoms Are Forever; The Monad with the Pure Function; For Your Types Only; A view to A seq; Licence to killThread; iterate Never Dies; unsafePerformIO Is Not Enough. * DavidRoundy: ... fun of haskell-cafe is that it's where all the cool people hang out * dons: Coding drunk in Haskell is ok though, its like drinking on a passenger plane flight -- the stewards will prevent you from hurting anyone. However, coding drunk in C is just scary, DUI territory, and should not be allowed. * JulianMorrison: Small startup companies are the expendable sensory and feeding apparatus of the mainstream. * droundy: With a higher-kinded monad and phantom existential witness types, darcs would be very fun... * dons: The alien rulers of the galaxy must surely use a statically typed language with type inference * dibblego: Java programmers prefer referential transparency too, they just call it 'design patterns' or something * tessier: After the last newbies head exploded trying to read everything on that monad link there was a lot of paperwork. We'd like to avoid doing that again. Code Watch Fri Dec 8 21:03:34 PST 2006. Andy Gill. [62]Adding tracing support (HPC) 62. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cvs.ghc/18263 Wed Dec 13 08:45:38 PST 2006. simonpj. [63]You can now have an MVar with a polymorphic contents 63. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cvs.ghc/18279 About the Haskell Weekly News Each week, new editions are posted to [64]the Haskell mailing list as well as to [65]the Haskell Sequence and [66]Planet Haskell. [67]RSS is also available, and headlines appear on [68]haskell.org. Headlines are available as [69]PDF. The Haskell Weekly News is also [70]available in Spanish translation. To help create new editions of this newsletter, please see the [71]contributing information. Send stories to dons at cse.unsw.edu.au. 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