
Dear all, I have looked through the tickets of haskell-prime. I would like to bring up my own point of view concerning one specific ticket, namely Class Aliases. I have looked at the ticket and right now it's marked as a low priority with low probability of entering the standard. As I see it, class aliases have a low impact on most of the code, only requiring some syntactical changes and some extensions in .hi interface. However, they can be very empowering with regards to the modularisation of type classes. Often people on #haskell want to implement some subset of Num and reuse as much as possible that which exists but find themselves stuck because their type does not support all the semantics of Num. With the use of type-classes one can easily decompose Num into a set of subclasses without making it more difficult to use for the general user of Num. In addition it can be used for other modularisations as well, making them quite trivlal, for instance the proposal to split Enum. Just my two cents :) With regards, Christophe Poucet -- Christophe Poucet Ph.D. Student Phone:+32 16 28 87 20 E-mail: Christophe.Poucet@imec.be IMEC vzw – Register of Legal Entities Leuven VAT BE 0425.260.668 – Kapeldreef 75, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium – www.imec.be *****DISCLAIMER***** This e-mail and/or its attachments may contain confidential information. It is intended solely for the intended addressee(s). Any use of the information contained herein by other persons is prohibited. IMEC vzw does not accept any liability for the contents of this e-mail and/or its attachments. **********

"Christophe Poucet"
Class Aliases. I have looked at the ticket and right now it's marked as a low priority with low probability of entering the standard.
I think class aliases might be a nice idea too. But we don't have any concrete experience with implementations that support them. Haskell' is primarily about standarding the current state-of-the-art, so this is why the idea is unlikely to be adopted. But it would be great if someone were to implement it now anyway, and then it might make it into the next language standard. Regards, Malcolm

On Tue, May 23, 2006 at 09:46:19AM +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
"Christophe Poucet"
wrote: Class Aliases. I have looked at the ticket and right now it's marked as a low priority with low probability of entering the standard.
I think class aliases might be a nice idea too. But we don't have any concrete experience with implementations that support them. Haskell' is primarily about standarding the current state-of-the-art, so this is why the idea is unlikely to be adopted. But it would be great if someone were to implement it now anyway, and then it might make it into the next language standard.
I had planned on implementing them for ghc, but have had so many projects on my plate (not to mention my day job) I have not had time to really get into it. In retrospect, this would have made a good google summer of code project for me to mentor. In any case, if anyone wants to go ahead and start implementing them I would be more than happy to help in any way I can. John -- John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈
participants (3)
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Christophe Poucet
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John Meacham
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Malcolm Wallace