July 2005 - Haskell - Haskell.org

Re: ST Monad and all that
by Srinivas Nedunuri 11 Jul '05

11 Jul '05

OK, thanks for the references. I think I've got a better handle on what's what. The library documentation mentions the ability to convert the ST monad into an IO monad. What are the reasons/pluses/minuses of doing this? (I can see one reason being that you won't have to use monad transformers to try and thread two different monads through your code). Also, I didn't see any mention of a mutable List - I suppose you have to use Data.Array.ST? cheers

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Project to add cairo support to Gtk2Hs wins Google Summer of Code grant
by Duncan Coutts 10 Jul '05

10 Jul '05

All, We are very pleased to announce that Paolo Martini's project proposal to add support for the new cairo[1] vector graphics library to Gtk2Hs[2] has been selected to receive a grant in Google's Summer of Code[3] programme. This will make it possible to create GUIs in Haskell that take advantage of cairo's sophisticated vector graphics capabilities and its high quality display and print output. Paolo now has until the beginning of September to complete the project and receive the full $4500 grant. I know everyone will join me in wishing him the best of luck! Paolo will be maintaining a blog about his project on the Gtk2Hs website. We would also like to thank Google for recognising the importance of supporting projects like Gtk2Hs and hscairo[4] that aim to make Haskell an even more versatile programming system. See the Gtk2Hs website for Paolo's full project proposal[5] [1] http://www.cairographics.org/ [2] http://haskell.org/gtk2hs/ [3] http://code.google.com/summerofcode.html [4] http://www.cairographics.org/hscairo [5] http://haskell.org/gtk2hs/archives/2005/07/10/gtk2hs-cairo-project/ Duncan

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ST Monad and all that
by Srinivas Nedunuri 08 Jul '05

08 Jul '05

Hello, in trying to understand how to use the ST Monad I've come across references to a bewildering variety of related types such as STRefs, STArrays, MutVar, ArrayRef, IORef, IOArray, ArrRef, etc. the list goes on. Is there a place where I can get a comprehensive explanation of what's what? Its a bit fustrating trying to figure out how these concepts relate to each other by reading snippets of information on different web sites and papers (e.g. "State in Haskell"). Thanks for your help

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FACS'05: Deadline Extended 29 July
by Luis Barbosa 07 Jul '05

07 Jul '05

[apologies for cross-posting] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- FACS'05 II International Workshop on Formal Aspects of Component Software Macao October 24-25, 2005 www.iist.unu.edu/facs05/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- NEWS: * On-line submissions are now OPEN at www.iist.unu.edu/facs05/ * Submission deadline has been EXTENDED to 29 July ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------

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IFL'05 - 2nd Call for Papers (new: Accomodation/Registration details)
by Andrew Butterfield 06 Jul '05

06 Jul '05

Apologies, as ever, for multiple copies.... = Call for Papers/Participation = Announcement and Call for Papers for the 17th International Workshop on the Implementation and Application of Functional Languages (IFL'05) September 19th-21st, 2005, Dublin, Ireland. Website: http://www.cs.tcd.ie/ifl05 E-mail: ifl05(a)cs.tcd.ie == Scope and Topics == The IFL workshops form a tradition that has lasted for nearly two decades. The aim of these workshops is to bring together researchers actively engaged in the implementation and application of functional and function-based programming languages. They provide an open forum for researchers who wish to present and discuss new ideas and concepts, work in progress, preliminary results, etc. related primarily but not exclusively to the implementation and application of functional languages. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to * language concepts * type checking * compilation techniques * generic programming techniques * (abstract) interpretation * automatic program generation * (abstract) machine architectures * formal aspects * array processing * concurrent/parallel programming * concurrent/parallel program execution * heap management * runtime profiling * performance measurements * debugging and tracing * verification * tools and programming techniques Papers on applications demonstrating the suitability of novel ideas in any of the above areas and contributions on related theoretical work are also welcomed. The change of the workshop name adding the term "application", introduced in 2004, is to reflect the broader scope IFL has gained over recent years. == Contributions == Prospective authors are encouraged to submit papers to be published in the draft proceedings (published as a technical report of the Department of Computer Science of the University of Dublin) and to give presentations at the workshop. All contributions must be written in English, conform to the Springer-Verlag LNCS series format, and not exceed 16 pages. http://www.springer.de/comp/authors/index.html or http://www.springeronline.com/ sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,5-164-2-72376-0,00.html Papers must be submitted by August 26th as postscript or pdf files through the workshop web page at http://www.cs.tcd.ie/ifl05/. All participants who give presentations at the workshop are invited to submit revised versions of their papers for the post-workshop proceedings. They will be refereed by the program committee according to normal conference standards, and will be published by Springer as part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. == Important Dates == * mid-July, 2005 Accommodation booking (advisory) * Aug 7th, 2005 Registration deadline * Aug 26th, 2005 Submission deadline for draft proceedings * Sep 19th, 2005 Workshop starts in the morning * Sep 20th, 2005 Afternoon excursion and banquet dinner * Sep 21st, 2005 Workshop ends in the evening * Nov 7th, 2005 Submission deadline for post-refereeing process * Dec 16th, 2005 Notification of acceptance/rejection * Feb 3rd, 2006 Camera-ready papers due == Program Committee == * Matthias Blume, Toyota Technological Institute, Chicago, USA * Andrew Butterfield, (Chair) Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. * Clemens Grelck, University of Lubeck, Germany. * Zoltan Horvath, Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary. * Frank Huch, University of Kiel, Germany. * Joe Kiniry, National University of Ireland, Dublin. * Hans-Wolfgang Loidl, University of Munich, Germany. * Frederic Loulergue, University of Paris XII, Val de Marne, France. * Simon Marlow, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK * Marco T. Morazan, Seton Hall University, NJ, USA. * Barak Pearlmutter, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. * Rinus Plasmeijer, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Netherlands. * Peter Thiemann, University of Freiburg, Germany. * German Vidal, Technical University of Valencia, Spain. * others to be confirmed == Workshop Organization == Andrew Butterfield, Department of Computer Science, University of Dublin. == Further Information == Website: http://www.cs.tcd.ie/ifl05 E-mail: ifl05(a)cs.tcd.ie ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew Butterfield Tel: +353-1-608-2517 Fax: +353-1-677-2204 Department of Computer Science, O'Reilly Insititute Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland. Head of Foundations and Methods Research Group Course Director, B.A. (Mod.) Information & Communications Technology http://www.cs.tcd.ie/Andrew.Butterfield/ -----------------------------------------------------------------------

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Final Call for papers: MoveLog05 (ICLP workshop)
by James Lipton 06 Jul '05

06 Jul '05

*************** APOLOGIES FOR MULTIPLE POSTING ************** **** FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS: JULY 10 DEADLINE **** MoVeLog'05 Mobile Code Safety and Program Verification Using Computational Logic Tools An ICLP Workshop, Sitges, Spain, Oct. 5, 2005 http://babel.ls.fi.upm.es/movelog05 Computational logic and logic programming in particular can support rich reasoning about programs, proofs, types, and specifications. Recent breakthroughs in mobile code safety and program verification have brought even more relevance to these tools, especially in the areas of meta-logic proof theory, proof search, static analysis and abstract interpretation, and model checking, even when the object code involved is very far from declarative. Components are needed that can perform such reasoning and the logic programming community is well positioned to provide such components. Especially promising has been ground-breaking work with proof- carrying-code, a development that shows signs of having widespread applications, and has brought a surprising number of new challenges where computational logic can potentially contribute. It is worth pointing out that the earliest papers in the field made explicit mention of the possible relevance of such formalisms as lambda-prolog and ELF for all phases of the enterprise: generation of verification conditions, formalization of proofs, manipulation of proofs and certificate checking. Since then there have been proposals to combine these approaches with other logic programming frameworks equipped with tools for static analysis and abstract interpretation. While other programming paradigms may also be relevant here, logic programming may have an important edge among other reasons because its basis in declarative principles has led to the development of sophisticated static analysis and abstract interpretation tools. This workshop is aimed at using computational logic in general and logic programming in particular to support reasoning about security, safety, correctness, and mobile code. It aims to bring together researchers in logic programming working in mobile code safety, security, program analysis, and correctness as well as those in related areas of automated deduction (HOL, COQ, NuPRL, ISABELLE etc). Relevant topics include (but are not limited to) the following: * Protocol analysis and verification * Proof Carrying Code * Logical Frameworks * Verification Condition Generation * Type Systems for mobile calculi and verification * Proof Checking * Applications to Mobile Code Safety and Program Verification using the following tools: o Static Analysis o Model Checking o Theorem Proving o Constraint Systems * New formal systems for verification * Algorithms and Cryptography Questions related to the above topics SUBMISSIONS: Submitted papers must be in PostScript or PDF, no longer than 10 pages in LNCS format, to be presented in ~20 minutes. They must consist of original, relevant and previously unpublished research results related to any of the topics of the conference. We also invite submissions of brief expositions of work in progress for a poster session. The length of these papers should be no longer than 4 pages. At least one author of each paper must register for the conference before the early registration deadline. The acceptance of the paper commits one of the authors to its presentation at the conference. To submit a paper, please send the paper in PS or PDF format to the email address: movelog05-submissions(a)babel.ls.fi.upm.es You should receive a confirmation mail. If there is sufficient interest, a post-workshop proceedings will be considered. IMPORTANT DATES: - Paper Submission: July 10 - Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: July 28. PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Bruno Blanchet (ENS, Paris) Gopal Gupta (Univ, of Texas, Dallas, USA) Manuel Hermenegildo (UPM, Spain and Univ. of New Mexico, USA) Danny Krizanc (Wesleyan University, USA) *Jim Lipton (Wesleyan University, USA) Julio Mariño (UPM, Spain) Dale Miller (École Polytechnique, INRIA Futurs, France) Gopalan Nadathur (University of Minnesota, USA) *Alwen Tiu (LORIA, Nancy, France) Mike Whalen (University of Minnesota, USA) (*)Program co-chairs WORKSHOP ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: James Lipton, (workshop coordinator) Wesleyan University Julio Mariño Carballo Technical University of Madrid Dale Miller Laboratoire d'Informatique, LIX Manuel Hermenegildo Technical University of Madrid and The University of New Mexico

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ANNOUNCE: hs-plugins 0.9.10
by dons＠cse.unsw.edu.au 06 Jul '05

06 Jul '05

hs-plugins 0.9.10 has been released. hs-plugins is a dynamic loader and runtime compilation library for Haskell. Highlights of this release include: * support for GHC 6.4, and cabalised packages * ported to Windows of various flavours thanks to Vivian McPhail and Shelarcy * now uses HSX parser, thanks to Niklas Broberg * extended load interface, thanks to Lemmih * source now in a darcs repository * supports building with GNU make -jN * Simplified module hierarchy, moved under System.* namespace You can find the code at: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/hs-plugins Cheers, Don Stewart

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[ANNOUNCEMENT]: TFP '05: Third & Final Call for Papers
by Kevin Hammond 04 Jul '05

04 Jul '05

[With apologies in advance for any duplication. Kevin] THIRD & FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS TFP 2005 <http://www.tifp.org/tfp05>: Sixth Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming, September 23rd-24th 2005, Tallinn, Estonia (co-located with ICFP 2005 and GPCE 2005). Deadline for submission of extended abstracts: Weds 13th July 2005 (Please note the extended deadline) The 2005 Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming (TFP '05) is an international forum for researchers with interests in all aspects of functional programming languages, focusing on providing a broad view of current and future trends in Functional Programming. Previous TFP symposia were held in Munich, Germany in 2004, in Scotland in 2002 and 2003, as successors to the successful series of Scottish Functional Programming Workshops. TFP <http://www.tifp.org/> aims to combine a lively environment for presenting the latest research results with a formal post-symposium refereeing process leading to the publication by Intellect of a high-profile volume containing a selection of the best papers presented at the symposium. A review of a previous TFP proceedings can be found in the July 2003 issue of the Journal of Functional Programming. BEST STUDENT PAPER AWARD TFP traditionally pays special attention to research students, acknowledging that students are almost by definition part of new subject trends. The TFP05 best student paper award (i.e. for the best paper with a student as first author) acknowledges more formally the special attention TFP has for students. The 2004 award was given to Ron van Kesteren for the paper entitled: "Proof Support for General Type Classes". In order to enhance the quality of student submissions, student papers will be given the option of a feedback on their submission to the symposium proceedings. This feedback is intended for authors who are less familiar with a formal publication process and will provide general qualitative feedback on the submission, but will not give a grade or ranking. SCOPE OF THE SYMPOSIUM The Symposium recognises that new trends may arise through various routes. As part of the Symposium's focus on trends we therefore identify the following five categories of paper. High-quality papers are solicited in any of these categories: RESEARCH PAPERS (leading-edge, previously unpublished research work) POSITION PAPERS (on what new trends should or should not be) PROJECT PAPERS (descriptions of recently started new projects) EVALUATION PAPERS (what lessons can be drawn from a finished project) OVERVIEW PAPERS (summarizing work with respect to a trendy subject) Papers must be original, and not submitted for simultaneous publication in any other forum. They may consider any aspect of functional programming: theoretical, implementation- oriented, or more experience-oriented. Also applications of functional programming techniques to other languages may be considered. Papers on the following subject areas are particularly welcome: o functional programming and security o functional programming and mobility o functional programming applied to global computing o functional languages for embedded systems o telecommunications applications in functional languages o functional GRIDs o validation and verification of functional programs o functional languages for reasoning about imperative/object-oriented programs o interoperability with imperative programming languages o dependently typed functional programming o any new emerging trend in the functional programming area If you are in doubt on whether your paper is within the scope of TFP, please contact the TFP05 program chair, Marko van Eekelen, marko(a)cs.ru.nl. PROCEEDINGS Acceptance to the symposium will be based upon extended abstracts of at least 6 and at most 10 pages. Accepted abstracts are to be completed to full papers for publication in the proceedings that will be available at the symposium in Tallinn. In addition, we intend to continue the TFP tradition of publishing a high-quality subset of contributions in the Intellect series on Trends in Functional Programming. Revised papers will be refereed after the symposium to the normal standards and a subset of the best papers over all categories will be selected for publication by Intellect. This implies (among other things) that: * the paper is written in English. * the paper is well written. * the topic of the paper should be stated clearly. * the submission should clearly indicate to which paper category it belongs: a research, position, project, evaluation or overview paper; it should also indicate whether the paper is a student paper (i.e. first author a student). * for research papers, the approach to solving the problem should be outlined clearly and a detailed discussion of the solution must be given. * the work is properly compared with relevant related work. * there is an abstract, introduction and conclusion. * for research papers, the conclusion should summarise the problem, the solution, and how the work solves the problem. * papers for the symposium proceedings must adhere to the formatting instructions using the tfp.cls style, as will be provided on the TFP05 site; papers must not exceed 16 pages (papers in some categories may comprise considerably less pages). * papers submitted for publication by Intellect must follow formatting and any other instructions provided by the Program Chair. Papers will be judged on their contribution to the research area, with different criteria applying to different categories of paper, as appropriate. SIGNIFICANT DATES Submission of extended abstracts: Friday 8th July 2005 Notification of acceptance: Friday 22th July 2005 Early registration deadline: Friday 29th July 2005 Submission of full papers: Friday 2nd September 2005 Symposium at Tallinn, Estonia: Friday 23rd-Saturday 24th Sept. 2005 Feedback to student papers: Friday 21st October 2005 (provisional) Submission for formal proceedings: Friday 16th December 2005 (provisional) Notification of acceptance: Friday 10th February 2006 (provisional) Camera-ready version: Friday 10th March 2006 (provisional) ORGANISATION Symposium Chair: Kevin Hammond (University of St. Andrews) Program Chair: Marko van Eekelen (Radboud University Nijmegen, NL) Local Organisation: Tarmo Uustalu (Institute of Cybernetics, Tallinn) Treasurer: Greg Michaelson (Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh) PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Andrew Butterfield Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) Gaetan Hains Université d'Orleans (France) Therese Hardin Université Paris VI (France) Kevin Hammond St Andrews University (UK) John Hughes Chalmers University (Sweden) Graham Hutton University of Nottingham (UK) Hans-Wolfgang Loidl Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (Germany) Rita Loogen Philipps-University Marburg (Germany) Greg Michaelson Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh (UK) John O'Donnell University of Glasgow (UK) Ricardo Peña Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) Rinus Plasmeijer Universitaet Nijmegen (The Netherlands) Claus Reinke University of Kent at Canterbury (UK) Sven Bodo Scholz University of Hertfordshire (UK) Doaitse Swierstra Utrecht University (The Netherlands) Phil Trinder Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh (UK) Tarmo Uustalu Institute of Cybernetics, Tallinn (Estonia) SPONSORS We are actively looking for additional TFP sponsors, who may help to subsidise attendance by research students, for example. If you or your organization might be willing to sponsor TFP, or if you know someone who might be willing to do so, please do not hesitate to contact the Symposium chair: Kevin Hammond. Your students will be grateful!

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ICFP 2005 - Call for Participation
by Dariusz Biernacki 01 Jul '05

01 Jul '05

------------------------------------------------------------------------ CALL FOR PARTICIPATION The 10th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP 2005) Tallinn, Estonia September 26-28, 2005 http://www.brics.dk/~danvy/icfp05/ Co-located with TFP 2005 (September 23-24) and GPCE 2005 (September 29 - October 1) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ICFP 2005 provides a forum for researchers and developers to hear about the latest work on the design, implementations, principles, and uses of functional programming. The conference covers the entire spectrum of work, from practice to theory, including its peripheries. Conference Organizers: General Chair: Olivier Danvy, BRICS, University of Aarhus Program Chair: Benjamin Pierce, University of Pennsylvania Local Arrangements Chair: Tarmo Uustalu, Institute of Cybernetics, Tallinn Workshop Chair: Patricia Johann, Rutgers University Programming Contest Chair: Robby Findler, The University of Chicago ------------------------------------------------------------------------ For more details, see http://www.brics.dk/~danvy/icfp05/ Programme: http://www.brics.dk/~danvy/icfp05/programme.html Registration, accommodation and travel information: http://www.cs.ioc.ee/tfp-icfp-gpce05/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------

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best way to do generic programming?
by Arka al Eel 01 Jul '05

01 Jul '05

Hi, I'm playing with generic programming. At the moment I'm interested in reusable transformations on data types. Provided for example a toy datatype Expr like this: data Expr = Const Int | Var String | Add Expr Expr Plus a function "optimize" that optimizes a pattern "x + 0" into "x": optimize (Add x (Const 0)) = x You would now want this to be this generic, so the function should be recursive for all other constructors *and* other data types. For example, suppose that Expr is included in other datatype: data Stm = Assign String Expr | Seq Stm Stm I now want the "optimize" transformation to work on Stm, like this: x = optimize (Seq (Assign (Add (Var "x") (Const 0))) blah blah) For sure, I don't want to write specific code for type Stm. The thing I want is to generically walk through values of those types into Expr where it can apply the pattern. Haskell does not seem to have an easy way to do this. After looking through some papers I found lots of things that *might* handle this, like Generic Haskell, "scrap your boilerplate", Drift, etc. Now I'm not sure what works best for real world, bread and butter programming. None of them seem ideal. I know it's trivial in Scheme (my usual language). Vast amounts of the research literature concerns itself only with toy problems. Extensibility (i.e., reuse) however seems not to be a big concern. Really, this shouldn't be so hard. So I even asked a Haskell programming friend of mine, and he could not come up with a sensible solution in an hour, while I can do this in two minutes in Scheme. After all, writing compilers is supposed to be a *strong* point of Haskell. Real world is knocking on your door, guys! Yours truly, Arka.

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