May 2006 - Haskell - Haskell.org

Re: [Haskell] ANNOUNCE: Milfoh image to texture loading library
by Maurizio Monge 15 May '06

15 May '06

> > The design rationale for the OpenGL/GLUT/OpenAL/ALUT packages is that they > should exactly mirror the standardize native API behind them in a > Haskell-friendly way. GLUT is only a simple, portable GUI for OpenGL-based > program (handling windows, menus, callbacks, etc.) and it has no support for > loading images, therefore the GLUT package will never have such a facility, > either. Sure, only the GLUT api should be mirrored, but i was thinking that since ALUT do have a few facilities to load audio files, why should not have GLUT itself some facility to load images? BTW, this was just a (slightly offtopic) personal consideration. > > It might be an interesting project to write a nice Haskell binding to the > Developer's Image Library (DevIL, see http://www.imagelib.org/) or Imlib2 > (http://www.enlightenment.org/Libraries/Imlib2/) An alternative is to mirror > only the design and actually do a re-write of the whole library in Haskell. And imagemagick would be another possibility too. Sure, but this is problably is quite a bit of work (even just a binding, without rewriting all funcionalities), i just wrote a bare minimum library to create a texture from an image in an opengl program. i think it will be useful for instance if you want to write a program using just GLUT, to be able to load some texture, because you can just incude it. That's it, nothing more and nothing less. > > An IIRC, there is already a Haskell binding for SDL, but I am not so sure > about how complete it is and if it is still maintained. hSDL is not complete, most important for me was that the OpenGL part and the SDL bindings are not yet done. Of course a more definitive solution would be to complete the hSDL bindings (BTW i don't know if it is still maintained, last release is of 2005 April 12), as SDL is a much more general purpose library than GLUT. -- Ciao Maurizio "Well we all shine on Like the moon and the stars and the sun" (John Lennon)

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ANNOUNCE: Milfoh image to texture loading library
by Maurizio Monge 14 May '06

14 May '06

Hi, since i was getting frustrated by having very good OpenGL/GLUT Haskell bindings but no image loading library i have put together a very small library from SDL_image (and a bare minimun of SDL) to load directly and very easily image files to opengl textures. The download link and the overview of the library are here: http://linuz.sns.it/~monge/wiki/index.php/Milfoh Comments/Suggestions are welcome! Since this was a real pain, i think that something like this (maybe a more polished version) should go into GLUT (as, for instance, ALUT do have some audio file loading facilities). -- Ciao Maurizio "Well we all shine on Like the moon and the stars and the sun" (John Lennon)

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ANN: A Haskell Charting Library
by Tim Docker 14 May '06

14 May '06

I'm making available the current state of my 2D charting library for haskell. It's still at quite an early stage, but may prove useful. At present it has: - line charts, points charts, fills, and combinations. - Automatic layout sizing and adjustment. - Auto scaling of axis ranges - Extensible to support new plot types - Uses the cairo graphics library for output - a friendly haskell interface. There's tons of features that I'd like to add, but it satisfies the immediate needs of another application. A little information and a darcs repo can be found here: http://dockerz.net/software/chart.html Comments, feedback (or even patches!) are welcome. This is the first haskell library code I've written, so I'd be especially interested in comments on the API.

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timing/timeout (how to express that in Haskell)
by Johannes Waldmann 12 May '06

12 May '06

What is the idiomatic way to say in (ghc) Haskell: "run this computation for at most x seconds" (e. g. it returns Boolean; imagine a primality test) so I want something :: Int -> a -> Maybe a with the guarantee that the result is Just x with x in whnf, or Nothing. I guess one answer is "that's not Haskell because that's not a function". Sure, but I think I need it anyways, so I would accept some IO .. in the types. Best regards, -- -- Johannes Waldmann -- Tel/Fax (0341) 3076 6479/80 -- ---- http://www.imn.htwk-leipzig.de/~waldmann/ -------

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REMINDER: HC&A Report (extended deadline: 15 May 2006)
by Andres Loeh 12 May '06

12 May '06

Dear Haskellers, the deadline for the May 2006 edition of the Haskell Communities and Activities Report is only a few days away -- but this is still enough time to make sure that the report contains a section on *your* project, on the interesting stuff that you've been doing; using or affecting Haskell in some way. Many projects that have been included in former reports have not yet updated their entries. Please have a look at the November 2005 edition for reference. * Has your project been listed in previous Reports, but is not yet updated? Please write a short update! * Are you no longer working on a project that was included in the Report? Write up what you are working on instead, and tell me if someone else has picked up the project. * Is some project you have heard about not included in any previous Report? Please let me know ... There is still time to write a completely new entry, on a new compiler, tool, library, company, user group, idea, ... -- as long as there is a connection to the Haskell language, there is a place for it in the Report! I have slightly extended the deadline. Submissions are now due by next Monday, that is 15 May 2006. Please mail your entries to <hcar at haskell dot org>, in plain text or pseudo-(La)TeX format. More information can be found in the original Call for Contributions at http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2006-April/017861.html I look forward to receiving your contributions. Thanks a lot, Andres (current editor) -- Haskell Communities and Activities Report (http://haskell.org/communities) 05/2006 edition extended submission deadline: 15 May 2006 <hcar(a)haskell.org>

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Funded PhD studentships at Kent
by S.J.Thompson 11 May '06

11 May '06

PhD Studentships Computing Laboratory, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK Applications are invited for a number of PhD Research Studentships funded by EPSRC starting in September 2006. These studentships will provide tuition fees (at home/EU fees level) and, in the case of UK applicants, maintenance for a period of three years, subject to satisfactory progression through each year of study. The maintenance rate for 2006/7 is at least 12,300 pounds per annum. Candidates should have, or expect to obtain, a good first degree in Computer Science or a related discipline. An appropriate degree at Master's level would also be acceptable. Member of the functional programming group http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/research/groups/tcs/fp/ would be happy to discuss research topics with potential applicants. You can apply for a PhD studentship in any of the department's research areas, see http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/research/pg/researchdetails.html for research groups and suggestions for projects. Alternatively, you could contact a prospective supervisor and develop a research proposal in collaboration with them. The application process is set in motion through an on-line application form: http://www.kent.ac.uk/studying/postgrad/gradapply.html and an application for funding: http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/research/pg/funding/bursary_app.html. Please also ensure that your supporting documentation (references, degree confirmation and TOEFL/IELTS score if necessary) is forwarded with your application. Applications must reach us by 16 June 2006. For further information, see http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/research/pg/. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Simon Thompson S.J.Thompson(a)kent.ac.uk Director and Professor of Logic and Computation Computing Laboratory phone: +44-1227-823820 University of Kent fax: +44-1227-762811 Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NF, UK www.cs.kent.ac.uk/~sjt/ -----------------------------------------------------------------------

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MPC/AMAST 2006 2nd Call for Participation
by Tarmo Uustalu 11 May '06

11 May '06

NEWS: - MSFP accepted paper list is now available. - Remember that early registration is until 15 May 2006. Accommodation in the conference hotels is only guaranteed until this date. CALL FOR PARTICIPATION 8th International Conference on Mathematics of Program Construction MPC '06 11th International Conference on Algebraic Methodology and Software Technology AMAST '06 Kuressaare, Estonia, 2-8 July 2006 http://cs.ioc.ee/mpc-amast06/ Following on from the successful joint conference AMAST/MPC 2004 at Stirling, UK, 2004, the two biennial conferences on mathematical methods in software technology are colocating also in 2006. The joint event will take place in Kuressaare, Estonia, in early July. A perfect place and time to enjoy the Nordic white nights - at 58° N in the midsummer season. MPC will be held 3-5 July, followed by AMAST 5-8 July. A satellite workshop of MPC, Workshop on Mathematically Structured Functional Programming, MSFP 2006 will take place 2 July. This is an official workshop of the TYPES project and researchers from TYPES sites can use funds of the project to attend. Important dates Early registration: 15 May 2006 Late registration: 5 June 2006 MPC invited speakers Robin Cockett, University of Calgary Olivier Danvy, Aarhus Universitet Oege de Moor, University of Oxford MSFP invited speakers Andrzej Filinski, Københavns Universitet John Power, University of Edinburgh AMAST invited speakers Ralph-Johan Back, Åbo Akademi University Lawrence S. Moss, Indiana University Till Mossakowski, Universität Bremen MPC, MSFP and AMAST accepted paper lists and preliminary programmes appear on the conference website. PC lists appear on the conference website. Important dates * Early registration: 15 May 2006 * Late registration: 5 June 2006 Registration Registration, accommodation and travel information are available on the conference website. To register, please fill out the online registration form. Booking of accommodation at Kuressaare is handled by the local organization. Accommodation in one of the conference hotels is only guaranteed until the early registration deadline of 15 May. After this date, we will do what we can, but Kuressaare is a small town and July is in the peak season. Venue Kuressaare (pop. 16000) is the main town on Saaremaa (Ösel), the second-largest island of the Baltic Sea. Kuressaare is a charming seaside resort on the shores of the Gulf of Riga highly popular with Estonians as well as visitors to Estonia. The scientific sessions of MPC/AMAST 2006 will take place at Saaremaa Spa Hotel Meri, one among the several new spa hotels in the town. The social events will involve a number of sites, including the 14th-century episcopal castle and the impact craters of Kaali. Accommodation will be at Saaremaa Spa Hotels Meri and Rüütli. To get to Kuressaare, one normally passes through Tallinn (pop. 402000), Estonia's capital city. Tallinn is famous for its picturesque medieval Old Town, inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List. From Tallinn, Kuressaare is easily reached by scheduled coach (incl. a ferry ride). We may arrange chartered coaches from Tallinn to Kuressaare and back both for MPC and AMAST, but this depends on the demand. There are also twice-daily flights to Kuressaare from Tallinn and twice-weekly direct flights from Helsinki and Stockholm. Local organizers MPC/AMAST 2006 is organized by Institute of Cybernetics, a research institute of Tallinn University of Technology. Contact email address: mpc06(at)cs.ioc.ee.

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Call for Participation: PLAS 2006
by Steve Zdancewic 10 May '06

10 May '06

Call for Participation PLAS 2006 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Programming Languages and Analysis for Security http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~stevez/plas06.html co-located with ACM SIGPLAN PLDI 2006 Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation Ottawa, Canada, June 10, 2006 ********************************************************************** IMPORTANT: Early registration deadline is May 17, 2006 http://www.regmaster2.com/pldi2006.html ********************************************************************** We encourage you to attend the first instance of the PLAS workshop! The goal of PLAS 2006 is to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to exchange and understand ideas and to seed new collaboration on the use of programming language and program analysis techniques that improve the security of software systems. The preliminary program can be found on the workshop web pages: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~stevez/plas06.html Workshop highlights: - An invited talk by David Wagner of U.C. Berkeley "Object Capabilities for Security" - 10 paper presentations, ranging in topics from authorization and monitoring to web vulnerability detection and information-flow policies. - A "madness" session, in which any interested participants have 5 minutes to present provocative, preliminary, or unusual work. Student participation is especially encouraged.

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FP-style vs. OO-style AST structure
by Doug Kirk 10 May '06

10 May '06

Hi, I'm a Haskell newbie, but not new to programming, and I have a question regarding style (I think). I'm writing a parser for OMG's OCL, and have two ways of defining the AST model of a constraint. Each constraint in OCL has the following 4 characteristics: 1. name :: Maybe String 2. context :: UmlElement 3. expr :: OclExpression 4. type :: OclConstraintType Now, having come from an O-O background, this looks right; however, in an FPL, it may not be. OclConstraintType is essentially an enumeration of the values: Invariant | Precondition | Postcondition | InitialValue | Derivation | Body The question is this: is it better to create a single type as above with a 'type' attribute, or would it be better to use the types as separate constructors of a Constraint, each constructor taking the same attributes? I'm looking to avoid any pitfalls that could occur with either decision, and at this point I don't know the benefits of doing it one way vs. the other. BTW, I am using UUST Parser Combinator AG for the parser definition, in case that makes a difference. Thanks! --doug

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2nd CFP: Workshop on Generic Programming 2006
by Ralf Hinze 10 May '06

10 May '06

[The deadline is approaching: 24 days left.] ============================================================================ SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS Workshop on Generic Programming 2006 Portland, Oregon, 16th September 2006 The Workshop on Generic Programming is sponsored by ACM SIGPLAN and forms part of ICFP 2006. Previous Workshops on Generic Programming have been held in Marstrand (affiliated with MPC), Ponte de Lima (affiliated with MPC), Nottingham (informal workshop), Dagstuhl (IFIP WG2.1 Working Conference), Oxford (informal workshop), and Utrecht (informal workshop). http://www.informatik.uni-bonn.de/~ralf/wgp2006.{html,pdf,ps,txt} ============================================================================ Scope ----- Generic programming is about making programs more adaptable by making them more general. Generic programs often embody non-traditional kinds of polymorphism; ordinary programs are obtained from them by suitably instantiating their parameters. In contrast with normal programs, the parameters of a generic program are often quite rich in structure; for example they may be other programs, types or type constructors, class hierarchies, or even programming paradigms. Generic programming techniques have always been of interest, both to practitioners and to theoreticians, but only recently have generic programming techniques become a specific focus of research in the functional and object-oriented programming language communities. This workshop will bring together leading researchers in generic programming from around the world, and feature papers capturing the state of the art in this important emerging area. We welcome contributions on all aspects, theoretical as well as practical, of o adaptive object-oriented programming, o aspect-oriented programming, o component-based programming, o generic programming, o meta-programming, o polytypic programming, o and so on. Submission details ------------------ Deadline for submission: 3rd June 2006 Notification of acceptance: 24th June 2006 Final submission due: 8th July 2006 Workshop: 16th September 2006 Authors should submit papers, in postscript or PDF format, formatted for A4 paper, to Ralf Hinze (ralf(a)informatik.uni-bonn.de) by 3rd June 2006. The length should be restricted to 12 pages in standard (two-column, 9pt) ACM. Accepted papers are published by the ACM and will additionally appear in the ACM digital library. Programme committee ------------------- Roland Backhouse University of Nottingham Pascal Costanza Vrije Universiteit Brussel Peter Dybjer Chalmers University of Technology Jeremy Gibbons University of Oxford Johan Jeuring Universiteit Utrecht Ralf Hinze (chair) Universität Bonn Karl Lieberherr Northeastern University David Musser Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rinus Plasmeijer Universiteit Nijmegen Sibylle Schupp Chalmers University of Technology Jeremy Siek Rice University Don Syme Microsoft Research ============================================================================

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