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Haskell Weekly News: Issue 74 - June 25, 2008
by Brent Yorgey 25 Jun '08

25 Jun '08

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Haskell Weekly News http://sequence.complete.org/hwn/20080625 Issue 74 - June 25, 2008 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to issue 74 of HWN, a newsletter covering developments in the [1]Haskell community. This week, you'll notice a bit more detail in the 'Blogs' section. I've added summaries to some of the posts, to help you decide which you might be interested to read (only a few this week, since I added them at the last minute). I've also >>> highlighted blogs not syndicated on Planet Haskell---mostly people who have just begun learning Haskell and decided to blog about it. Go show them some comment love, and invite them into the community! Community News Andrew Wagner (chessguy) recently flew out to Microsoft for an interview with their Live Search team. In [2]an email to the cafe, he shares some stories from his experience and some interesting coding challenges. Announcements HAppS self-demoing tutorial. Thomas Hartman [3]announced a self-demoing, HStringTemplate-using intro to HAppS. Check out the [4]live demo or obtain it [5]from Hackage. NWFP Interest Group. Greg Meredith [6]announced the next monthly meeting of the NW Functional Programmers Interest group, 6:30 on June 25 at the Seattle Public Library. Greg will talk about a very cool [7]compositional representation of graphs he's been tinkering with recently. ICFP final call for posters. Matthew Fluet [8]announced the final call for proposals for the ICFP 2008 poster session, which should be [9]submitted by June 30. Let people know what you're working on! type-level and parameterized-data packages. Alfonso Acosta [10]announced the release of the [11]type-level and parameterized-data packages, which provide type-level computation and parameterized types a la a dependently-typed system. Lambda in the sun. James Iry [12]announced the creation of [13]Southern California Functional Programmers (SoCalFP), a group for people in LA, Orange County, and San Diego to meet to discuss, debate, present, and learn about functional programming concepts and techniques in various languages. Real World Haskell. Bryan O'Sullivan [14]announced the availability of ten new draft chapters of [15]Real World Haskell, the upcoming O'Reilly book being written by Bryan, John Goerzen, and Don Stewart. In case you were worried, yes, you'll be able to have one in your Christmas stocking! Pugs on hackage!. Audrey Tang has uploaded to Hackage [16]version 6.2.13.2 of [17]Pugs, an implementation of Perl 6 in Haskell. Literal programming with rst-literals. Martin Blais [18]described a neat use of his utility [19]rst-literals to extract Haskell code from ReST documents, enabling a different style of literate programming. Pipe 1.0. Matti Niemenmaa [20]announced the release of [21]Pipe, a library for piping data through a pipeline of processes. HUnit. Richard Giraud [22]announced that he has improved the HUnit documentation and published the changes in a [23]darcs repository. hback. Norbert Wojtowicz [24]announced a new release of [25]hback, a Haskell implementation of the [26]dual n-back memory game using [27]gtk2hs. Google Summer of Code Progress updates from participants in the 2008 [28]Google Summer of Code. Hoogle 4. Neil Mitchell (ndm) is working on Hoogle 4, and recently [29]added two new features, multi-word search and intelligent suggestions. DPH physics engine. Roman Cheplyaka (Feuerbach) is working on a physics engine using [30]Data Parallel Haskell. [31]This week he intended to implement simple ad-hoc cubic collision geometry to test collisions with rotation, but the code became too cumbersome and non-extensible. He took a break to read some papers, and found [32]a better solution. GHC plugins. Max Bolingbroke is working on dynamically loaded plugins for GHC. [33]This week he worked on adding arbitrary user-specified phases to GHC, implementing a control system, pipeline generation, and [34]Template Haskell integration. Next he plans to work on a plugin annotation system. Cabal dependency framework. Andrea Vezzosi (Saizan) is working on a make-like dependency analysis framework for Cabal. He has posted [35]a detailed explanation of his project, some of the issues involved, and his progress so far. Language.C. Benedikt Huber (visq) is working on Language.C, a standalone parser/pretty printer library for C99. This week he worked on AST documentation and improvements, prepared to port the AST analysis from c2hs, and worked on the pretty printer's internals. Generic tries. Jamie Brandon is working on a library for efficient maps using generalized tries. Recently he has worked on implementing some [36]bitpacking tools to save memory. GHC API. Thomas Schilling (nominolo) is supposedly working on [37]improvements to the GHC API. However, officials at HWN headquarters have begun privately speculating that Thomas does not, in fact, exist. Discussion history of tuples vs pairs. Conal Elliott [38]asked about the history of support for n-tuples in Haskell and ML. hackageDB maintainer policy. Ross Paterson began a lengthy [39]discussion towards agreeing on a policy for uploading packages to Hackage, specifying whether the package is maintained and who is maintaining it, and other related issues. What is a rigid type variable?. Xiao-Yong Jin [40]asked what the 'rigid type variables' are that are sometimes referred to in GHC error messages. Read the thread for a concise discussion and the solution to the original problem. Map interface. Jamie Brandon started a [41]thread asking for feedback on his proposed API for generic tries, and the discussion is still ongoing. Left and right folds. George Kangas [42]exhibited a pair of very elegant alternate definitions for left and right fold, and showed how this alternate viewpoint makes obvious several algebraic identities as well as the generalization to [43]Data.Foldable. A must-read for the aspiring functional programmer. ribbonsPerLine. Alfonso Acosta asked an interesting [44]question about "ribbonsPerLine" in the Text.PrettyPrint.HughesPJ library. Do you know what it does? The answer can be found in the [45]original paper describing the library. Jobs PhD position at University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Simon Marlow [46]announced, on behalf of Patricia Johann, an open PhD position in operational and categorical approaches to parametricity. The funded position is in the newly-formed Mathematically Structured Programming group at the University of Strathclyde, comprising Neil Ghani, Patricia Johann, and Conor McBride. Quantitative Trading Developer Position at Hutchin Hill Capital. Neil Mehra [47]announced an open position for a Quantitative Trading Developer at Hutchin Hill Capital, a newly formed multi-strategy hedge fund located in midtown Manhattan. Blog noise [48]Haskell news from the [49]blogosphere. * >>> Blockcipher: [50]Converting Geospatial Coordinates. Blockcipher has had enough of reading Haskell tutorials, and is itching to actually create something useful! * Roman Cheplyaka: [51]V-Clip algorithm (status update). An update on Roman's Google Summer of Code project. * Andy Gill: [52]Memo class using type families. * >>> blueapple: [53]Project Euler. blueapple is hooked on [54]Project Euler and has been using it as an opportunity to learn Haskell. * >>> Dinesh Pillay: [55]Haskell & Type Inference. Dinesh has been learning Haskell for just a few days now and is really enjoying it. In this post he shares a problem he was having with types and its solution. * Don Stewart (dons): [56]Daily Haskell: Download and analyse logs, then generate sparklines. A new series on gluing Hackage libraries together to get things done. * Max Bolingbroke: [57]Compiler Plugins For GHC: Week Two. An update on Max's Google Summer of Code project. * Edward Kmett: [58]Paramorphism. * Edward Kmett: [59]Catamorphism. * Edward Kmett: [60]Recursion Schemes: A Field Guide. Edward is writing up a 'field guide' to all those 'foomorphism' recursion schemes. * Neil Mitchell: [61]GSoC Hoogle: Week 4. * Real World Haskell: [62]Ten new draft chapters. * Jamie Brandon: [63]Bitpacking. Updates on Jamie's Google Summer of Code project. * Jamie Brandon: [64]Finally!. * Brent Yorgey: [65]ZipEdit. Brent describes a new library for creating simple interactive list editors. * Real-World Haskell: [66]Video of my concurrent/multicore Haskell talk is up. * Roman Cheplyaka: [67]Status report: week 4. An update on Roman's Google Summer of Code project. * Osfameron: [68]More Countdown: laziness, Scheme, and German frogs. * Andrea Vezzosi (Saizan): [69]a dependency analysis framework for Cabal. * Osfameron: [70]Schwartzian transform in Haskell. * Neil Mitchell: [71]Hoogle 4 New Features. * Thomas M. DuBuisson: [72]Past and Future libraries. * >>> codeflow: [73]Haskell + a grain of Python. codeflow talks about his experience learning Haskell and functional programming. * >>> Peter Christensen: [74]Hey Language Snobs: Don't Pinch Pennies. * >>> Micah Elliott: [75]1983-96: The Golden Age of Programming Languages. Quotes of the Week * povman: when does ghc6.10 plan to release itself? * Baughn: So I just rewrote a fairly complex text extraction/indexing system to pipeline its work across several processors - painlessly, in less than five minutes. Bravo, haskell! * monochrom: We need to cabalise Cale. * Botje: h0t (monoid `mappend` monoid) action? * quicksilver: the only tool we have in haskell98 for performing an action is the magic sigil 'main =' * solrize: haskell has a very steep unlearning curve :) * Botje: drug users pass around needles, haskell users pass around Oleg papers * qwe1234: i know haskell, ocaml, scheme and prolog better than you ever will. About the Haskell Weekly News New editions are posted to [76]the Haskell mailing list as well as to [77]the Haskell Sequence and [78]Planet Haskell. [79]RSS is also available, and headlines appear on [80]haskell.org. Headlines are available as [81]PDF. To help create new editions of this newsletter, please see the information on [82]how to contribute. Send stories to byorgey at seas dot upenn dot edu. The darcs repository is available at darcs get [83]http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/ . References 1. http://haskell.org/ 2. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/41760 3. http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2008-June/044696.html 4. http://rippledeals.com:5001/ 5. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/happs-tutorial 6. http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2008-June/044671.html 7. http://biosimilarity.blogspot.com/2008/06/algebra-of-graphs-individually-an… 8. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16263 9. https://www.softconf.com/s08/icfp08-posters/submit.html 10. http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2008-June/044630.html 11. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/type-level 12. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16260 13. http://socalfp.blogspot.com/ 14. http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/2008/06/22/ten-new-draft-chapters/ 15. http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/ 16. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/Pugs-6.2.13.2 17. http://pugscode.org/ 18. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/41621 19. http://furius.ca/pubcode/pub/conf/common/bin/rst-literals.html 20. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/41619 21. http://iki.fi/matti.niemenmaa/pipe/ 22. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.glasgow.user/14661 23. http://richardg.name/ 24. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16252 25. http://code.google.com/p/hback/ 26. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0801268105v1 27. http://www.haskell.org/gtk2hs/ 28. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/summer-of-code/wiki/SoC2008 29. http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2008/06/hoogle-4-new-features.html 30. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/GHC/Data_Parallel_Haskell 31. http://physics-dph.blogspot.com/2008/06/status-report-week-4.html 32. http://physics-dph.blogspot.com/2008/06/v-clip-algorithm-status-update.html 33. http://blog.omega-prime.co.uk/2008/06/23/compiler-plugins-for-ghc-week-two/ 34. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Template_Haskell 35. http://vezzosi.blogspot.com/2008/06/my-summer-of-code-project-dependency.ht… 36. http://jamiiecb.blogspot.com/2008/06/gsoc-week-1.html 37. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/GhcApiStatus 38. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/41749 39. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/9334 40. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/41651 41. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/9259 42. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/41607 43. http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/base/Data-Foldable.ht… 44. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/41506 45. http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~rjmh/Papers/pretty.ps 46. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16253 47. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/41584 48. http://planet.haskell.org/ 49. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Blog_articles 50. http://idea-guy.blogspot.com/2008/06/converting-geosptial-coordinates.html 51. http://physics-dph.blogspot.com/2008/06/v-clip-algorithm-status-update.html 52. http://blog.unsafeperformio.com/?p=30 53. http://blueappledev.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/project-euler/ 54. http://projecteuler.net/ 55. http://dpillay.blogspot.com/2008/06/haskell-type-inference.html 56. http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2008/06/24#daily-haskell-one 57. http://blog.omega-prime.co.uk/2008/06/23/compiler-plugins-for-ghc-week-two/ 58. http://comonad.com/reader/2008/paramorphism/ 59. http://comonad.com/reader/2008/catamorphism/ 60. http://comonad.com/reader/2008/recursion-schemes/ 61. http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2008/06/gsoc-hoogle-week-4.html 62. http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/2008/06/22/ten-new-draft-chapters/ 63. http://jamiiecb.blogspot.com/2008/06/bitpacking.html 64. http://jamiiecb.blogspot.com/2008/06/finally.html 65. http://byorgey.wordpress.com/2008/06/21/zipedit/ 66. http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/2008/06/20/video-of-my-concurrentmulti… 67. http://physics-dph.blogspot.com/2008/06/status-report-week-4.html 68. http://osfameron.vox.com/library/post/more-countdown-laziness-scheme-and-ge… 69. http://vezzosi.blogspot.com/2008/06/my-summer-of-code-project-dependency.ht… 70. http://osfameron.vox.com/library/post/schwartzian-transform-in-haskell.html… 71. http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2008/06/hoogle-4-new-features.html 72. http://tommd.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/past-and-future-libraries/ 73. http://codeflow.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/haskell-a-grain-of-python/ 74. http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/hey-language-snobs-dont-pinch-pen… 75. http://micahelliott.blogspot.com/2008/06/1983-96-golden-age-of-programming.… 76. http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell 77. http://sequence.complete.org/ 78. http://planet.haskell.org/ 79. http://sequence.complete.org/node/feed 80. http://haskell.org/ 81. http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/archives/20080625.pdf 82. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HWN 83. http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/

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ICFP08 Final Call for posters
by Matthew Fluet (ICFP Publicity Chair) 25 Jun '08

25 Jun '08

ICFP 2008 poster session September 21, 2008 Call for presentation proposals ICFP 2008 will feature a poster session for researchers and practitioners, including students. The session will provide friendly feedback for work that is in gestation or ongoing, as well as opportunities to meet each other and exchange ideas. We welcome poster submissions on all ICFP topics, especially presentations of - applications of and to functional programming; - recent work presented at more distant venues; and - ongoing work, whether or not submitted to ICFP. There will be no formal proceedings, but presenters will be invited to submit working notes, demo code, and other materials to supplement their abstract and poster. These materials will be released informally on a Web page dedicated to the poster session. An accepted submission is not intended to replace conference or journal publication. Persons interested in presenting a poster are invited to submit a one-page abstract in SIGPLAN conference style http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigplan/authorInformation.htm to the Web site https://www.softconf.com/s08/icfp08-posters/submit.html by June 30, 2008. The program committee will review the submissions for relevance and interest, and notify the authors by July 14, 2008. Accepted posters must be presented by the authors in person on Sunday, September 21, 2008. Important dates: Submission: Monday, June 30, 2008 Notification: Monday, July 14, 2008 Presentation: Sunday, September 21, 2008 Program committee: Benjamin Pierce (University of Pennsylvania) Colin Runciman (University of York) Chung-chieh Shan (Rutgers University)

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FDPE 2008 -- Deadline extension
by mh＠informatik.uni-kiel.de 24 Jun '08

24 Jun '08

Please note that the deadline for the Workshop on Functional and Declarative Programming in Education (FDPE08) which will be held in conjunction with ICFP 2008 on Sunday, September 21, 2008 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada is extended to Sunday, June 29, 2008. Beside regular papers extended abstracts presenting new ideas in teaching declarative programming and (short) tool describtions are welcome as well. Further information is available from http://www-ps.informatik.uni-kiel.de/fdpe08/

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Lambda in the sun
by James Iry 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

Announcing the creation of Southern California Functional Programmers (SoCalFP) <http://socalfp.blogspot.com/>, a group for people in LA, Orange County, and San Diego to meet in person and/or virtually to discuss, debate, present, and learn about functional programming concepts and techniques in various languages. You might ask, "why a functional programming group in Southern California?" Well, SoCal, wake up and smell the lambda. There's increasing interest in bastions of functional programming like Haskell and various Lisps; popular mainstream languages like Ruby and Python have lambda (or lambda like) capabilities; hybrid OO/functional languages like F# and Scala are generating buzz; C# 3.0 has embraced core functional ideas like closures and monads; and even staid, conservative Java may get some functional goodness in the next version. Perhaps most importantly, programmers can't ignore the oncoming multi-core freight train and Erlang has shown that concurrency and functional programming go together like peanut butter and chocolate. If you're intrigued come visit our main site <http://socalfp.blogspot.com/>and join our mailing list <http://groups.google.com/group/socalfp>.

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CfPart: 4th Int'l Workshop on Automated Specification and Verification of Web Systems (WWV'08)
by demis＠dimi.uniud.it 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

WWV 2008 - CALL FOR PARTICIPATION !!! Early registration deadline: JUNE 25, 2008 !!! ******************************************************************* 4th International Workshop on Automated Specification and Verification of Web Sites (WWV'08) July 4, 2008, Siena (Italy) http://wwv08.dimi.uniud.it co-located with WFLP'08 http://wflp08.dimi.uniud.it/ ******************************************************************* WWV'08 will be held in the convention centre of the University of Siena, Italy: http://www.unisi.it/santachiara/ SCOPE The increased complexity of Web sites and the explosive growth of Web-based applications have turned their design and construction into a challenging problem. Nowadays, many companies have diverted their Web sites into interactive, completely-automated, Web-based applications (such as Amazon, on-line banking, or travel agencies) with a high complexity that requires appropriate specification and verification techniques and tools. Systematic, formal approaches to the analysis and verification can address the problems of this particular domain with automated and reliable tools that also incorporate semantic aspects. The WWV 2008 provides a forum for researchers from the communities of Rule-based programming, Automated Software Engineering, and Web-oriented research to facilitate the cross-fertilization and the advancement of hybrid methods that combine the three areas. The WWV'08 program includes 6 regular papers and two invited talks by Rosario Pugliese (University of Florence, Italy) and I.V. Ramakrishnan (Stony Brook University, USA).

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IFL 2008 Call for Papers
by Sven-Bodo Scholz 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

******************************************************************************** * * CALL FOR PAPERS * * 20th International Symposium on the * Implementation and Application of Functional Languages * IFL 2008 * 10-12.Sept 2008, Hatfield UK * * http://events.sac-home.org/ifl2008/ * ******************************************************************************** The aim of the IFL symposia 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. Formal proceedings are produced after the symposium, so that authors can incorporate the feedback from discussions at the symposium in their published papers. Topics ====== Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * language concepts * type checking * compilation techniques * (abstract) interpretation * generic programming techniques * automatic program generation * array processing * concurrent/parallel programming * concurrent/parallel program execution * functional programming on embedded systems * functional programming on multi-cores/ many-cores * heap management * runtime profiling * performance measurements * debugging and tracing * (abstract) machine architectures * verification * formal aspects * tools and programming techniques Papers on applications or tools 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 symposium name adding the term application, introduced in 2004, is to reflect the broader scope IFL has gained over the years. Paper Submissions ================= Prospective authors are encouraged to submit papers to be published in the draft proceedings and to present them at the symposium. All contributions must be written in English, conform to the Springer-Verlag LNCS series format and not exceed 16 pages. The draft proceedings will appear as a Technical Report of the School of Computer Science of the University of Hertfordshire. Attendees of IFL 2008 will have the opportunity to submit a revised version of their paper for post-symposium reviewing. As in previous years, we hope that selected papers will be published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) Series. The Peter Landin Prize ====================== Since 2002 every year the Peter Landin Prize of 150 GBP is awarded to the best paper presented at the symposium, as selected by the program committee. Important Dates =============== * Submission for draft proceedings: 22. August * Early Registration: 25. August * Symposium: 10-12. September * Submission for post-refereeing: 14. November * Notification of acceptance / rejection: 23. January 2009 * Submission of a camera ready version: 20. February 2009 Contact ======= For further details see <http://events.sac-home.org/ifl2008/> or contact us by email: events <at> sac-home.org

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ANNOUNCE: GHC version 6.8.3
by Ian Lynagh 22 Jun '08

22 Jun '08

============================================================= The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 6.8.3 ============================================================= The GHC Team is pleased to announce a new patchlevel release of GHC. This release contains a number of bugfixes relative to 6.8.2, so we recommend upgrading. Release notes are here: http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/6.8.3/html/users_guide/release-6-8-3.html How to get it ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The easy way is to go to the web page, which should be self-explanatory: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ We supply binary builds in the native package format for many platforms, and the source distribution is available from the same place. Packages will appear as they are built - if the package for your system isn't available yet, please try again later. Background ~~~~~~~~~~ Haskell is a standard lazy functional programming language; the current language version is Haskell 98, agreed in December 1998 and revised December 2002. GHC is a state-of-the-art programming suite for Haskell. Included is an optimising compiler generating good code for a variety of platforms, together with an interactive system for convenient, quick development. The distribution includes space and time profiling facilities, a large collection of libraries, and support for various language extensions, including concurrency, exceptions, and foreign language interfaces (C, whatever). GHC is distributed under a BSD-style open source license. A wide variety of Haskell related resources (tutorials, libraries, specifications, documentation, compilers, interpreters, references, contact information, links to research groups) are available from the Haskell home page (see below). On-line GHC-related resources ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web: GHC home page http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ GHC developers' home page http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ Haskell home page http://www.haskell.org/ Supported Platforms ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The list of platforms we support, and the people responsible for them, is here: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Contributors Ports to other platforms are possible with varying degrees of difficulty. The Building Guide describes how to go about porting to a new platform: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building Developers ~~~~~~~~~~ We welcome new contributors. Instructions on accessing our source code repository, and getting started with hacking on GHC, are available from the GHC's developer's site run by Trac: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ Mailing lists ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, use the web interfaces at http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-bugs There are several other haskell and ghc-related mailing lists on www.haskell.org; for the full list, see http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ Some GHC developers hang out on #haskell on IRC, too: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/IRC_channel Please report bugs using our bug tracking system. Instructions on reporting bugs can be found here: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/reportabug

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CfPart: 17th Int'l Workshop on Functional and (Constraint) Logic Programming (WFLP'08)
by demis＠dimi.uniud.it 21 Jun '08

21 Jun '08

WFLP 2008 - CALL FOR PARTICIPATION !!! Early registration deadline: JUNE 25, 2008 !!! =================================================================== WFLP 2008 17th International Workshop on Functional and (Constraint) Logic Programming Siena, Italy, July 3-4, 2008 http://wflp08.dimi.uniud.it/ co-located with WWV'08 http://wwv08.dimi.uniud.it/ =================================================================== WFLP'08 will be held in the convention centre of the University of Siena, Italy: http://www.unisi.it/santachiara/ SCOPE The Workshop on Functional and (Constraint) Logic Programming aims at bringing together researchers interested in functional programming, (constraint) logic programming, as well as the integration of the two paradigms. It promotes the cross-fertilizing exchange of ideas and experiences among researchers and students from the different communities interested in the foundations, applications, and combinations of high-level, declarative programming languages and related areas. The WFLP'08 program includes 14 regular papers and an invited talk by Dale Miller (Ecole Polytechnique Paris, France).

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Fwd: PhD position at University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
by Simon Marlow 20 Jun '08

20 Jun '08

[ forwarding on behalf of Patricia Johann <pjohann at camden.rutgers.edu> ] PhD Position in Operational and Categorical Approaches to Parametricity Department of Computer and Information Sciences University of Strathclyde, Scotland Applications are invited for one PhD position within the newly-formed Mathematically Structured Programming group at the University of Strathclyde. The group comprises Prof. Neil Ghani, Dr. Patricia Johann, and Dr. Conor McBride. The funded PhD project centers around operational and categorical approaches to relational parametricity, which serves as the basis for deriving both structured tools for programming with, and effective techniques for reasoning about, functional programs, solely from their (polymorphic) types. The project aims to develop the theoretical foundations of parametricity for languages supporting advanced datatypes --- such as nested types, GADTs, and their mixed-variance versions --- as well as to apply these foundations to program transformations and other applications. The project is under the direction of Patricia Johann. The successful applicant will have an MSc in Mathematics or Computing Science or a related subject with a strong Mathematics or Computing Science component. Ideally, they will also have a strong, documented interest in doing research. Strong mathematical background and problem-solving skills are essential; good programming skills are a plus. Prior knowledge in the areas of operational semantics, category theory, and/or parametricity is an advantage, but is not required. The PhD position is for 3 years; the start date is negotiable. The position is a fully-funded post for a home (i.e., UK) student, and includes both coverage of fees and an EPSRC-level stipend for each of the three years. For European students, the post covers only fees (i.e., no stipend is available). More information about the department is available at http://www.strath.ac.uk/cis The University of Strathclyde (http://www.strath.ac.uk) is located in the heart of Glasgow, which Lonely Planet Travel Guides hail as "one of Britain's largest, liveliest and most interesting cities" (see http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/scotland/glasgow/) Southern Scotland provides a particularly stimulating environment for researchers in theoretical computer science, with active groups in this area at Heriot-Watt University, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Glasgow, the University of St. Andrews, and the University of Strathclyde. Requests for further information and other informal enquiries can be sent to: Patricia Johann Patricia.Johann at cis.strath.ac.uk (The group is currently in the process of moving to the University of Strathclyde, so the above is the best contact address for the duration of the summer. Students interested in joining the group to work on other topics should contact Prof. Ghani at Neil.Ghani at cis.strath.ac.uk, since further positions are expected soon. Those interested in the position are asked to send e-mail to the address given above. Full Details of the application process are available upon request, but an application will include: 1. A cover letter stating the applicant's specific interest in the project. 2. A full curriculum vitae, including an abstract of the applicant's graduate thesis and the name of their supervisor. 3. Letters of recommendation or references from at least two scientific staff members. (Letters of recommendation should either be included along with the application, or should arrive separately promptly.) 4. A completed application for postgraduate study at the University of Strathclyde. Applications, forms for letters of recommendation, and instructions are available at http://www.strath.ac.uk/prospectus/postgraduateapplications/ Applications will be considered until the position is filled, but those received on or before 15 August 2008 will have priority.

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Announce: hback - dual n-back memory game (0.0.3)
by Norbert Wojtowicz 19 Jun '08

19 Jun '08

I've released a version 0.0.3 of hback based on the current HEAD of the darcs repo. From the end-user's perspective, there are three major changes: 1. Game now tries to accurately duplicate the protocol described in the original PNAS paper [0]. If there are any deviations, please do let me know. 2. The game should now correctly build with all dependencies and correctly locate all data at runtime that was copied during installation. If there are any issues with this, it's a bug - please do report it. 3. The graphics are now rendered as SVG (which means the cairo lib installed on the system will need to support SVG). Cabal file can be found on hackage: http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/hback/0.0.3/hback-0.0.3.tar.gz If you prefer to keep up-to-date with changes, checkout the repo instead: darcs get --partial http://code.haskell.org/hback/ And the new project homepage: http://code.google.com/p/hback/ Thanks to everyone who showed an interest in the program; it's really helpful in encouraging me to continue tinkering with it. As always, all suggestions and comments sincerely welcome, Norbert Wojtowicz [0] http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0801268105v1

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