[Haskell-cafe] Haskell Weekly News: Issue 140

jfre...@gmail.com

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Nov 21, 2009, 3:15:02 PM11/21/09

to has...@haskell.org, haskel...@haskell.org

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Haskell Weekly News
http://sequence.complete.org/hwn/20091122
Issue 140 - November 22, 2009
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to issue 140 of HWN, a newsletter covering developments in the
[1]Haskell community.

Apologies for the somewhat late edition, I got back late from the
NES/MAA conference yesterday in Springfield, MA, and was generally too
exhausted from all the math competing and giving of talks that HWN
could not compete with the appeal of sleeping... This week there was a
new edition of the HCAR, plenty of good discussion about Iteratee's and
the Type Directed Name Resolution proposal, altogether a busy week. So
here it is, your Haskell Weekly News!

Announcements

[BostonHaskell] Next meeting: November 24th at MIT (32-G882). Ravi
Nanavati [2]announced the next meeting of BAHUG.

Haskell Communities and Activities Report (17th ed., November 2009).
Janis Voigtlaender [3]announced the new edition of the Haskell
Communities and Activities Report.

Call for Participation - PEPM'10 (co-located with POPL'10). Janis
Voigtlaender [4]announced a call for participation for PEPM 2010.

LambdaCube engine and Bullet physics binding. Csaba Hruska [5]announced
a binding to the LambdaCube and Bullet engines.

ICFP '10: Second call for workshop proposals. Wouter Swierstra
[6]announced a second call for workshop proposals for ICFP 2010.

deepseq-1.0.0.0. Simon Marlow [7]announced version 1.0.0.0 of `deepseq`

wcwidth-0.0.1. Jason Dusek [8]announced a small package which provides
binding to wchar.h, which assigns a column width to unicode characters.

gnome-keyring 0.1 (bindings to libgnome-keyring). John Millikin
[9]announced a set of bindings to the GNOME keyring libraries.

attempt. Michael Snoyman [10]announced a new release of the `attempt`
package.

control-monad-failure and safe-failure. Michael Snoyman [11]also
announced a new version of `control-monad-failure` and `safe-failure`.

Announcing the GHC Bug Sweep. Simon Marlow [12]announced the GHC bug
sweep, to help weed out the GHC Trac of old bugs, and also to get warm
fuzzy feelings from helping everyone's favorite compiler devs.

New Industrial Haskell Group membership options. Duncan Coutts
[13]announced some new membership options for the the Industrial
Haskell Group (IHG)

bindings-SDL 1.0.2, the domain specific language for FFI description.
Mauricio Antunes [14]announced a new version of the bindings-SDL
package.

wxHaskell 0.12.1.2. Jeremy O'Donoghue [15]announced a release of the
wxHaskell package, including new improved support for installation via
cabal on any system, with only a minor caveat on Windows.

TFP 2010 - Call for Papers. TFP 2010 [16]announced a call for papers
for TFP 2010, the 11th symposium on Trends in Functional Programming.

Reminder: Fun in the afternoon, MSR Cambridge, 26 Nov. Simon Marlow
[17]announced a final reminder for the `Fun in the Afternoon` meeting,
which will be at MSR Cambridge on the 26th of November (ED:
Thanksgiving for us Americans, if only there were some way to combine
turkey-oriented gluttony with Functional programming...).

Job at the University of Technology in Cottbus. Wolfgang Jeltsch
[18]announced a job opening at the University of Technology in Cottbus.

Scottish Category Theory Seminar. Conor McBride [19]announced the first
meeting of Scottish Category Theory Seminar, a forum for discussion of
all aspects of Category Theory, be they pure or applied. (ED: I am
fighting very hard to not make some sort of Braveheart Joke...)

Discussion

Iteratee question. Valery V. Vorotyntsev [20]asked about using
iteratee's in his binary data parser code.

Haskell as an alternative to Java. Philippos Apolinarius [21]wondered
whether Haskell would make for a good Java alternative.

Status of TypeDirectedNameResolution proposal? Levi Greenspan [22]asked
about the status of the TDNR proposal.

Typef*ck: Brainf*ck in the type system. Johnny Morrice [23]showed us
his implementation of everyone's favorite profane programming
language... in the type system.

Could someone teach me why we use Data.Monoid? Magicloud Magiclouds
[24]requested some insight to why we use monoids so much in Haskell,
leading to a fantastic discussion of all the myriad places Monoids pop
up in both Haskell and in Math in general.

Blog noise

[25]Haskell news from the [26]blogosphere. Blog posts from people new
to the Haskell community are marked with >>>, be sure to welcome them!
* Neil Brown: [27]The Operators and Monoids of CHP.
* Philip Wadler: [28]A list is an odd creature, take 2.
* Darcs: [29]darcs hacking sprint 3 report.
* Mikael Vejdemo Johansson (Syzygy-): [30][MATH198] Lecture 9 posted
and lectured.
* Gergely Patai: [31]LambdaCube and Bullet on Hackage at last.
* David Amos: [32]Three new modules in HaskellForMaths.
* Darcs: [33]darcs weekly news #46.
* Christophe Poucet (vincenz): [34]Setting up iptables to throttle
incoming ssh.
* Ivan Lazar Miljenovic: [35]Waddaya know, testing WORKS!.
* Neil Mitchell: [36]Reviewing View Patterns.
* Neil Brown: [37]An Introduction to Communicating Sequential
Processes.
* Joachim Breitner: [38]Darcs Hacking Sprint: Mission Complete.
* Ivan Lazar Miljenovic: [39]Past, Present and PEPM.
* Erik de Castro Lopo: [40]Hacking DDC..
* Dan Piponi (sigfpe): [41]Haskell Monoids and their Uses.
* Joachim Breitner: [42]Arrived at the Darcs hacking sprint.

Quotes of the Week

* Apocalisp: You can't have your baby and eat it too
* tensorpudding: so you boil lisp for an hour to sift out the
parentheses and impurities, make a whitespace sauce with liberal
syntactic sugar, and you have haskell a la mode
* ddarius: I'm not aware of anything (including C++) that can
seamlessly talk to C++ code.
* ksf: is Data.Data.Data some kind of reference to swedish chefs?
* IceDane: [on escaping an imperative mindset]: <kmc> i recommend
heavy drinking <IceDane> I've tried that. I just have fun and wake
up and feel like shit the day after. but still think in loops.
* jpet: Ok, after studying the generated core a bit, I can conclude
that generated core is somewhat hard to follow.
* Adamant: [on the update complexity of Data.Map] I read that as
'Oleg(n)'
* skorpan: I did not have impure relations with that language

About the Haskell Weekly News

New editions are posted to [43]the Haskell mailing list as well as to
[44]the Haskell Sequence and [45]Planet Haskell. [46]RSS is also
available, and headlines appear on [47]haskell.org.

To help create new editions of this newsletter, please see the
information on [48]how to contribute. Send stories to jfredett . at .
gmail . dot . com. The darcs repository is available at darcs get
[49]http://patch-tag.com/r/jfredett/HWN2/pullrepo HWN2 .

References

Benjamin L.Russell

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Nov 23, 2009, 9:36:57 PM11/23/09

to haskel...@haskell.org

On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:14:29 -0800 (PST), jfre...@gmail.com wrote:

> Typef*ck: Brainf*ck in the type system. Johnny Morrice [23]showed us
> his implementation of everyone's favorite profane programming
> language... in the type system.

Incidentally, I've always wondered about the politically correct way
of referring to this programming language (and related implementation
in the above-mentioned type system) in academic circles; if I were
writing a paper for submission to an academic journal, should I place
priority on accuracy or propriety? In general, for what kinds of
publications should I prioritize one criterion over the other?

In general, if a programming language-related term contains what is
generally regarded as a profane word as a component, for what kinds of
written material should I prioritize accuracy vs. propriety?

-- Benjamin L. Russell
--
Benjamin L. Russell / DekuDekuplex at Yahoo dot com
http://dekudekuplex.wordpress.com/
Translator/Interpreter / Mobile: +011 81 80-3603-6725
"Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto."
-- Matsuo Basho^

Joe Fredette

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Nov 23, 2009, 9:51:02 PM11/23/09

to Benjamin L.Russell, haskel...@haskell.org

I censored it because I intend the HWN to be a PG rated article. I
figure -- while I am not under any delusion that kids these days have
mouths fouler than mine, which is a feat for sure -- that some young
programmer with strict speaking morals may stumble upon the HWN and say,

"Hey self! This is a fantastically written weekly newsletter
concerning
recent developments in this community, and did I mention how
wonderfully
written it is?"

I should want said programmer to not feel any offense that can be
easily avoided by a single * here or !@#$ there.

Generally I'm opposed to censorship -- but that generally entails an
authority censoring against the will of the author, I think that in
this case -- as I am the author/editor (not of the post proper, but
rather the conduit to the post) -- that censorship-self-inflicted
doesn't really count.

I guess my view is that such a paper with an unintentionally foul-
mouthed name -- like Brainf*ck -- ought not be the reason for which
your paper is rejected from a journal or other publication source, but
rather it should be understood that it might be mildly censored (as I
did) if it is publish, in accordance with the intended audience of the
publication source.

/Joe

Conor McBride

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Nov 23, 2009, 9:59:12 PM11/23/09

to haskell-cafe Cafe

Hi Benjamin

On 24 Nov 2009, at 02:35, Benjamin L.Russell wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:14:29 -0800 (PST), jfre...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> Typef*ck: Brainf*ck in the type system. Johnny Morrice [23]showed us
>> his implementation of everyone's favorite profane programming
>> language... in the type system.

> In general, if a programming language-related term contains what is

> generally regarded as a profane word as a component, for what kinds of
> written material should I prioritize accuracy vs. propriety?

Who gives a brain?

More seriously, I worry that inaccuracy (other than blessed relief from
tedious pedantry, of course) might ever be improper. Lots of arts
academia write learned articles about filth, and it's no big deal when
it's in quotation. That's the situation here, no? Perhaps use quotation
marks just to be clear that the terminology is not of your making. But
you should have no need of ASCII-art fig leaves.

(Now, as far as *email* (e.g., HWN) is concerned, it makes sense to act
like wise spammers the world over and disguise your true intentions from
the automated filters. People from Scunthorpe must be really fed up
doing
that. I know they're fed up being used as an example, too. Sorry.)

Yours ever

Coqnor

Benjamin L.Russell

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Nov 23, 2009, 10:14:31 PM11/23/09

to haskel...@haskell.org

On Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:50:22 -0500, Joe Fredette <jfre...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>I guess my view is that such a paper with an unintentionally foul-
>mouthed name -- like Brainf*ck -- ought not be the reason for which
>your paper is rejected from a journal or other publication source, but
>rather it should be understood that it might be mildly censored (as I
>did) if it is publish, in accordance with the intended audience of the

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>publication source.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Aha, but therein lies the gist of the issue: For example, if somebody
wrote a hypothetical Haskell library called (and properly censored,
according to your standards) "Monadam*: A library for translating
those dam* monads into non-monad-syntax form," and wanted to submit a
paper on the semantics of the library to a functional programming
journal, then for that intended audience of the publication source,
should the title be self-censored prior to submission, or left intact?

In addition (just to be pedantic, but this issue could conceivably
arise with certain library names in the future), if the library were
announced on, say, the main Haskell mailing list, then for that
intended audience of the publication source, should the subject line
of the announcement read "ANN: Monadam*: A Library for Translating
Those Dam* Monads into Non-monad-syntax Form," or would it be more
appropriate to leave the library name intact?

Normally, this issue does not arise, but with certain programming
language names that contain profane terms within, there is a
possibility that somebody could potentially name a library similarly,
leading to this referencing issue.

Presumably, the Library of Congress citation would include the full
name, regardless of any profane terms within; if the name were
censored to be politically correct, and then some researcher wanted to
look up the Library of Congress citation, couldn't the censoring
potentially lead to referencing difficulties? For a researcher
potentially wishing to look up a publication, this could become an
issue. How should this issue be resolved?

Benjamin L.Russell

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Nov 23, 2009, 11:24:47 PM11/23/09

to haskel...@haskell.org

On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:58:30 +0000, Conor McBride
<co...@strictlypositive.org> wrote:

>Hi Benjamin
>
>On 24 Nov 2009, at 02:35, Benjamin L.Russell wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:14:29 -0800 (PST), jfre...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>> Typef*ck: Brainf*ck in the type system. Johnny Morrice [23]showed us
>>> his implementation of everyone's favorite profane programming
>>> language... in the type system.
>
>> In general, if a programming language-related term contains what is
>> generally regarded as a profane word as a component, for what kinds of
>> written material should I prioritize accuracy vs. propriety?
>
>Who gives a brain?
>
>More seriously, I worry that inaccuracy (other than blessed relief from
>tedious pedantry, of course) might ever be improper. Lots of arts
>academia write learned articles about filth, and it's no big deal when
>it's in quotation. That's the situation here, no? Perhaps use quotation
>marks just to be clear that the terminology is not of your making. But
>you should have no need of ASCII-art fig leaves.

Agreed. Inaccuracy in the title can potentially lead to
cross-referencing difficulties if a search is performed. As long as
the title is in quotation, it would seem that accuracy should probably
be prioritized over the political incorrectness of portions of the
title, so that someone who wishes, say, to perform a search need not
search for both versions of the title.

>(Now, as far as *email* (e.g., HWN) is concerned, it makes sense to act
>like wise spammers the world over and disguise your true intentions from
>the automated filters. People from Scunthorpe must be really fed up
>doing
>that. I know they're fed up being used as an example, too. Sorry.)

Hmm. That's a potential dilemma. If someone were, say, a functional
programming researcher and wanted to look up related discussions in
archived mailing lists and newsgroups on a term that included a
politically incorrect subterm within, then it would then be necessary
to perform a search on all the following variants (taking "Monadam*"
(with the asterisk replaced by the the correct letter) as an example):

1) the uncensored version
2) Monadam*
3) Monada**
4) Monad***
5) Mona****

Wow. Unfortunately, the automated filtering software is likely to
mark a message of an uncensored title as spam. Maybe the mailing
lists and newsgroups have no choice but to be left out of any related
searches in order to escape the filters?

-- Benjamin L. Russell
--
Benjamin L. Russell / DekuDekuplex at Yahoo dot com
http://dekudekuplex.wordpress.com/
Translator/Interpreter / Mobile: +011 81 80-3603-6725
"Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto."
-- Matsuo Basho^

_______________________________________________

Richard O'Keefe

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Nov 23, 2009, 11:46:42 PM11/23/09

to Benjamin L.Russell, haskel...@haskell.org

I should point out that what seems like a rude name in one
language may be a perfectly proper word in another.
For example, "ai" in Maori means "to copulate", and yet
we have things like the AI Journal. Naughty naughty.
F*ck is a perfectly good German name, I believe, and
you will find that name associated with some fungi.

Sean Leather

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Nov 24, 2009, 4:30:09 AM11/24/09

to Richard O'Keefe, haskell-cafe

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 05:46, Richard O'Keefe wrote:

> For example, "ai" in Maori means "to copulate",
>

Really [1]? It's amazing what Google [2] will tell you these days. ;)

[1] http://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/343
[2] http://www.google.com/search?q=ai+maori

Regards,
Sean

Maurício CA

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Nov 24, 2009, 8:59:29 AM11/24/09

to haskel...@haskell.org

> Incidentally, I've always wondered about the politically correct
> way of referring to this programming language (and related
> implementation in the above-mentioned type system) in academic
> circles;

Is this a question of politically correctness? Since there's no
discrimination or prejudice involved, I think it's more of a
question of social rules. If you are using a word where it's
going to be indexed, like article titles, I vote for beeing
accurate. But outside that, it's difficult to answer
this in a way that extends beyond one's own circle of friends.
Censoring a bad word may be polite for some, and offensive for
others, what could we do about that? Regarding brainfuck itself,
I think beeing censored is part of the joke.

> In general, if a programming language-related term contains what
> is generally regarded as a profane word as a component, for
> what kinds of written material should I prioritize accuracy vs.
> propriety?

If we decide to allow * inside conids and varids in Haskell, and
have a rule that names clash when they differ only by a letter
replaced by a *, we have gone too far.

Best,
Maur�cio

Richard O'Keefe

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Nov 24, 2009, 5:43:18 PM11/24/09

to Sean Leather, haskell-cafe

On Nov 24, 2009, at 10:29 PM, Sean Leather wrote:

>
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 05:46, Richard O'Keefe wrote:
> For example, "ai" in Maori means "to copulate",
>
> Really [1]? It's amazing what Google [2] will tell you these days. ;)

Really! Check
http://www.maoridictionary.co.nz/

In fact if you read [1], you will find
"There is also another lexical ai which
is a verb with the meaning ï¿½to copulateï¿½"
on page 4.

[Haskell-cafe] Haskell Weekly News: Issue 140 - November 22, 2009

jfre...@gmail.com

Benjamin L.Russell

Joe Fredette

Conor McBride

Benjamin L.Russell

Benjamin L.Russell

Richard O'Keefe

Sean Leather

Maurí­cio CA

Richard O'Keefe

Maurício CA