Re: [Caml-list] Re: replacing Mathematica was: Polymorphic pretty printing

[Andrej Bauer <Andrej.Bauer@andrej.com>]

Christophe TROESTLER wrote:
> 
> IMHO, the main "annoyance" with that goal is notational: there will be
> many uses of "+" for example and each of these will need its own
> notation.  While I am not bothered by the two "+." and "+", this can
> become heavy when one manipulates lots of different structures
> (vectors, matrices, polynomials, groups,...).  GCaml will be great for
> this.

I think you just convencied me to use Haskell and its type classes.
Seriously, I wonder if a purely functional language might not be better
for my purposes.

> About the original thread, "polymorphic pretty printing", it would be
> nice if folks at INRIA could give indications on what they think the
> better solution is -- it would be nice if it could be made independent
> of possible changes in the toplevel code.

Yes, what to the makers of ocaml say? I am afraid there is no way to
avoid dependence on toplevel code, since the pretty printer must know
something about the representation of types and values.

But that's not my worry anymore. I am off to haskell, Bye bye.

Andrej