<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 01:46, Don Stewart wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div id=":7ub" class="ii gt">
leather:<br>
<div class="im">><br>
> 2. What is the difference between "Haskell" and the "Haskell Platform"? I see<br>
> one or the other in various places. To get from <a href="http://www.haskell.org" target="_blank">www.haskell.org</a> to downloading<br>
> the Mac software, I go through "Download Haskell," "Get the Haskell Platform ><br>
> Mac," and "Download Haskell for Mac OS X (intel)."<br>
<br>
</div>Well, for one, we have characterized the difference between GHC and the<br>
Haskell Platform as:<br>
<br>
GHC is to the HP as Linux Kernel is to Linux<br>
<br>
Now, "Haskell" for newcomers might mean "toolchain on my machine" --<br>
which is the Haskell Platform. Or it might mean the language.<br>
<br>
We try to ensure advertising for the HP makes it simple: "Download<br>
Haskell", but documentation pages carefully describe the fact that the<br>
HP is a development environment for the Haskell language.</div></blockquote></div><br>It just occurred to me to check what Sun/Oracle does for Java. I guess what is on <a href="http://haskell.org">haskell.org</a> is no worse than what is on <a href="http://java.com/en/download/">http://java.com/en/download/</a> . But perhaps answering such questions as "What is Haskell?" or "Why download the Haskell Platform?" as well as a short blurb about the use of the terms Haskell and Haskell Platform would help.<br>
<br>Personally, I prefer to separate the name of the language from the name of the development tools, because I think that causes unnecessary confusion. End-users do not need to care about Haskell, unlike Java since they need the JRE, so potential developers and students are the audience. This group needs the Haskell Platform for developing with Haskell, and having the tools referred to as "Haskell Platform" is clear enough (imho) without having to call the tools "Haskell."<br>
<br>In the end, whatever the choice, the language on <a href="http://haskell.org">haskell.org</a> should probably be somewhat more consistent.<br><br>Sean<br>