1 Introduction

Haskell Mode is a major mode providing a convenient environment for editing Haskell programs.

Some of its major features are:

• Syntax highlighting (font lock),
• automatic indentation,
• on-the-fly documentation,
• interaction with inferior GHCi/Hugs instance, and
• scanning declarations and placing them in a menu.

1.1 Naming

The name haskell-mode refers to the whole collection of modules in this package. There is specifically a file ‘haskell-mode.el‘ which defines a major mode called ‘haskell-mode‘. Generally, in this documentation they will be distinguished by normal font (haskell-mode) and code font (‘haskell-mode‘).

1.2 History

haskell-mode has a long history. It goes all the way back to 1992. Since then, it has received many contributions in many forms. Some design choices that remain in haskell-mode today are historical. Some modules are outdated or no longer used, or are used by a few people.

Historically there hasn’t been a single individual or set of individuals directing the package’s architecture for a long period of time, rather, patches and new modules were accepted in liberally and we are left with a box full of interesting toys that may or may not work.

As of 2016 Haskell Mode is coordinated using Github at https://github.com/haskell/haskell-mode.