[m-dev.] Mercury Tutorial Book

[Ralph Becket]

I'm about to start work on a Mercury book aimed at 1st/2nd year
computer science students and programmers interested in learning the
language.  The book will not be a technical reference, nor will it
assume broad familiarity with the principles of declarative
programming.

It would be helpful to know what the Mercury community thinks the book
should contain.

My first thoughts (in no particular order) are:
- the book should be strongly example driven;
- should contain enough detail on the foreign language interface etc.
  to convince people that Mercury is a serious language (it is all too
  common for students to come away from ML/Haskell courses thinking
  that those languages are of little practical utility);
- it's probably best to start off with just the functional component
  of the language with semidet predicates before moving on to general
  predicates, modes and determinisms;
- should have a strong section on IO;
- should have a strong section on uniqueness and the use of arrays,
  hash tables, stores, etc.

Any suggestions, ideas, comments gratefully received!

- Ralph
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