[Started work on new examples
John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>**20070611031745] {
hunk ./en/ch05-typeclasses.xml 246
-      FIXME
+      Now that you're familiar with defining your own typeclasses and making
+      your types instances of typeclasses, it's time to introduce you to
+      typeclasses that are a standard part of Haskell.  As we mentioned at
+      the beginning of this chapter, typeclasses are at the core of some
+      imporant aspects of the language.  We'll cover the most common ones
+      here.
hunk ./en/ch05-typeclasses.xml 254
-    <sect2 id="hs.typeclasses.wellknown.readshow">
-      <title>Read and Show</title>
+    <sect2 id="hs.typeclasses.wellknown.show">
+      <title>Show</title>
+      <para>
+        The <literal>Show</literal> typeclass is used to convert types to
+        <literal>String</literal>s.  It is perhaps most commonly used to
+        convert numbers to <literal>String</literal>s, but it is defined for
+        so many types that it can be used to convert quite a bit more.  You
+        can also, of course, define instances for your own types as well.
+      </para>
+      <para>
+        The most important function of <literal>Show</literal> is
+        <literal>show</literal>.  It takes one argument: the type to convert.
+        It returns a <literal>String</literal> representing that type.
+      </para>
+      <para>
+        Here is an example usage, from taken from a quick session with ghci:
+      </para>
+    </sect2>
+
+    <sect2 id="hs.typeclasses.wellknown.read">
+      <title>Read</title>
addfile ./examples/ch05/show.ghci
hunk ./examples/ch05/show.ghci 1
+--# typetwiddle
+show 1
+show [1, 2, 3]
+show (1, 2)
+show "Hello!"
+putStrLn (show "Hello!")
+show ['H', 'i']
+putStrLn (show "Hi")
+show "Hi, \"Jane\""
+putStrLn (show "Hi, \"Jane\"")
}