Refactoring for less idiosyncratic variability Base.hs

[rbonifacio]

The business with the main function specifically is hard to sell. There are just too many PATCHES going on with the base product, where many of them are probably only needed because the original code for poorly factored to start with. I don't think we do ourselves or a reader a great service, if we keep so much idiosyncratic variability (low level patching) in Base.hs. I think this needs some discussion. We basically have to explore the tiny patches one by one and see whether we can avoid them by a better code structure. The implementation is trivial.