[cwn] Attn: Development Editor, Latest Caml Weekly News

Alan Schmitt alan.schmitt at polytechnique.org
Tue Feb 21 01:18:03 PST 2006


Hello,

Here is the latest Caml Weekly News, for the week of February 14 to  
21, 2006.

1) Weblogs 1.2 released
2) ocaml+twt v0.81
3) ocaml ncurses bindings
4) What library to use for arbitrary precision decimals
5) Menhir available under GODI

========================================================================
1) Weblogs 1.2 released
Archive: <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/32240>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Richard Jones announced:

We're pleased to announce version 1.2 of our weblogs library, for
importing and parsing web server logs, and much much more.

<http://merjis.com/developers/weblogs>
<http://resources.merjis.com/developers/weblogs/Weblogs.html>

This is released under GNU LGPL + OCaml linking exception.
	
========================================================================
2) ocaml+twt v0.81
Archive: <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/32251>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Mike Lin announced:

Here's a small bugfix update to "The Whitespace Thing" for OCaml, a
preprocessor that uses indentation instead of parenthesization to group
multi-line expressions, like in Python and Haskell. Although the
implementation approach I used has some limitations, I now use ocaml 
+twt for
all my new code and I recommend it, if you like this code style.

<http://people.csail.mit.edu/mikelin/ocaml+twt/>
	
========================================================================
3) ocaml ncurses bindings
Archive: <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/32238>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Kai Kuehne asked, Nicolas George answered, and Paul Pelzl added:

Nicolas George wrote:
 > Kai Kuehne wrote:
 > > Just a question... I wan't to start programming in Ocaml but it  
would be great
 > > if there were a ncurses-binding. I know ocaml-tmk, but there is  
no release yet
 > > and it seems that there won't be a release-version. :)
 > >
 > > Well.. is anybody here planning to implement a ncurses-binding  
for ocaml
 > > or finish ocaml-tmk?
 >
 > Hi. I am the shameful author of ocaml-tmk. I can say that for me, the
 > project is dead: I almost do not write Caml these times, and I  
have more
 > pressing things to do.
 >
 > I say "shameful" because at least one person proposed to carry on the
 > project, and I procrastinated my reply. Which makes I must make  
apologies
 > for replying so late, which makes me procrastinate more. So today  
I force
 > myself to answer. I am really sorry for people who counted on me.

I think I may have offered to take over the project at one point... or
at least I considered offering.  I forget.

I maintain two projects that use a slightly-forked version of your
curses bindings:
<http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~pelzlpj/orpie>
<http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~pelzlpj/wyrd>
Since I'm already maintaining that fork as part of those projects, it
wouldn't be a big deal for me to set up a minimal website and offer the
curses bindings as a separate package.

 > I am willing to give the project to anyone who wants it, provided  
he tells
 > me exactly what I have to do on the Savannah website to change the
 > ownership, including a possible licence change to include
 > I-do-not-remember-what Caml-specific exception to the LGPL..

If you do want to hand over the project to me, I'd rather not deal with
Savannah.  I'd just set up a personal site and let you link to it ("this
project has moved...").

 > As for your immediate needs: the ncurses binding in the current  
state of TMK
 > was working and fairly complete last time I checked. As far as I  
remember,
 > the only missing parts are the scanf-like functions and the mouse  
parts.
 > What is not complete at all is the widget system on top of that,  
but if you
 > only need low-level ncurses functions, you may be lucky.
 >
 > On the other hand, the code dates back to just before the coming of
 > dynalically-loaded primitives. The build system is probably broken  
with
 > regard to that aspect.

Kai, I'd recommend you grab the curses bindings out of the source code
from one of the projects I linked above.  They've got a couple of
bugfixes that are not in ocaml-tmk, and they've been updated to work
with recent OCaml releases.
	
========================================================================
4) What library to use for arbitrary precision decimals
Archive: <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/32254>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Deep into this thread, Richard Jones said:

Before we go too far down the currency track (where I agree, using
integers is the way to go), my actual requirement is for a natural
OCaml mapping for the PostgreSQL NUMERIC/DECIMAL type:

<http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/ 
datatype.html#DATATYPE-NUMERIC-DECIMAL>

The database can define types like NUMERIC(6,4) which means 6 decimal
digits in total, 4 of them after the decimal point -- for example,
12.3456

There doesn't seem to me to be a good natural map for this type in the
stdlib.

Rich.

PS. You can find latest progress on PG'OCaml here:

<http://merjis.com/tmp/pgocaml-0.3.tar.gz>

I've already converted a few of our bigger programs to use this library.
	
========================================================================
5) Menhir available under GODI
Archive: <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/32267>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** François Pottier announced:

This short note is to let you know that Menhir, the new LR(1) parser  
generator
for OCaml, is now available through GODI. If you have installed GODI,  
just run
godi_console and look for the package godi-menhir.

More information about Menhir can be found at

   <http://pauillac.inria.fr/~fpottier/menhir/>
	
========================================================================
Using folding to read the cwn in vim 6+
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a quick trick to help you read this CWN if you are viewing it  
using
vim (version 6 or greater).

:set foldmethod=expr
:set foldexpr=getline(v:lnum)=~'^=\\{78}$'?'<1':1
zM
If you know of a better way, please let me know.

========================================================================
Old cwn
------------------------------------------------------------------------

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========================================================================

Alan Schmitt, <http://alan.petitepomme.net/>

-- 
Alan Schmitt <http://alan.petitepomme.net/>

The hacker: someone who figured things out and made something cool  
happen.
.O.
..O
OOO


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