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

Alan Schmitt alan.schmitt at polytechnique.org
Tue Feb 27 00:17:50 PST 2007 

Hello,

Here is the latest Caml Weekly News, for the week of February 20 to  
27, 2007.

1) Maze generator
2) PG'OCaml (PostgreSQL syntax extension for OCaml) 0.7 released
3) Xmlm
4) Yaxpo

========================================================================
1) Maze generator
Archive: <http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_frm/thread/ 
5b3ff5b976132b5b/74000c1765fdc142#74000c1765fdc142>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Jon Harrop announced:

Whilst revamping our website, I took the time to improve the maze  
generator:

   <http://www.ffconsultancy.com/ocaml/maze/>

it is now 30% shorter and much faster, using an array instead of a  
functional
map. It also uses continuation passing style instead of an explicit  
stack.
But it no longer produces PostScript output.

The program uses a simple depth first search. An interesting alternative
algorithm involves keeping track of sets of connection cells and  
breaking
walls to unify the sets until you have a spanning tree. That should  
be easy
to code in OCaml but I think it will generate mazes that are much  
harder to
solve.
			
========================================================================
2) PG'OCaml (PostgreSQL syntax extension for OCaml) 0.7 released
Archive: <http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_frm/thread/ 
79936118f202dfe3/56af7f94b0d6f92b#56af7f94b0d6f92b>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Richard Jones announced:

I'm pleased to announce the release of PG'OCaml 0.7.  PG'OCaml is a
syntax extension to OCaml which allows you to issue PostgreSQL
commands in a type-safe manner from within OCaml code.
You can find out a bit more here:

<http://merjis.com/developers/pgocaml>

This code is released under the GNU LGPL + OCaml linking exception.

Changes since 0.5:

* Comprehensive support for profiling statements and analysing
    the results.
* Gabriel de Perthuis - fixes for OMakefile support.
* Don't crash if we get notice messages from the server.
* More types supported.
* pa_pgsql syntax can connect to multiple databases.
			
========================================================================
3) Xmlm
Archive: <http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_frm/thread/ 
f6a58bf1528aa507/ae8059d2e57fec9b#ae8059d2e57fec9b>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Daniel Bünzli announced:

Xmlm is an OCaml module providing sequential XML input/output and
a persistent cursor. It aims at making non valid XML processing
robust and painless.
The sequential interface can be used to process documents without
building an in-memory representation. It also lets the programmer
translate its own data structures to an XML representation and
vice-versa.

The cursor allows to navigate and update a simple in-memory tree
representation of XML documents. Updates performed by the cursor
are persistent (non destructive).

To facilitate direct integration into projects, Xmlm is made of a
single module and distributed under a BSD license.

Project home page : <http://code.google.com/p/xmlm>

Your feedback is welcome,

Daniel

P.S.

Why another XML parser ?

Dissatisfaction about existing solutions either too complete and
complex or too britlle and restrictive. Besides it seems all
existing parsers force you to read the whole document in
memory. Here are some points that motivated the design of Xmlm.

1. Easy to integrate into projects without introducing external
     dependencies. A single module provides everything including
     documentation (ocamldoc) and the license.

2. Well documented. Features and limitations of the parser are precisely
     documented.

3. Easy to use yet flexible api.
    - Choice between sequential (SAX-like) or tree (DOM-like)  
processing.
    - Construction/deconstruction of user data structures from/to xml
documents.
    - Tree processing with persistent cursor (zipper).
    - Simple white space handling options for character data.
    - Character encodings are translated to UTF-8.
      UTF-8 is the only encoding the programmer needs to handle.
    - Character references and predefined entities are resolved.
      Other entity references can be resolved via a user provided
callback.
    - Early access to data to allow parse time data transformations.
    - Parse time element pruning.

4. Robust parsing. Does not assume an xml subset.
    - Supports major encodings :  ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16 (LE and BE),
ISO-8559-1.
    - Parses qualified names (namespaces).
    - Tail-recursive.

5. Limitations. If you need one of these things use PXP.
    - Comments, processing instructions and standalone declaration are
      dropped by the parser (it is a feature).
    - No DTD support (but it can be extracted and written as a raw
string).
    - No validity support.
			
========================================================================
4) Yaxpo
Archive: <http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_frm/thread/ 
29ae14bd9d647505/1180ee2a0ac12261#1180ee2a0ac12261>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Mike Lin announced:

Despite an apparent curse causing any server hosting it to experience
catastrophic hardware failure, I have once again revived the web page  
for
the Yaxpo XML parser:

<http://people.csail.mit.edu/mikelin/yaxpo>

Unfortunately, this should not be construed to suggest that I have any
intention of updating the package; it has worked sufficiently for my
purposes for the last five years. Xml-Light or the recently announced  
Xmlm
are probably easier to use, unless you need the weird reentrancy
stuff enabled by the astounding fallacy of an XML parser written  
entirely in
CPS.
			
========================================================================
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/>

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


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