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Hello,

Here is the latest Caml Weekly News, week 21 to 27 november, 2001.

Summary:
1) Updates for Ensemble release 1.31
2) Tool to convert Maple code to MuPad
3) Report 0.1
4) Zoggy : Glade in OCaml
5) Anyone working on an enhanced Tidy ?
6) Ocaml 3.03 alpha MinGW port ?
7) New Caml Weekly News maintainer

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1) Updates for Ensemble release 1.31
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ohad Rodeh announced:

I have ported the system to use Winsock2 on WIN32 platforms.
Testing was done on an NT4 work-station, so WIN2000 clients should work
as well. Performance is not optimal because Winsock2 is somewhat buggy on
NT4. I think
it will work much better on more advanced Microsoft OSes. Anyone care to
comment?

I've had problems with
  - Multicast : setting the TTL and LOOPBACK
  - Sending and receiving IO-vectors.
So, workarounds have been placed.

This update also includes some minor bug fixes, and a fix for a reference
counting bug
that occurs when using a mesh of TCP connections to transport messages
between group
members.

As usual, the code can be downloaded from the system homepage at:
     www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/Projects/Ensemble                   

For the CAML people, if anyone is interested in networking code for
winsock2, here is your
chance! I had to mess around with Unix exceptions, because the native CAML
Unix library uses
winsock1 which has slightly different error codes.


======================================================================
2) Tool to convert Maple code to MuPad
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Francois Thomasset announced:

Comme nous devions convertir nos programmes de Maple à MuPad, j'ai écrit un
outil en OCaml pour nous assister dans ce travail. Je mets cet outil à la
disposition de la communauté :
http://www-rocq.inria.fr/~thomasse/Maple-MuPad/

I have written in OCaml a small tool that may help to convert a Maple code to
MuPad.

======================================================================
3) Report 0.1
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Maxence Guesdon announced:

I'm pleased to announce the first release of Report, a tool-and-library
to help your  ocaml apps to produce XML (and so HTML) documents.
It still misses real documentation but it should be usable if you give
it a try.
You will find it at :
http://www.maxence-g.net/Tools/report/report.html

======================================================================
4) Zoggy : Glade in OCaml
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm pleased to announce the first release of Zoggy, a glade for LablGtk.
This is an extract of the INSTALL file :

The differences with Glade are :
- generated classes can have parameters
- values of properties are OCaml code
- you can insert predefined boxes in other widgets
   (not yet complete)

Zoggy can already be used, the interface builder and
code generation seems ok.
There is still a lot to do :
- some widgets are missing,
- some properties are missing,
- a menu editor,
- drag and drop would be cool,
- some controls are missing.

You will find it at :
http://www.maxence-g.net/Tools/zoggy/zoggy.html

======================================================================
5) Anyone working on an enhanced Tidy ?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Leary asked:
(thread start: http://caml.inria.fr/archives/200111/msg00410.html)

I have a (rambling) question/feature request.

I've been using W3's HTML Tidy as a cleanup tool for the small bit of HTML
I'm working on.  I've also got a local copy of www.htmlhelp.com's validator
cgi program, which seems to be on par with W3's validation service.

What I'd really like is a local program that will flexibly:

- validate to the dtd in the doctype declaration, or convert to a different
one as nicely as possible, output a list of errors, optionally fix the
errors and warnings  (HTML Tidy does this pretty well, but isn't as
rigorous at validating as W3 or htmlhelp, and not flexible enough in its
options)
  -- optionally insert null attributes for those that are missing (like
summary for tables, alt for img, etc.)

- strip out all formatting that should be done with css, either leaving class
attributes that can be used in a style sheet, or doing away with the
formatting altogether

- indent properly (Tidy is good, but not quite beautiful)

- maybe validate css too

- recursive option, with options for depth/domain

- link checking

I guess what I'd like is a more featureful and thorough version of Tidy.  I
would think that this could be quite a little killer-app in its niche,
assuming it is done right -- amenable to gui wrappers, vim errorformat, et
al.  I would also think this might be a decent test vehicle for a lot of
the Bedouin code.  Unfortunately I'm too busy to do much about it myself...

Q: Is anyone working on such a beast?

in sum:

Tidy
  + up-to-date/rigorous
  + link checking
  + css
  + bells and whistles
  + very flexible
  = killer-app?

======================================================================
6) Ocaml 3.03 alpha MinGW port ?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jean-Marc Eber asked:
(thread start: http://caml.inria.fr/archives/200111/msg00414.html)

There have been some interesting postings on this list 
about a MinGW port of the OCaml Compiler. The
attached patch was textually large but conceptually
simple.

I'm really not a specialist about this topic, but have now
(or in a near future) to choose between possible
Windows "technologies" (Visual C, Cygwin, MinGW) for
an OCaml program (only a console mode stuff in my case).   

Could anybody explain to me why a MinGW isn't *always*
preferable to a Cygwin one (use of the same compiler, GCC,
MinGW being more "direct" Windows without an indirection
layer, not speaking about licensing problems, etc....).

I understand well that the Caml Team wants probably to
maintain a MS C version of the OCaml implementation,
but wanted to ask the Team if they have some ideas about
the future of Cygwin/MinGW ports. Isn't a MinGW port, in
the medium term, preferable to a Cygwin one ? Or do I
miss a point ?

======================================================================
7) New Caml Weekly News maintainer
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I have replaced David as Caml Weekly News maintainer. You may reach me
at alan.schmitt@inria.fr.

Lots of thanks to David for doing a great job.

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

Alan Schmitt