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

Archive: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/32240

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.
	

Archive: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/32251

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/
	

Archive: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/32238

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.
	

Archive: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/32254

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.
	

Archive: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/32267

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