Hello
Here is the latest Caml Weekly News, for the week of January 27 to February 03, 2009.
Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/80d88a5df82886dd#
Replying to the thread from last week, Xavier Clerc said:The work done around the Da Vinci machine (http://openjdk.java.net/projects/mlvm/) is clearly interesting for the future of the OCaml-Java project (and for almost any compiler targeting the JVM). However, we have no evidence regarding the 'transfert rate' from the Da Vinci machine to the 'plain' JVM. That being said, some other developments are needed before we get decent performances from ocamljava-compiled code. Not trying to be exhaustive, I would list: - tail calls (*); - garbage collector strategies better suited to functional languages (*); - some kind of 'method pointers' for efficient closure handling (*) cf. http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=292 - a better memory model (**); - a better code generator (**); - more aggressive unboxing of values, like in ocamlopt (**). Items marked by (*) are related to the JVM while those marked by (**) are developments to be done on the OCaml-Java codebase. One chance for the OCaml-Java project is that the hype around so-called scripting languages seems to push Sun to design and integrate things that are useful to OCaml-Java. Indeed, scripting languages and OCaml express some common needs such as garbage collectors oriented towards short-lived objects, or function/method pointers. Almost all that benefits to scripting languages will also benefit to OCaml-Java. Anyway, we will have to wait until JDK 7 (planned / hoped for late 2009) to see some of these changes available for production. In the meantime, I will have to find some time to work on OCaml-Java to correct its deficiencies.
Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/cdff9f3f08d5da31#
Dave Benjamin announced:I have released a new version of XmlRpc-Light, version 0.6.1. It is available on Google Code at the following location: http://code.google.com/p/xmlrpc-light/ [Note to package maintainers: I would greatly appreciate if you could include the examples directory somewhere under /usr/share/doc in your next distribution. Thanks!] XmlRpc-Light is an XML-RPC client and server library written in OCaml. It requires Xml-Light and Ocamlnet 2. New in version 0.6.1 * [1] WordPress example updated to support all new RPC methods in [2] WordPress 2.7, including reading and writing of comments and options, timezone-safe date-time handling, and page and post status lists * New example code: [3] complete set of bindings to [4] UbiGraph, an interactive 3D graph rendering and animation engine * Support for int32 type and lazy multicall clients with "genclient" code-generation tool * New utility function, [5] XmlRpc.serve_message, enables building custom servers that efficiently map between other structured serialization formats 1. http://wordpress.org/ 2. http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_2.7 3. http://xmlrpc-light.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/examples/ubigraph/ 4. http://ubietylab.net/ubigraph/ 5. http://xmlrpc-light.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/xmlrpc-light/html/XmlRpc.html#VALserve_message By the way, at the time of writing, it would appear that xmlrpc.com, the official homepage of XML-RPC, is completely offline. XML-RPC is dead! Long live XML-RPC! =)
Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/0789c4d0033961d4#
Dave Benjamin announced:It is with great pleasure, and fair bit of relief, that I announce the completion of the OCaml PLEAC! The PLEAC project aims to translate the source code examples from the Perl Cookbook into many languages. The OCaml version was started in 2001. Note that by "completion", I am speaking from a purely numerical perspective. There is still plenty of room for improvement, but I can say with confidence that every recipe in the original cookbook has been given either a faithful translation into OCaml or an explanation for why such a translation is impossible or unnecessary, with a strong preference for the former. The last few chapters contain many networking and (circa 1998) web programming examples, primarily written with Ocamlnet. There is even a hand-written ICMP ping, should you ever find that you need one. Also featured are several examples of Richard Jones' Bitstring, Weblogs, and Perl4caml libraries, a text-mode screen saver for curses, and of course the obligatory .signature rotator. Enjoy! The PLEAC project and OCaml version are available at these locations, respectively: http://pleac.sourceforge.net/ http://pleac.sourceforge.net/pleac_ocaml/index.html Thanks to the following people who, along with myself, contributed directly to the OCaml PLEAC: Erik de Castro Lopo Jean-Christophe ARNU Neale Pickett Pixel Remi VANICAT Stefano Zacchiroli William Douglas Neumann Additional bug fixes and improvements were made possible with help, knowingly or unknowingly, from the following individuals via their posts to the caml-list and pleac-discuss mailing lists, personal email, or contributions to other language implementations of PLEAC: Alain Frisch Andrew Johnson Clément Capel David Brown David Mentré Guillaume Cottenceau Janne Hellsten Ken Wakita Mac Mason Miguel Pignatelli Paul King Finally, I'd personally like to give my sincere thanks to Anthony Borla and Pixel, for their support and enthusiasm; to Guillaume Cottenceau for hosting and maintaining this project for so many years; to Tom Christiansen for writing the vast majority of the original Perl recipes; and to O'Reilly for giving permission to rewrite the Perl Cookbook's source and thus allowing PLEAC to exist.
Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/ce42f1663ffca95f#
Yaron Minsky announced:I'm pleased to announce the Jane Street Summer Project for 2009. The JSSP is really just a new name for the OCaml Summer Project, where the change in name reflects a change in scope. While maintaining a focus on OCaml, we're also accepting proposals for other functional programming languages. We've also made some changes to the funding structure which we think will make it easier for faculty members and students in the US to take part. The project blog can be found here: http://janestreetsummer.com and the project FAQ can be found here: http://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/57
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:set foldmethod=expr
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zM
If you know of a better way, please let me know.
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