Here is an example of the Caml Weekly News, a superb and highly valued effort by Alan Schmitt. I'm sure Alan would be willing to share software tricks, etc. And it is surprising in how many places the question of external bindings comes up! Norman
--- Begin Message ---
- Subject: [cwn] Attn: Development Editor, Latest Caml Weekly News
- From: Alan Schmitt <alan.schmitt@...>
- Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 11:11:25 +0100
Hello,Here is the latest Caml Weekly News, for the week of December 18, 2007 to January 01, 2008.Happy New Year!1) Ocaml 3.10.1 release candidate2) OCaml meeting in Paris -- subscription is opened3) Objective C - Objective Caml bridge for Mac OS X4) OCaml-Ming5) glMLite6) OCaml-Allegro========================================================================1) Ocaml 3.10.1 release candidateArchive: <http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_frm/thread/7d5572c1d876347b#d6c90d3caf6eb772>------------------------------------------------------------------------** Damien Doligez announced:It is my pleasure to announce that release 3.10.1 is imminent.At this time, I have made a release candidate available atThis is a source-only release intended for final testing. Please try itand report your experiences to me <mailto:damien.doligez@inria.fr>.If it works on your favorite architecture, tell me. If it doesn't work,tell me too.The bug fixes included in this release are detailed in the Changes file.** Daniel de Rauglaudre then said:For those who want to test it with Camlp5, I added the compatibilitywith OCaml 3.10.1 (which was missing, because I didn't know that thisversion number was in preparation).It is Camlp5 5.06 available at:========================================================================2) OCaml meeting in Paris -- subscription is openedArchive: <http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_frm/thread/e42538adeb95f2bb#53dd49e92006e7e1>------------------------------------------------------------------------** Sylvain Le Gall announced:I hereby declare that we are looking for participants.The meeting will be in Paris at ENST on January, the 26th 2008.The proposed schedule is:* Begin at 10am* Short talks in the morning: GODI, ocamlbuild, Debian* Lunch* Workshops in the afternoon until 6pm* Dinner in ParisYou can subscribe by editing the following page:If you want to come, you must subscribe, since the access will berestricted.I am also looking for people that wish to help the organization(video...)========================================================================3) Objective C - Objective Caml bridge for Mac OS XArchive: <http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_frm/thread/0d83230a706de893#fba049a4cd06a44e>------------------------------------------------------------------------** Francois Rouaix announced:Folks,I've just opened up an svn onThis is an alpha-level release of a bridge between OCaml and Objective C (ormore precisely, Cocoa APIs) for MacOSX.It's been barely tested, only w/ ocamlc 3.09.3 and Tiger 10.4.11 and stilllacks many features (e.g. invoking OCaml methods from ObjC).However, it gets an "Hello World" command-line program compiled and running,all from automatically generated stubs.Don't expect to understand much of the bridge's technical aspects unlessyou're expert-level in OCaml (objects, labels, C-interface)and intermediate in ObjectiveC (NSInvocation, Foundation, AppKit).At this point I'm looking for feedback on naming conventions, overallexpectations on verbosity and utilization.Start w/ reading the Wiki if you're interested, and shoot me an email.License is (new) BSD style.========================================================================4) OCaml-MingArchive: <http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_frm/thread/3777fd5c27ced4e1#7655c0137548991e>------------------------------------------------------------------------** Florent Monnier announced:OCaml bindings for the Ming library,a library to create Flash animations.(the state is still alpha)You can browse the interface ocamldoc:Several code samples are provided in the tar-ball.Here is an exemple of script with the object interfacewhich is made to be as close as possible to the PHP interface:(the PHP interface is well documented)========================================================================5) glMLiteArchive: <http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_frm/thread/3c4fc5bd49790228#61289dfa7ccb05ae>------------------------------------------------------------------------** Florent Monnier announced:OCaml bindings for OpenGL.(Samples from the Red-Book translated to OCaml are provided.)You can have a look at the interface generated documentation here:** Stefano Zacchiroli and Jan Rehders asked, and Florent Monnier answered:> > Can you please compare glMLite with LablGL [1]?> ... and glcaml [2] :)I can't since LablGL doesn't work on my computer (Mandriva and Mesa).That's the reason why I did my own binding.All I can say is that LablGL has a more camlize interface while my bindingkeeps the openGL function names unchanged. (but a wrapper module makes itpossible to use glMLite with LablGL's interface, and by the way it ispossible to run Lablgl scripts with glMLite.)When the problem with LablGL was uncountered I have mailed the author, but wehave not been able to find the reason of the problem with LablGL, so...[Florent Monnier added in a later message]I have never used glcaml.When I have begin my binding, glcaml was not release yet, so that's why Ibegun my own.What I can say as difference from reading the generated documentation is thateach of the 3 openGL binding resolve the problem of the GLenum parameters(that often collide between several functions) in a different way.GLCaml provides one big glenum type that contains all the parameters for allthe functions (so it seems there is no type check at all), LablGL usespolymorphic variants, and glMLite packs the problematic types in modules.So users have the choice :)** Jon Harrop added:While we're on the subject, perhaps I can productively compare LablGL andGLCaml:LablGL is by far the most widely used and, therefore, tested of the OpenGLbindings available for OCaml. According to the package popularity contests,LablGL has 412 registered installs on Debian and Ubuntu. This library isideal for people who are less familiar with OpenGL because it provides ahigher-level and safer API. However, LablGL only supports OpenGL 1.GLCaml are the most up-to-date bindings to OpenGL for OCaml, supporting thelatest OpenGL 2 API. This library uses an OCaml program to generate thebindings automatically, which makes it much easier to keep up to date butlower-level. This library is ideal for people who require OpenGL 2 but is notas thoroughly tested as LablGL (no packages) and, consequently, containsbugs.I'm not quite sure where Florent's bindings fit in because they lack packagesand users like GLCaml and lack support for OpenGL 2 like LablGL.I recently wrote several OpenGL 2 shader demos in OCaml using Elliott Oti'sGLCaml bindings. I filed two bug reports in the process. I'm hoping thecommunity can pull together to get these state-of-the-art bindings tested andshipped in deb packages. I'd like this to be the future of OpenGL for OCamlbecause the autogenerated bindings make the latest OpenGL features accessibleto expert users and higher-level bindings can easily be written to helpnewbie users.We'll refrain from writing OCaml Journal articles about GLCaml until it hasstabilized but several people have expressed an interest in a 3D scene graphlibrary for OCaml which I can create for GLCaml easily from part of Smoke'ssource code.========================================================================6) OCaml-AllegroArchive: <http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_frm/thread/99c7647697c8ba00#dcc3300ab648c8ff>------------------------------------------------------------------------** Florent Monnier announced:I have released OCaml-Allegro, an OCaml binding for Allegro.Allegro is a cross-platform library intended for use in computer games andother types of multimedia programming.It is available here:You can have a look at the interface generated documentation here:Some exemples from the original Allegro source package are provided convertedin OCaml. (Feedback on the binding with these exemples is wellcome.)You can read an introduction of the library on Wikipedia:or more details, description and documentation on the official website:========================================================================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 usingvim (version 6 or greater).:set foldmethod=expr:set foldexpr=getline(v:lnum)=~'^=\\{78}$'?'<1':1zMIf you know of a better way, please let me know.========================================================================Old cwn------------------------------------------------------------------------If you happen to miss a CWN, you can send me a message(alan.schmitt@polytechnique.org) and I'll mail it to you, or go take a look atthe archive (<http://alan.petitepomme.net/cwn/>) or the RSS feed of thearchives (<http://alan.petitepomme.net/cwn/cwn.rss>). If you also wishto receive it every week by mail, you may subscribe online at========================================================================--Alan Schmitt <http://alan.petitepomme.net/>The hacker: someone who figured things out and made something cool happen..O...OOOO
Attachment: PGP.sig
Description: This is a digitally signed message part_______________________________________________ caml-news-weekly mailing list caml-news-weekly@lists.idyll.org http://lists.idyll.org/listinfo/caml-news-weekly
--- End Message ---