GuileSIC v0.7 available

[Richard Todd]

GuileSIC is a BASIC->guile translator.
Version 0.7 is available from the same spot as previous releases:
  http://www.vzavenue.net/~rwtodd5128/index.html

There are quite a few changes as I tried to make the design more
general, and am (barely) starting to document it.  I also couldn't
help but add several new features in the process.

(if you try this out I'm pretty sure you'll need the newest LALR 
module from that same page as well).

As usual, any feedback you have will help make this project better,
so please don't hesitate.  My current hope is to reach version 1.0
by 01/12/2004.

Richard Todd

(NEWS excerpt):
Version 0.7   (12/11/2003)

User-Visible Changes:

  Better Visual Basic Compatibility
    - WHILE/WEND (gwbasic syntax) changed to WHILE/END WHILE (vb syntax)
    - FUNC/END FUNC changed to FUNCTION/END FUNCTION (vb syntax)
    - string-concatenation operator '&' is now available
    - using '_' to escape newlines is now available 
      (this is like using '\' at end of lines in a shell script, 
       except that you are allowed to put whitespace and comments
       after the '_').  See bottom of tests/guessNumber.bas for 
       an example.

  Utility guile-basic.scm is now an installed script (pass -h for help)

  New BASIC features
    - You can declare variables as LOCAL, which scopes them to functions
      instead of making them global.  See tests/LocalVars.bas for examples.
    - The ^ exponentiation operator is now available 
    - LOAD "filename.bas"  loads another basic file like an
      #include<> would work in C.  The lexer maintains an input-port 
      stack, so the loaded file can load further files.

  Reorganized, and Texinfo docs started
    - Docs need much more work!
    - Lots of internal changes to clean up and reorganize the code
    - Now the code is in private modules (lang basic lexer), 
      (lang basic parser), and (lang basic parsed-statements) in addition 
      to the user-visible (lang basic)

  Better error-checking and reporting
    - Reports on a `$FILE:$LINE: $MSG' format, so emacs and other
      editors can take you to the conversion errors.
    - Attempts to do elementary semantic checks (to the extent that it can,
      given that this BASIC is essentially as runtime-typed as scheme is).
 
  Thread-Safety
    - Eliminated global state using closures and goops classes so that 
      multiple BASIC parsers should be able to run cuncurrently.

  Speed
    - Expands the parser at 'make' time, instead of run-time.  So, the
      lalr package dependency is still there, but only for make-ing.
    - This makes a noticeable startup-time difference.

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