Re: [Texmacs-dev] Getting rid of Scheme?

[David MENTRE]

Hello,

While looking at getting rid of Scheme, why not substitute it with
Objective Caml? I do not want to start a langage war and I'm pretty sure
that a lisp-like language is mandatory for Joris[1] but I personally
like OCaml and I consider it a very good scripting language (if not
programming language).

BTW, would it be conceivable to have multiple extension languages for
TeXmacs? 


For the sake of completeness:

Joris van der Hoeven <address@hidden> writes:

>   1) Is the license GPL compatible?

I think so. Standard library is under LGPL. Compiler is QPL-like. I
think runtime is under LGPL.

>   2) How fast is the implementation (benchmarks ^^^)?

For compiled code (native code is OCaml parlance), between 0.9 and 1.5
times C speed. Slower for byte code (but not that slow).

As an indicator, OCaml is 2nd behind C in Bagley's Shootout
(http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/craps.shtml) and 8th in byte code
(BTW, bigloo, scheme compiler, is 7th; cmucl is 6th and gnu gcl should
be faster than cmucl).

>   3) How portable is the implementation (Unix, Windows, etc.)?

Very portable. Unix (both free and proprietary ones), Windows, MacOS X,
on various processors (from ARM to IA64 and AMD64).
http://caml.inria.fr/ocaml/portability.html

>   4) Is it possible to use Scheme as an extension language?

Yes. Byte-code runtime can be easily used as an extension language. It
might be more difficult for native code.

>   5) Does the implementation have a clean module system?

Yes.

>   6) Do the SFRI extensions work?

You mean executing C code from the OCaml environment? If so, yes.


>   7) Is there a CLOS-like system available?

Yes, an object-like system is available (although without mixins, but
that is currently worked out in a PhD).




Yours,
d.

[1] I would be very interested to know why however.
-- 
 David Mentré <address@hidden>