Changes for 1.2.7/1.3

Dear all,

I've spent a little time over the last few days making some plans for some significant upheavals to LEAP to improve its reliability.

This will probably turn LEAP into version 1.3, although depending on the amount of change, it could still be "just" 1.2.7.

I don't plan on changing much in the way of visible changes at this stage, although depending on how things go, that may well prove the case. If there's something you'd like to see in LEAP, please drop me a note, or complete a feature request at Sourceforge:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=350044&group_id=44&func=browse

I may also be found on AIM as rleytonbofh, and ICQ as 56641722 - feel free to drop me a note there too.

The Major change planned is to restructure the underlying file management code to use the DBM/GDBM/NDBM libraries commonly found on Unix systems (and on PC's via Cygwin).

It's become very apparent to me in the last month or two that there is something subtly wrong with the current code - all written by myself a few years ago in Germany - which is leading to the horrible "leapattributes not found" error.

I've spent many an hour looking at the code, and cannot get to the bottom of it. I've many other reasons to dislike the current low-level code too, and this is really the last straw.

So by using the DBM libraries, the system should be more reliable, and faster too, but most importantly, enable me to focus more on the features and language support that people want from LEAP, namely Algebra support.

I'd like to enable LEAP to be more portable too, and possibly used in a library context around /any/ dbm file, but that's just thoughts right now.

As always, your comments are much appreciated. I'll keep you posted over the next few months as to progress.

Regards,

Richard Leyton