Re: [Ocaml-lib-devel] Ocaml indent?

[Nicolas C. <war...@fr...>]

> - the question of the consistency for the functions of a module is
> somewhat ameliorated because structures would claim to implement this or
> that signature only (I know: the problem would somehow be moved to
> designing the module's signature. Still, we'd be doing one problem at a
> time: what goes in, first, then how to build it...)

Agreed,
Talking first about the signatures is meaningful

> - the community could proffer several implementations for different
> signatures... This could mean competition between implementations
> (hopefully) for the benefit of everybody... (Also, some stabilisation of
> the (winning) modules in the library).

Yes, somehow
Several implementations should be discussed before committing, that's part
of the approval process.
An implementation can be changed latter if a better one is found or a bug
fixed, but the specification won't change

> - it could be demanded that people contributing to a *particular
> structure* follow the indentation mode of *that* structure... Besides If
> someone produced code and submitted it without the proper indentation,
> just indenting *one* structure in a coherent way is pretty easy for
> anybody to do. (We could see other people's practice and improve our
> "indenting" habits that way too!)

I don't think we should talk about indentation right now but well... Let's
do it.
There IS indentation rules in OCaml , they're used in the OCaml Sources and
specified somewhere ( in the Manual ? or any pointer ? )

> So what I propose is:
> - let's make a big library, the Extended Library, EL
> - made of a thousand smaller (smallish) modules and let people
> contribute to it.
> - implementing public (voted, agreed upon) signatures
> - that
>         a) extend signatures and modules of the standard library SL
>         b) provide different implementations to those of the SL (and
> test them, that's my dream)
>         c) provides *other* signatures and modules that hugely add
> functionality to the SL
>         d) make open "call-for-implementation"'s in the form of
>  signatures interesting to the community.
>         e)...

That make sense
But I don't agree with the "thousand".
The current goal is not to put every existing (although very used) ocaml
library into the ExtLib. For example PXP, which is a very good XML parser -
and everybody is using XML in today applications - should remain a separate
library. The ExtLib should remain somehow small :)

Nicolas Cannasse