[q-lang-users] Q 7.7 roadmap

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Hi all,

just to confirm that this project is still alive ... ;-) I started work
on Q 7.7 today with a bugfix in the tuple grouping syntax (see the cvs
log of qc.y and qmparse.y). I'm sorry for the long period of silence, I
was busy with presenting Q as well as other projects at various
conferences during the semester holidays, so I couldn't find the time to
work on Q as I had anticipated.

Q 7.7 is supposed to be a preview of Q 8.0 (which I hope to finish
during summer and which will be the basis of the book about Q I'm
writing). My TODO list for this release comprises the following major items:

- Wadler/Okasaki views: These will allow matching against "virtual"
constructors, using the existing customizable unparsing mechanism. This
will be useful for matching against abstract data types with private
constructors. Taking the Rational type as an example, you will then be
able to write something like 'foo (X%Y) = bar X Y;', employing (%) as a
virtual constructor.

- local variable bindings with lambda and friends (we've discussed this
on the list before, but I'm still not sure about the right way to do this)

- replace GNU regex with libpcre, so that we finally have
unicode-capable regular expression support

- scrap the bundled readline and unbundle the gnocl/gqbuilder stuff from
the core distribution

- add Rob's polynomial library to the "all in one" package

- bug and portability fixes (in particular, as John has pointed out,
compatibility with recent automake versions needs to be worked on, and,
as Rob rightfully complained, the expression unparser needs support for
recursive invokations)

- I also plan to work on 64 bit compatibility asap, but I'm not sure
whether this will make it into 7.7 already.

Any other issues and missing features that I forgot? Please let me know!

Cheers,
Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag