[Caml-list] poll - need for a good introductory OCaml book

[Caml-list] poll - need for a good introductory OCaml book

[Graham Guttocks]

[reposting, as the first one didn't seem to go through]

There seems to me clearly, a lack of a good, tutorial style,
introductory book about OCaml in English.  Something akin to
``Programming Perl'' (as someone mentioned).

I'm talking to a publisher at Manning (http://www.manning.com) about
the possibility of such a book.  They are intrigued, but would like to
see some indication that people are interested.

Would you like to see such a book?  Something you could pick up in the
technical section of your local bookshoppe.  If so, speak up, and I'll
collect the responses to feed back to the publisher.  Thanks.

=====
Regards,
Graham

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Re: [Caml-list] poll - need for a good introductory OCaml book

[Martin Weber]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 04:35:22PM +1300, Graham Guttocks wrote:
> [reposting, as the first one didn't seem to go through]
> 
> There seems to me clearly, a lack of a good, tutorial style,
> introductory book about OCaml in English.  Something akin to
> ``Programming Perl'' (as someone mentioned).
> (...)

Mind explaining what's wrong with ``Developing Applications in Ocaml'' ?

regards,
-martin

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Re: [Caml-list] poll - need for a good introductory OCaml book

[Shawn Wagner]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 04:35:22PM +1300, Graham Guttocks wrote:
> [reposting, as the first one didn't seem to go through]
> 
> There seems to me clearly, a lack of a good, tutorial style,
> introductory book about OCaml in English.  Something akin to
> ``Programming Perl'' (as someone mentioned).

Don't you mean Learning Perl?

There's already a Programming Perl reference manual equivalent, though you
have to read French (Er, excuse me, Freedom ;)) to get any use out of the
dead tree version.

-- 
Shawn Wagner
shawnw@speakeasy.org

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Re: [Caml-list] poll - need for a good introductory OCaml book

[Daniel M. Albro]

	Aw, man, don't bring up the "Freedom Fries," I was already
embarrassed enough for my country as it is!  Anyway, I think the
O'Reilly book is actually quite good for learning, if you do all
of the exercises and stuff.  We just need to get O'Reilly to publish
the English version (and there are still a few exercise solutions to
translate into English).


On Thu, 2003-03-13 at 00:28, Shawn Wagner wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 04:35:22PM +1300, Graham Guttocks wrote:
> > [reposting, as the first one didn't seem to go through]
> > 
> > There seems to me clearly, a lack of a good, tutorial style,
> > introductory book about OCaml in English.  Something akin to
> > ``Programming Perl'' (as someone mentioned).
> 
> Don't you mean Learning Perl?
> 
> There's already a Programming Perl reference manual equivalent, though you
> have to read French (Er, excuse me, Freedom ;)) to get any use out of the
> dead tree version.
-- 
Daniel M. Albro <albro@humnet.ucla.edu>

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Re: [Caml-list] poll - need for a good introductory OCaml book

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 04:35:22PM +1300, Graham Guttocks wrote:
> [reposting, as the first one didn't seem to go through]
> 
> There seems to me clearly, a lack of a good, tutorial style,
> introductory book about OCaml in English.  Something akin to
> ``Programming Perl'' (as someone mentioned).
> 
> I'm talking to a publisher at Manning (http://www.manning.com) about
> the possibility of such a book.  They are intrigued, but would like to
> see some indication that people are interested.
> 
> Would you like to see such a book?  Something you could pick up in the
> technical section of your local bookshoppe.  If so, speak up, and I'll
> collect the responses to feed back to the publisher.  Thanks.

I'd buy it if it was any good.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Red Hat Inc. (London, UK) http://www.redhat.com/software/ccm
http://www.annexia.org/ Freshmeat projects: http://freshmeat.net/users/rwmj
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RE: [Caml-list] poll - need for a good introductory OCaml book

[MikhailFedotov]

Hi!

> > [reposting, as the first one didn't seem to go through]
> >
> > There seems to me clearly, a lack of a good, tutorial style,
> > introductory book about OCaml in English.  Something akin to
> > ``Programming Perl'' (as someone mentioned).
> > (...)
>
> Mind explaining what's wrong with ``Developing Applications
> in Ocaml'' ?

The introductory part of reference manual reads easier. And there
is a bug too in the book (at least one, I don't know if there are more):

# let test_nul_integer = function `Number n -> n=0
  and test_nul_real = function `Number r -> r=0.0 ;;
  val test_nul_integer : [< `Number of int] -> bool = <fun>
  val test_nul_real : [< `Number of float] -> bool = <fun>
# let test_nul x = (test_nul_integer x) || (test_nul_real x) ;;

(the next line is wrong - ocaml 3.06 won't allow this):

   val test_nul : [< `Number of float & int] -> bool = <fun>

Reference manual explains where is the bug...

Mikhail



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RE: [Caml-list] poll - need for a good introductory OCaml book

[Jacques Garrigue]

From: "MikhailFedotov" <mikhail@kittown.com>
> > Mind explaining what's wrong with ``Developing Applications
> > in Ocaml'' ?
> 
> The introductory part of reference manual reads easier. And there
> is a bug too in the book (at least one, I don't know if there are more):
> 
> # let test_nul_integer = function `Number n -> n=0
>   and test_nul_real = function `Number r -> r=0.0 ;;
>   val test_nul_integer : [< `Number of int] -> bool = <fun>
>   val test_nul_real : [< `Number of float] -> bool = <fun>
> # let test_nul x = (test_nul_integer x) || (test_nul_real x) ;;
> 
> (the next line is wrong - ocaml 3.06 won't allow this):
> 
>    val test_nul : [< `Number of float & int] -> bool = <fun>
> 
> Reference manual explains where is the bug...

The appendix of the book is explicitly about ocaml-2.99.
Lots of things changed since, so this is not surprising that new
features do not work exactly as explained in the book.
For this example, this is a rather recent change, to catch stupid
errors, the above being useless anyway.

        Jacques Garrigue

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Re: [Caml-list] poll - need for a good introductory OCaml book

[Michael Schuerig]

On Thursday 13 March 2003 09:33, Daniel M. Albro wrote:
> We just need to get O'Reilly to publish
> the English version (and there are still a few exercise solutions to
> translate into English).

Admittedly, I haven't read the book, but my understanding is that this 
book is based on OCaml 2.x. Is it really such a good idea to publish it 
as is when OCaml has been at version 3.x for quite some time now?

I guess, I'm trying to make a "marketing" (shudder) point. No matter how 
good and useful the book is, it'll be harder to pitch it (and OCaml) to 
people willing to learn a new language, when at the same time you'd 
have to say "it's based on an earlier version of the language, but 
that's not important".

Michael

-- 
Michael Schuerig                 Not only does lightning not strike
mailto:schuerig@acm.org          twice, it usually doesn't strike once.
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/  --Salman Rushdie, "Fury"

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[Caml-list] O'Reilly book (was poll - need for a good introductory OCaml book)

[Christophe TROESTLER]

On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, Jacques Garrigue <garrigue@kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp> wrote:
> 
> The appendix of the book is explicitly about ocaml-2.99.  Lots of
> things changed since, [...]
>
On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, Michael Schuerig <schuerig@acm.org> wrote:
> 
> Admittedly, I haven't read the book, but my understanding is that this 
> book is based on OCaml 2.x. Is it really such a good idea to publish it 
> as is when OCaml has been at version 3.x for quite some time now?

Wouldn't it be possible to update the English version of book for Caml
3.06 ?  It is possible to do it while preserving a way to typeset the
original version with macros like \ifCamlVersion{2.x}{...} ...  Of
course one should start by asking the authors whether they agree, then
a group of people (I volunteer) could check the code and report the
things to correct.  A useful addition would also be to update the java
code that displays the solutions to the exercises to work with mozilla
(only a matter of hours I guess if the LaTeX code is clean).  IMHO,
this needs to be done for the readers to use with pleasure this great
book.

Please let me know if I can do something.
ChriS

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Re: [Caml-list] O'Reilly book (was poll - need for a good introductory OCaml book)

[Xavier Leroy]

> > The appendix of the book is explicitly about ocaml-2.99.  Lots of
> > things changed since, [...]
> >
> > Admittedly, I haven't read the book, but my understanding is that this 
> > book is based on OCaml 2.x. Is it really such a good idea to publish it 
> > as is when OCaml has been at version 3.x for quite some time now?
> 
> Wouldn't it be possible to update the English version of book for Caml
> 3.06 ?

Actually, appendix A in the English version was updated to OCaml 3.04,
which is 3.06 minus the polymorphic methods and record fields.  It
could be updated to 3.06 without much effort.

Everything else uses 2.04 indeed, but OCaml 2.04 is still a (very
large) subset of 3.06, so everything that is described in the book
still applies to 3.06.  And I like the idea that the body of the book
describes and uses a large, stable subset of the language, while some
of the more advanced, less stable features are described separately in
an appendix.

> A useful addition would also be to update the java
> code that displays the solutions to the exercises to work with mozilla
> (only a matter of hours I guess if the LaTeX code is clean).

It's Javascript code, actually, and it is totally impenetrable :-)
Interested Javascript hackers can have a look at
        http://caml.inria.fr/oreilly-book/html/videoc.js
If you manage to get it to work under Mozilla, you'll be thanked
profusely.

- Xavier Leroy

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[Caml-list] [OT] Re: O'Reilly book

[Christophe TROESTLER]

On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, Xavier Leroy <xavier.leroy@inria.fr> wrote:
> 
> It's Javascript code, actually, and it is totally impenetrable :-)
> Interested Javascript hackers can have a look at
>         http://caml.inria.fr/oreilly-book/html/videoc.js

>From little experiments, it seems that the problem comes from

<layer name="l__1_APPEND/PFcor.ml.tex" class="hint" visibility="hide"
  style="position:absolute" width="50%">

because « visibility="hide" » is not understood by Mozilla/Gecko.
What you can (should?) do is to put it in « style » as follows:

<layer name="l__1_APPEND/PFcor.ml.tex" class="hint"
  style="position:absolute; visibility:hidden" width="50%">

But then, the script needs to be modified (rewritten?) accordingly.  I
haven't figured how (I know nothing about JS) but the following may be
interesting « http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/user/view/cs_msg/3817 ». I
hope this info can help somebody more versed in JS than me to fix the
problem...

Cheers,
ChriS

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Re: [Caml-list] O'Reilly book (was poll - need for a good introductory OCaml book)

[Alan Schmitt]

* Xavier Leroy (xavier.leroy@inria.fr) wrote:
> It's Javascript code, actually, and it is totally impenetrable :-)
> Interested Javascript hackers can have a look at
>         http://caml.inria.fr/oreilly-book/html/videoc.js
> If you manage to get it to work under Mozilla, you'll be thanked
> profusely.

As a follow up about this, videoc was developped by Christian Queinnec.
I think I read a few months ago that a new version had been released. It
might be available here: http://youpou.lip6.fr/queinnec/VideoC/VideoC.html

Alan

-- 
The hacker: someone who figured things out and made something cool happen.

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