Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

[Ed Keith]

--- On Thu, 4/2/09, Alp Mestan <alp@mestan.fr> wrote:

> I think it would be a better effort to start a new work, even if harder.
> OCaml's has known some evolutions, there are many key projects (Extlib, > Core, Batteries, ...) so it would be nice to throw most of today's OCaml > in an entirely new book. Moreover, there wouldn't be any problem with 
> the publisher of LLC.
> 
> 
> But for such a project there would be the need for a great team of very > motivated people.

First let me say that while I have been a professional programmer for over twenty years, have used many languages, and have have been playing with ocaml for several years, I am no expert on ocaml (the only language I claim to be expert in is C++). Nor do I have much experience writing, and, like many Americans, I am monolingual.

Having said that, I currently have some free time time and would be willing to offer my assistance to this project. It would give me the opportunity to hone my writing and ocaml skills, and I believe as an experienced professional programmer (I have worked in government, military, finance, medicine, aviation, and research) and ocaml newbie I could bring a useful perspective to the project. 

I hope I can be of service,

    -EdK

Ed Keith
e_d_k@yahoo.com

Blog: edkeith.blogspot.com




      

Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

[Jon Harrop]

On Thursday 02 April 2009 13:41:01 Ed Keith wrote:
> Having said that, I currently have some free time time and would be willing
> to offer my assistance to this project. It would give me the opportunity to
> hone my writing and ocaml skills, and I believe as an experienced
> professional programmer (I have worked in government, military, finance,
> medicine, aviation, and research) and ocaml newbie I could bring a useful
> perspective to the project.
>
> I hope I can be of service,

I think the existing books cover the core parts of the language well so there 
is no need for further work in that area but I would like to see books 
covering the following topics:

. Batteries (!).

. Libraries, e.g. LablGTK.

. Post 3.10 camlp4.

. Other tools, e.g. menhir, dpygen, bitstrings, micmatch.

There are also some areas where I think today's OCaml software could be 
improved:

. Automatic FFI stub JIT compilation using LLVM.

. OpenGL 3 bindings.

. GUI libraries.

. IDEs (probably depends upon GUI libraries).

-- 
Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e

Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

[Alp Mestan]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2144 bytes --]

Indeed, as I said above, a book on "today's OCaml" should cover a wide
variety of topics (syntax extensions with camlp4/5, general purpose
libraries, specific libraries like ocamlnet, GTK+ and OpenGL binding, etc).
To write such a book, there would be the need for many authors with time and
knowledge to produce a good learning and practice material for OCaml !

I think many of us would enjoy writing some paragraphs for such a project...
But would there be enough people to achieve the writing of an entire (and
good) book ?

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 3:37 PM, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:

> On Thursday 02 April 2009 13:41:01 Ed Keith wrote:
> > Having said that, I currently have some free time time and would be
> willing
> > to offer my assistance to this project. It would give me the opportunity
> to
> > hone my writing and ocaml skills, and I believe as an experienced
> > professional programmer (I have worked in government, military, finance,
> > medicine, aviation, and research) and ocaml newbie I could bring a useful
> > perspective to the project.
> >
> > I hope I can be of service,
>
> I think the existing books cover the core parts of the language well so
> there
> is no need for further work in that area but I would like to see books
> covering the following topics:
>
> . Batteries (!).
>
> . Libraries, e.g. LablGTK.
>
> . Post 3.10 camlp4.
>
> . Other tools, e.g. menhir, dpygen, bitstrings, micmatch.
>
> There are also some areas where I think today's OCaml software could be
> improved:
>
> . Automatic FFI stub JIT compilation using LLVM.
>
> . OpenGL 3 bindings.
>
> . GUI libraries.
>
> . IDEs (probably depends upon GUI libraries).
>
> --
> Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
> http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e
>
> _______________________________________________
> Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management:
> http://yquem.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/caml-list
> Archives: http://caml.inria.fr
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
>



-- 
Alp Mestan
In charge of the C++ section on Developpez.com.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3054 bytes --]

Re: [Caml-list] LLC book [was: Questions]

[Damien Guichard]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2389 bytes --]


It's far more than just about human ressources.

What you describe is some sort of "OCaml Bible".
First you have to decide what book you want.
If you do an OCaml Bible then probably some beginners will lack an introductory text.
If you do an introductory text then probably more experienced people will lack a reference book.

As i remember it Le Langage Caml was largely about compilation techniques.
That's yet another choice:
* do you want to introduce OCaml where it shines best, as an rewriting tool ?
* or do you want to be more general and application-agnostic ?

Certainly at some point you have to speak about semantic, so :
* do you want to be practical and omit the boring theory ?
* or do you want to speak about lambda-calculus, type inference and value restriction ?

Do you want a full exposure of the module language ?
Or just the bits that allow usage of the standard modules ? 
Do you want to present advanced usage of polymorphic variants ?
Or do you want to just point the right articles and let the reader perfect its knowledge ?

Certainly you also want to discuss different programming styles.
Moreover it's much better, especially for library designers, if you introduce some functional niceties
(maps, folds, continuations, lazyness, monads...).

That's many conflicting questions.

The reason why you overlook them is because you greatly overestimate the importance of libraries. 
Even from the library point of view, it's better if the langage comes first, it encourages a much more elaborated design.

-- damien





Damien Guichard
2009-04-02



En réponse au message
de : Alp Mestan
du : 2009-04-02 15:40:45
À : Jon Harrop; caml-list@yquem.inria.fr
CC : 
Sujet : Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

Indeed, as I said above, a book on "today's OCaml" should cover a wide variety of topics (syntax extensions with camlp4/5, general purpose libraries, specific libraries like ocamlnet, GTK+ and OpenGL binding, etc). To write such a book, there would be the need for many authors with time and knowledge to produce a good learning and practice material for OCaml !

I think many of us would enjoy writing some paragraphs for such a project... But would there be enough people to achieve the writing of an entire (and good) book ?

-- 
Alp Mestan
In charge of the C++ section on Developpez.com.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 6685 bytes --]

Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

[Richard Jones]

On Thu, Apr 02, 2009 at 03:40:33PM +0200, Alp Mestan wrote:
> I think many of us would enjoy writing some paragraphs for such a project...
> But would there be enough people to achieve the writing of an entire (and
> good) book ?

Once you get into the realm of having lots of authors writing an
"OCaml Bible" there's going to be so little money in it that either
none of them get paid, or the book will cost a huge amount of money
(or both).  Scientific works through traditional publishers are a bit
like that, if my father's experience editing a journal is anything to
go by.

So you might want to think about an alternate method of authorship,
such as a version-controlled, shared document, that allows
contributions and comes under a Free license of some sort.

If people still want an actual book, at the end of the day they can
take the electronic document to lulu.com and get it printed.

BTW, a lot of the content on ocaml-tutorial.org is public domain, if
that proves useful (check with the individual authors though).

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat

Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

[Joel Reymont]

On Apr 2, 2009, at 7:08 PM, Richard Jones wrote:

> So you might want to think about an alternate method of authorship,
> such as a version-controlled, shared document, that allows
> contributions and comes under a Free license of some sort.

Like the Django Book!

http://www.djangobook.com/

---
Mac hacker with a performance bent
http://linkedin.com/in/joelreymont

Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

[Zorg 421]

Great idea, would be a pleasure to contribute something to the caml community.

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 8:21 PM, Joel Reymont <joelr1@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Apr 2, 2009, at 7:08 PM, Richard Jones wrote:
>
>> So you might want to think about an alternate method of authorship,
>> such as a version-controlled, shared document, that allows
>> contributions and comes under a Free license of some sort.
>
> Like the Django Book!
>
> http://www.djangobook.com/

Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

[Richard Jones]

It doesn't take a huge amount to set this up (encouraging people to
write the words is quite another matter).

Source control: http://git.ocamlcore.org/ - check

Decide on a format: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook - check

License: http://creativecommons.org/ CC-BY-SA - check

Mailing list for editorial review of submissions:
  http://ocamlcore.org/ - check

Outline and subject areas:
 - Introduction to the language
 - Language core
 - Libraries
 - Camlp4
 - ...

Decide who will be in charge of each area ...

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat

Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

[Alp Mestan]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 723 bytes --]

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org> wrote:

>
> It doesn't take a huge amount to set this up (encouraging people to
> write the words is quite another matter).
>
> Source control: http://git.ocamlcore.org/ - check
>
> Decide on a format: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook - check
>
> License: http://creativecommons.org/ CC-BY-SA - check
>
> Mailing list for editorial review of submissions:
>  http://ocamlcore.org/ - check
>
> Outline and subject areas:
>  - Introduction to the language
>  - Language core
>  - Libraries
>  - Camlp4
>  - ...
>
> Decide who will be in charge of each area ...
>

And even more important, who would like to participate to this project ? ;-)

-- 
Alp Mestan

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1300 bytes --]

Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

[Daniel de Kok]

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org> wrote:
> Decide on a format: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook - check

I have written one open source book, and participated in another, and
DocBook was always a barrier of entrance for most potential
contributors. These days I'd rather go for something like the asciidoc
format, which can also be converted to DocBook. Having DocBook as an
intermediate format is very handy, because it is so easy to customize
XHTML and XSL-FO output with XSLT.

Take care,
Daniel

Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

[Daniel de Kok]

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org> wrote:
> Decide on a format: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook - check

I have written one open source book, and participated in another, and
DocBook was always a barrier of entrance for most potential
contributors. These days I'd rather go for something like the asciidoc
format, which can also be converted to DocBook. Having DocBook as an
intermediate format is very handy, because it is so easy to customize
XHTML and XSL-FO output with XSLT.

Take care,
Daniel

Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

[Richard Jones]

On Thu, Apr 02, 2009 at 02:37:28PM +0100, Jon Harrop wrote:
> . Post 3.10 camlp4.

This one is really crying out for a book or some sort of good
reference ...

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat

Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

[David Teller]

You could start with this: http://fr.wikibooks.org/wiki/Objective_Caml .
I have only had the time to write about 3 chapters (in French) but it
could serve as a base. Oh, and the license and source control are mostly
solved by the use of Wikibooks.

Cheers,
 David

questions

[John Prince]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 788 bytes --]

I'm new to ocaml and coming (most recently) from ruby, so I was wondering if
there are equivalents to some of the things that I find handy in ruby:

1) Is there something comparable to RSpec (i.e., behavior driven
development)?  A recommendation on which testing module to use?

2) Is there something like 'ri' in ocaml?  (commandline access to basic
documentation)

3) Is there consensus on the best/fastest xml parser?

4) What kind of YAML support is there?  I've seen an ad-hoc writeup to read
in JSON in an ocaml program, but I'm much more familiar with YAML.

Where is the message archive located?  Is it searchable?

Can someone point me to the best resource(s) for newbies?  I have been
reading through what's out there, but its always nice to get a
recommendation.

Thanks,
John

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 868 bytes --]

Re: [Caml-list] questions

[Martin Jambon]

Kuba Ober wrote:
> There must be some reason why the manual and other materials on the
> official site are of such poor quality. I've thought a bit about it, and
> the only reason I see is that the authors do not have a feel for what it
> takes to learn/understand/use that language. They obviously know it all
> through, but that's still far removed from being able to explain it to
> someone else. I don't know, of course, how it is that one understands
> something "well" yet is not able to explain it to somebody else. To me,
> that's very fragile knowledge. I always thought that deep understanding
> implies an ability to extract what's important, and to lead the other
> person from some "basics" (whatever they may be) to the conclusion.

I can see one reason: like many other French OCaml programmers, I learned
OCaml at school (it was in 1998). French teachers don't rely heavily on a
book. There is however one book that covers the essentials, "Le Langage Caml"
by Weis and Leroy, which despite using the Caml Light dialect is the most
enlightening programming book I've ever got to read. For the rest, there is
the reference manual of OCaml and plenty of source code all around the web.

I think that's why there is not much more incentive to write a complete
"replace-the-teacher" text book on OCaml written by the core OCaml developers,
who are mostly a French team. Besides, it's a lot of work and doesn't make money.

Of course there are now a few great books and tutorials on OCaml in English,
none of them having an official status.


Martin

-- 
http://mjambon.com/

Re: [Caml-list] questions

[David MENTRE]

Hello,

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 16:44, Martin Jambon <martin.jambon@ens-lyon.org> wrote:
> There is however one book that covers the essentials, "Le Langage Caml"
> by Weis and Leroy, which despite using the Caml Light dialect is the most
> enlightening programming book I've ever got to read.

I heartily agree. It's ability to show you how to make a grep or a
simple compiler in a few pages of OCaml and explanations is really an
enlightenment. Probably one of the best computer book I ever read.

Unfortunately, this book is out of print and hard to find.

Yours,
d.

Re: [Caml-list] questions

[Jon Harrop]

On Wednesday 01 April 2009 20:13:41 David MENTRE wrote:
> Unfortunately, this book is out of print and hard to find.

Incidentally, if anyone out there is still sitting on such a (good) book I'd 
be interested in publishing it for them. The result won't be as cheap as an 
O'Reilly because our overheads are higher but at least it would actually get 
published. Alternatively, I can tell anyone exactly what they'd need to get 
started self-publishing and they could do it themselves.

-- 
Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e

Re : [Caml-list] questions

[Matthieu Wipliez]

Isn't the book written in French? (I mean "Le langage Caml"...).
It could be nice to translate it in English, at least to have a larger base of readers, and adapt the examples from Caml Light to Objective Caml (I don't know how much the syntaxes differ though)

just my two cents,

Cheers
Matthieu



----- Message d'origine ----
> De : Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>
> À : caml-list@yquem.inria.fr
> Envoyé le : Mercredi, 1 Avril 2009, 21h27mn 25s
> Objet : Re: [Caml-list] questions
> 
> On Wednesday 01 April 2009 20:13:41 David MENTRE wrote:
> > Unfortunately, this book is out of print and hard to find.
> 
> Incidentally, if anyone out there is still sitting on such a (good) book I'd 
> be interested in publishing it for them. The result won't be as cheap as an 
> O'Reilly because our overheads are higher but at least it would actually get 
> published. Alternatively, I can tell anyone exactly what they'd need to get 
> started self-publishing and they could do it themselves.
> 
> -- 
> Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
> http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management:
> http://yquem.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/caml-list
> Archives: http://caml.inria.fr
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs

Re: Re : [Caml-list] questions

[David MENTRE]

Hello,

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 22:23, Matthieu Wipliez <mwipliez@yahoo.fr> wrote:
> Isn't the book written in French? (I mean "Le langage Caml"...).

Yes.

> It could be nice to translate it in English, at least to have a larger base of readers, and adapt the examples from Caml Light to Objective Caml (I don't know how much the syntaxes differ though)

The syntax is very close for the subset of Caml used in the book.

However, judging from the lack of availability of this book even in
French, there might an issue in the agreement between the authors
(Leroy & Weis) and the publisher. I'm suspecting the authors are
unable to re-publish the book elsewhere.

Yours,
david

Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

[Xavier Leroy]

>> It could be nice to translate it in English, at least to have a
>>   larger base of readers, and adapt the examples from Caml Light to
>>   Objective Caml (I don't know how much the syntaxes differ though)
> 
> The syntax is very close for the subset of Caml used in the book.

Right.  Parts of the standard library changed, though.

> However, judging from the lack of availability of this book even in
> French, there might an issue in the agreement between the authors
> (Leroy & Weis) and the publisher. I'm suspecting the authors are
> unable to re-publish the book elsewhere.

The publisher (Dunod) holds all rights except for an English
translation (Pierre Weis and I reserved those rights).  There is a
procedure to ask the publisher to relinquish its rights if it decides
not to print the book again, but that procedure can take up to 1 year (!).

All in all, I'm not sure it's worth the effort to resurrect this old
text, but if a group of motivated volunteers arise, let's discuss it
privately.

- Xavier Leroy

Re: [Caml-list] Re: LLC book [was: Questions]

[Alp Mestan]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1544 bytes --]

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Xavier Leroy <Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr> wrote:

> It could be nice to translate it in English, at least to have a
>>>  larger base of readers, and adapt the examples from Caml Light to
>>>  Objective Caml (I don't know how much the syntaxes differ though)
>>>
>>
>> The syntax is very close for the subset of Caml used in the book.
>>
>
> Right.  Parts of the standard library changed, though.
>
>  However, judging from the lack of availability of this book even in
>> French, there might an issue in the agreement between the authors
>> (Leroy & Weis) and the publisher. I'm suspecting the authors are
>> unable to re-publish the book elsewhere.
>>
>
> The publisher (Dunod) holds all rights except for an English
> translation (Pierre Weis and I reserved those rights).  There is a
> procedure to ask the publisher to relinquish its rights if it decides
> not to print the book again, but that procedure can take up to 1 year (!).
>
> All in all, I'm not sure it's worth the effort to resurrect this old
> text, but if a group of motivated volunteers arise, let's discuss it
> privately.
>
> - Xavier Leroy
>

I think it would be a better effort to start a new work, even if harder.
OCaml's has known some evolutions, there are many key projects (Extlib,
Core, Batteries, ...) so it would be nice to throw most of today's OCaml in
an entirely new book. Moreover, there wouldn't be any problem with the
publisher of LLC.

But for such a project there would be the need for a great team of very
motivated people.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2339 bytes --]