Re: [Caml-list] Type Safety comes to the iPad

[Jonathan Kimmitt <jonathan@kimmitt.co.uk>]

Hi,
  The application itself is written in Xcode. You need to be a member of the development
program at £59/$99 or equivalent per year to get access to the signing keys if you need
to modify 'extern' functions (native C code of the interpreter)

You don't need anything apart from iTunes to download (using document sharing)
source code in .ml files to the iPad and execute in the App

Or you can type in ocaml statements directly into the interpreter for example draw_rect 100 100 200 200;;
will draw a box immediately because the default startup open the graphics library.

There are some irritations, for example itunes does not allow a document with the name .ocamlinit
to be selected for download, so I provide an 'ocamlinit' instead to execute if it exists. If it doesn't
exist then the default startup is executed that comes with the App

The built-in keyboard is not ideal for ocaml with its dearth of easily accessible symbols. An external
keyboard is recommended if you want to do real work. Another issue is the lack of a decent editor
suited to programming - perhaps someone could port chamo to the iPad ?

I envisage a typical program would be developed on the workstation, compiled to a .cma file and then
downloaded to the iPad. However I have not tried this route to see if it works. you need to make sure the
ocaml version is identical.

There is no dynamic loading allowed - all the standard library that was relevant is linked in statically

Regards,

Jonathan

On 9 Nov 2010, at 09:39, Vincent Aravantinos wrote:

> Wow! This seems hugely interesting to me.
> Actually I've been wondering a while to know if I would buy an ipad, and my conclusion was "only if I can do Ocaml on it".
> Can you report a bit more on your experience ?
> Which tools did you use? How convenient it is? What drawback did you encounter?
> 
> Cheers,
> Vincent
> 
> Le 9 nov. 10 à 10:31, Jonathan Kimmitt a écrit :
> 
>> I thought you might be interested to know that my new OCAML App for the iPad was published
>> on the iTunes Store yesterday. I believe this is a significant achievement given the notorious
>> reluctance of Apple to embrace languages other than C/obj-C/C++ and I would hope it would
>> promote wider dissemination of type safety.
>> 
>> The real win would be if the new paradigm was accepted for teaching the new generation of
>> students etc, which would require greater acceptance by potential employers which is a bit
>> of a chicken/egg scenario.
>> 
>> Anyway I am inordinately proud of my new publication and if you know anybody who has an iPad,
>> please let them know about it.
>> 
>> http://itunes.apple.com/app/ocamlexample/id396515573?mt=8#
>> 
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