PLNews: Programming Language News

An update regarding the status of VA Smalltalk 7.0 is now available. VA Smalltalk is a Smalltalk system based on IBM VisualAge Smalltalk v6.0.3.

Release Candidate 1 of the Windows version is now available, with the General Availability release in the final stages of testing. It is expected to ship shortly.

csl4lin 1.0 has been released. It is a port of Codemist Standard Lisp to Linux.

The August 19, 2005 Tcl-URL! is now available. It lists recent developments in the Tcl community.

This edition covers topics such the TkproE IDE, virtual events and class bindings, recent wiki activity, plus more.

It has been announced that a new site for the The Just BASIC Newsletter has been created. Just BASIC is a free BASIC system for Windows.

A summary of discussion taking place on the Python python-dev mailing list between July 16 and July 31, 2005 is now available.

This edition covers topics such as the Heidelberg PyPy sprint, moving Python from CVS to Subversion, the Python 3.0 exception hierarchy, official documentation docstrings, a "while:" syntactic shortcut, sets in Python 2.5, plus more.

A new language, Objective Modula-2, has been announced. It adds the Objective-C object model, plus numerous other features, to Modula-2. It attempts to be a safer programming language that Objective-C, while retaining the capabilities of Objective-C. There are plans to implement the final specification in GNU Modula-2.

The August 18, 2005 Python-URL! is now available. It lists recent developments in the Python world.

This edition covers topics such as commercial Python training, PyObjC, popcount and Hamming distance, and the new Process PEP type, plus more.

Gambas 1.9.17 has been released. Gambas is a Visual Basic-like language and development environment.

This release includes a new GB.MatchString() API to perform pattern matching, improvements to various components, plus a number of bugfixes.

Amber for Parrot 0.2.3 has been released. It is a scripting language drawing from Eiffel and Ruby, and targetting the Parrot virtual machine.

This release includes support for wrapping Parrot PMC classes, support for an if-then-elseif-else-end construct, plus other improvements and numerous bugfixes.

ObjectiveCLIPS has been announced. It is a new programming environment for Cocoa on Apple Mac OS X, integrating CLIPS with Core Data and F-Script.

Some initial information concerning PyCon 2006 is now available. PyCon is a community-oriented Python conference targeting developers.

It will be held from February 24 until February 26, 2006, in Addison, Texas. There will be a day of tutorials on February 23, with a four day sprint being held after the conference.

Frink 2005-08-17 has been released. It is a language which allows for units of measurement to be tracked throughout calculations to help ensure correct answers.

This release fixes the error messages produced when converting between units with different dimensions.

Kawa 1.8 Beta has been released. It is a Scheme implementation which emits Java bytecode.

This release includes support for a shorthand method of accessing instance methods, support for SRFI 39, a rewrite of the symbol and namespace handling, more efficient character comparisons, a major rewrite of the macro handling and hygiene framework, a new function calling convention, plus more.

Pocket Scheme 1.2 has been released. Pocket Scheme is a Scheme implementation for Microsoft Windows CE Pocket PC and Handheld PC devices.

This release includes support for fully interruptable I/O, changes to the networking and binary I/O interfaces, relaxed recursion depth limits, and support for WM2003 devices.

Io 2005 08 17 has been released. Io is an embeddable, prototype-based language drawing from Smalltalk, Self, NewtonScript, Act1, LISP and Lua.

This release includes improvements to SkipDB, a fix for Map, updated sample code, multiple argument support for List appendSeq(), and a fix to URL setReferrer().

An updated version of "The New C Standard: An Economic and Cultural Commentary", by Derek Jones, is now available. It is an online book which analyses the C standard from a variety of perspectives.

This update fixes typos, now includes over 2000 hyperlinks, and allows for faster searching through page 782 of the PDF file. A complete list of changes is available.

Portable.NET 0.7.2 has been released. It is a cross-platform .NET implementation.

This release includes support for manual register allocation in CVM for x86-64, BeOS thread support, an update to a modified version of Boehm GC 6.5, System.Windows.Forms and System.Drawing changes and fixes, the implementation of missing functions in the Strings class, plus other bugfixes and improvements.

The August 16, 2005 edition of the Haskell Weekly News is now available. It lists recent developments in the Haskell community.

This edition covers topics such as: new software releases, the pros and cons of static typing, and language version pragmas, plus more.

It has been announced that Python 2.4.2 is due to be released sometime around the middle of September, with a release candidate planned for September 7 or 14.

It has also been suggested that the first Python 2.5 alpha should be released during March 2006, with a final release around May or June.

A summary of Perl 6 developments as of August 14, 2005 is now available.

This edition covers topics such as PXPerl, Perl 6 lexical scoping rules, adding new Parrot opcodes, generic classes, plus more.

Gambas 1.0.10 has been released. Gambas is a Visual Basic-like language and development environment.

This release includes a number of bugfixes to the interpreter, development environment, and various components.

Mysaifu JVM 0.1.0 has been released. It is a Java virtual machine which runs on Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC.

This release updates to GNU Classpath 0.17.

Squirrel 2.0.4 has been released. Squirrel is a lightweight, embeddable language with a C-like syntax which offers higher-order functions, delegation, tail recursion, generators, exception handling, and automated memory management.

This release includes support for weak references, plus API improvements and bugfixes.

The August 8 to August 14, 2005 edition of the Ruby Weekly News is now available. It is a summary of discussion taking place on the Ruby ruby-talk mailing list and the comp.lang.ruby newsgroup.

This edition covers topics such as the recent OSCON conference, Ruby on Rails, date parsing, the regular expression engine to be used in 1.8.3, plus more.

Embeddable Common-Lisp 0.9g has been released. It is a portable Common Lisp implementation which emits C code.

This release includes Mac OS X support fixes, the use of Boehm GC 6.5, improved naming for generated C functions, support for inline expansions for all logical operators, GCC 4.0 fixes, improved ANSI Common Lisp compatibility, faster type comparisons, plus other performance enhancements, improvements and bugfixes.