[clean-list] Communicating with other programs

[Diederik van Arkel]

op 11/17/01 3:02 AM schreef Brian Rogoff op bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net:

[snip previous conversation..]

> I'm certainly not motivated by any love of Linux, and I thought I made it
> clear that I think Unix sucks, though, like democracy, its better than
> most of the alternatives. However, I have more than enough windmills to
> tilt at, so if the Clean team isn't interested in releasing the compiler
> sources, and isn't interested in the Unixes, and there are no other
> volunteers who are intimately familiar with the ObjectIO library and
> willing to take a lead role, I'll tilt at something else.

I believe it has been made clear already that the sources for the Clean 2.0
compiler will be made available. Apart from that compiler sources are
irrelevant to the porting of the Object IO library. This is (just?) a
question of porting the existing and available source code to a suitable
GUI library under Linux. There is no difference between the existing Clean
1.3 compilers for Windows, Mac, and Linux. I agree that neither Peter Achten
nor I are inclined to take the lead in a Linux port but we are certainly
willing to assist if and when somebody takes this on.

> I reject the notion that anything has been tried with respect to Linux.
> That's simply ridiculous. When the compiler sources are available and we
> can build Clean from source on a number of platforms, you can start
> whining about the laziness of the Linux community. As that appears less
> and less likely to happen, I'll waste my time programming in, and
> promoting, something else.

Now this is what gets rather annoying. An open source compiler has nothing
to do with porting libraries so this is a straw man. As far as I am aware
the only significant difference between the Windows and Linux distributions
is the availability of the ObjectIO library and the Clean2 ide. Porting
these is not rocket science, just plenty of work for which the Clean team
cannot find the time or the justification.

> I have Clean installed on a Windows machine, but since I rarely even start
> up Windows any more I don't have much use for Clean. That's kind of sad,
> since I really preferred Clean to Haskell, but the Clean developers have
> the right to set their own priorities.
> 
> -- Brian
> 

On a more general note: Clean has more features and capabilities than are
generally announced. This is because we are unwilling to mention them before
they are fully developed and tested. If you need something to solve a
specific problem it is always worthwile to ask the Clean team and the
mailing list if this can already be achieved. With respect to Clean and C
integration we are experimenting with new capabilities but progress is slow
due to the time taken up with preparing the upcoming Clean2 release.

I'll stop rambling now...

regards,

Diederik van Arkel