Generated: June 1, 2002, 16:17:07 Copyright © 2002 , Kurt Nørmark The local LAML software home page

What is new in LAML

News in version 17:

  1. The most important new element in this version of LAML is the validating mirrors (HTML4.01 transitional and XHTML1.0 strict). While you generate your HTML document LAML will validate the document against the DTD. LAML comes with a number of examples (HTML4.01 and XHTML1.0). See also additional examples written for a recent paper (see below) about LAML. All examples are part of the LAML distribution, so it is easy to play with them.

  2. The new validating mirrors generate abstract syntax trees instead of strings. The abstract syntax trees can be rendered as text by use of the function render. The rendering process avoids excessive string concatenation. Less garbage collection is therefore necessary. The role of the ASTs relative to other formats used in LAML is illustrated in a figure.

  3. The new procedure write-html provides a conveninent top-level abstraction for rendering and writing a HTML clause to a text file.

  4. LENO has been extended in two directions: (1) A new surface syntax (XML-in-LAML) has been introduced via the new style leno. (2) Support of CSS is being introduced. Both of these are in progress, so do not yet expect finished work in this area. The old surface syntax is still operational via the style lecture-notes. Documentation of the new LENO work is pending. If you are interested in web-based teaching material and LENO you can consult the new paper WEB Based Lecture Notes - The LENO Approach (zipped postscript, pdf).

  5. We have also generated new mirrors for XHMTL1.0 transitional,and XHTML1.0 frameset . As of now the XHTML 1.0 strict validating mirror is finished (see above). XHTML 1.0 transitional and frameset are still experimental (and non-validating).

  6. We are currently writing a LAML tutorial. There are links to the tutorial from the distributed version, but the tutorial itself is maintained at the development site of LAML .

  7. There are two new papers about LAML. The one of most interest to the Scheme community is Web Programming in Scheme - the LAML approach (pdf, ps). The accompanying examples are also available. The LAML papers can be found on the LAML home page.

  8. The web-based teaching material Functional Programming in Scheme - A WWW-oriented approach may also be of interest. The material illustrate functional programming in Scheme by means of LAML examples. The material is produced by use of LENO (see above).

  9. Version 17.10:

  10. XML-in-LAML has been introduced. XML-in-LAML is a systematic support of XML in LAML, based on a DTD which parsed and processed to a mirror of the XML language in LAML. In the current version of LALM we do not include the generator part of XML-in-LAML.

  11. LENO has been updated with a new XML-in-LAML front end. The new version of LENO (which depends on the old one in styles/lecture-notes/) is located in styles/xml-in-laml/lecture-notes/

Besides the major improvemens listed above, a lot of small improvements have been made throughout the styles, tools, and libraries. See a more detailed log for further details. Notice however that some changes has been performed without any logging...

 

Kurt Nørmark
Aalborg University
normark@cs.auc.dk  

 

Generated: June 1, 2002, 16:17:07