Progress Report: Revised ToDos, Multi-file programming, Regular expressions

[Mark S. Miller]

MarkM wrote:
>At what point should we announce E on slashdot or freshmeat?  When should
>we promote to the cypherpunks?  I think we're getting close.  We shouldn't
>promote until people can have a rewarding experience with the download.
>VLSs are important, but they aren't crucial until we've revived the
>persistence logic or are trying to cross firewalls.  
>
>Proposed prerequisites: 
>	The unix build and install issues need to be fixed 
>		(volunteers appreciated!)
>	I need to write my long delayed concurrency chapter
>	MarcS needs to post Secure EChat.  
>
>Anything else??

MarcS & I talked about this and concluded that several more chapters were
necessary before someone would find E a nice usable programming language,
and therefore necessary before promotion.  Specifically:

	Collections
		Our ol' (E vs Flex vs Const) x (List vs Map)
		(plus String, which is already written)
	Patterns
	QuasiLiteral expressions and patterns

In addition, until you can break up your program into multiple files, you
can't really program.  So add to this list

	Multi-file programming

MarcS didn't catch it from the above text, so let me emphasize: I'm
proposing dropping the VLS from the prerequisites for promotion, since 1)
it isn't needed until you wanna persist or cross firewalls, and 2) we've
done it before, so it's no longer purple, and we can credibly explain the
story.

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I currently have multi-file programming working well enough to be usable.
It even correctly resolves import cycles.  More later in the upcoming draft
chapter on Multi-file programming.

Using this, I wrapped "http://www.oroinc.com/products/OROMatcher1.1.html",
a Perl5 compatible pure java regular expression engine.  It's freely
redistributable, but unfortunately isn't open source, so E makes use of it
if it's there, but doesn't break if it isn't.  If it is, my wrapping turns
it into a quasi-pattern parser named "rx".  Again, it needs some work, but
it's already working well enough to be usable.  More later in the upcoming
draft chapter on QuasiLiteral expressions and patterns.

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I'd love to have someone else take the lead on the unix build and install
issues so I can just focus on the rest.  Volunteers??  Thanks(!!) in advance.

	Cheers,
	--MarkM