[E-Lang] Announcing stl-E 0.8.9k: An interim non-distributed release

[Mark S. Miller]

 From http://www.erights.org/download/stl-0-8-9-k/index.html

                     First, the anti-highlights

E stl-0.8.9k is an interim non-distributed release, but supporting a more 
modern version of the E language spec. It's primary motivation is to support 
work on compiling E, but it may also be preferred by those using E for 
non-distributed programming.

The E installer is much improved for MSWindows, but these improvements have 
not yet been ported to other platforms, so this release is an MSWindows-only 
release. This is a very temporary situation -- the vast majority of E is 
fully platform independent.

As of this version E only support Java >= 2 (ie, a JDK/JRE >= 1.2).



                   Highlights of this Version

The following is a list of the names of the major changes, but without yet 
any explanations. As each change is explained in the upcoming release notes, 
the item below will be linked to that explanation. Most of these notes will 
be messages to the e-lang list, so the link should also serve as the root of 
a discussion about each change.

This is the first version of E supporting locally untrusted code (!!!)

Closer conformance to the Kernel E spec

Closer conformance to Marc Stiegler's draft book E in a Walnut

Experimental bundling of the Waterken Hydro 2.0 capability-oriented 
collection library

New Minimal-XML DOM tree and QuasiParser

Concurrency improvements

    Extended when-catch syntax

    Extensible Promise architecture, enabling Object-Pluribus to be 
    rewritten in unprivileged E code

    The Dead Man Switch

Improvements to the "e" driver program

Installation improvements (MSWindows only for now)

Syntax changes, including

    a lighter-weight syntax for anonymous closures.

    "typedef" for describing object protocols

And, as always, various terminology changes


        Cheers,
        --MarkM