Alice 1.1 released

[Andreas Rossberg]

We are happy to announce version 1.1 of the Alice programming
system:

      http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/alice/

Alice ML is a functional programming language that enriches the
statically typed, closed functional world of ML with extensive
support for type-safe programming of concurrent, distributed
and open systems. It also features cutting-edge constraint
programming technology in the tradition of Oz/Mozart.

Alice ML is a mostly conservative extension of Standard ML
featuring:

   Futures
      selective laziness and light-weight concurrency with
      implicit dataflow synchronisation
   Higher-order modules
      higher-order functors and abstract signatures
   Packages
      dynamically typed ML modules as first-class values
   Pickling
      type-safe, generic & platform-independent marshalling,
      including code, types and full modules
   Components
      type-safe lazy dynamic linking across the Internet
   Distribution
      type-safe remote functions and network mobility
   Constraints
      constraint propagation and programmable search for
      solving hard combinatorical problems
   Virtual Machine
      portable implementation with support for just-in-time
      compilation
   Interactive tools
      graphical browsers for data structures and search spaces

The highlights of this release are:

   Graphical User Interface
      The Interactive Toplevel now comes with an optional GUI that
      includes a simple program editor.
   First-class Compilation
      The library now enables safe runtime access to the compiler,
      including a type-safe Lisp-style "eval" function.
   Search Factory and Distributed Search
      A generic Search Factory enables programming of custom search
      strategies for constraint programming, and includes a distributed
      search engine.
   Glade Interface Builder
      The new aliceglade tool allows creation of Gtk interfaces for
      Alice with the graphical Glade interface builder. [glade.gnome.org]
   SQL Library
      A binding to the SQLite library is now included in the
      distribution. [www.sqlite.org]
   XML Parser
      The distribution also includes a simple XML parser based on the
      libxml2 library. [www.xmlsoft.org]
   Mac OS Port
      The system is now available for Mac OS X (without just-in-time
      compilation).
   Bug Fixes
      Lots of bugs and problems fixed, particularly on Windows.

For a detailed list of changes please see:

      http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/alice/download/CHANGES

Alice is open source under a BSD-style license. Source and binary
packages are currently available for Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.

Enjoy,

         - The Alice Team