GF Version 3.0
Aarne Ranta
7 November 2007


This document summarizes the goals and status of the forthcoming
GF version 3.0.

==Overview==

GF 3 results from the following needs:
- refactor GF to make it more maintainable
- provide a simple command-line batch compiler
- replace gfc by the much simpler gfcc format for embedded grammars


The current implementation of GF 3 has three binaries:
- gfc, batch compiler, for building grammar applications
- gfi, interpreter for gfcc grammars, for using grammars
- gf, interactive compiler with interpreter, for developing grammars


Thus, roughly, gf = gfc + gfi.

Question: should we have, like current GF, just one binary, gf, and
implement the others by shell scripts calling gf with suitable options?
- +: one binary is less code altogether
- +: one binary is easier to distribute and update
- -: each of the components is less code by itself
- -: many users might only need either the compiler or the interpreter
- -: those users could avoid installation problems such as readline


There are some analogies in other languages:

  || GF    | Haskell | Java   ||
  |  gfc   | ghc     | javac   |
  |  gfi   | ghci*   | java    |
  |  gf    | ghci*   | -       |

In Haskell, ghci makes more than gfi since it reads source files, but
less than gf since it does not compile them to externally usable target
code.




==Status of code and functionalities==

GF executable v. 2.8
- gf: 263 modules, executable 7+ MB (on MacOS i386)


Current status of GF 3.0 alpha:
- gf3: 94 modules, executable 4+ MB
- gfc: 71 modules, executable 3+ MB
- gfi: 35 modules, executable 1+ MB


Missing functionalities
- in gfc:
  - input formats: cf, ebnf, gfe, old gf
  - output formats: speech grammars, bnfc
  - integrating options for input, output, and debugging information
    (as described in Devel/GFC/Options.hs)


- in gfi:
  - command cc (computing with resource)
  - morphological analysis, linearization with tables
  - quizzes, treebanks
  - syntax editor
  - readline


==Additional feature options==

Native Haskell readline

Binary formats for gfo and gfcc

Parallel compilation on multicore machines