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gf-core/src-3.0/GF/Devel/gf3.txt

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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