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<TITLE>GF 3.0</TITLE>
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<P ALIGN="center"><CENTER><H1>GF 3.0</H1>
<FONT SIZE="4">
<I>Krasimir Angelov, Björn Bringert, and Aarne Ranta</I><BR>
Beta release, 27 June 2008
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<P>
GF Version 3.0 is a major revision of GF. The source language is a superset of the
language in 2.9, which means backward compatibility. But the target languages, the
compiler implementation, and the functionalities (e.g. the shell) have undergone
radical changes.
</P>
<H2>New features</H2>
<P>
Here is a summary of the main novelties visible to the user:
</P>
<UL>
<LI><B>Size</B>: the source code and the executable binary size have gone
down to about the half of 2.9.
<LI><B>Portability</B>: the new back end format PGF (Portable Grammar Format) is
much simpler than the old GFC format, and therefore easier to port to new
platforms.
<LI><B>Multilingual web page support</B>: as an example of portability, GF 3.0 provides a
compiler from PGF to JavaScript. There are also JavaScript libraries for creating
translators and syntax editors as client-side web applications.
<LI><B>Incremental parsing</B>: there is a possibility of word completion when
input strings are sent to the parser.
<LI><B>Application programmer's interfaces</B>: both source-GF and PGF formats,
the shell, and the compiler are accessible via high-level APIs.
<LI><B>Resource library version 1.4</B>: more coverage, more languages; some of
the new GF language features are exploited.
<LI><B>Uniform character encoding</B>: UTF8 in generated files, user-definable in
source files
</UL>
<H2>Non-supported features</H2>
<P>
There are some features of GF 2.9 that will <I>not</I> work in the 3.0 beta release.
</P>
<UL>
<LI>Java Editor GUI: we now see the JavaScript editor as the main form of
syntax editing.
<LI>Pre-module multi-file grammar format: the grammar format of GF before version 2.0
is still not yet supported.
<LI>Context-free and EBNF input grammar formats.
<LI>Probabilistic GF grammars.
<LI>Some output formats: LBNF.
<LI>Some GF shell commands: while the main ones will be supported with their familiar
syntax and options, some old commands have not been included. The GF shell
command <CODE>help -changes</CODE> gives the actual list.
</UL>
<P>
Users who want to have these features are welcome to contact us,
and even more welcome to contribute code that restores them!
</P>
<H2>GF language extensions</H2>
<P>
Operations for defining patterns.
</P>
<P>
Inheritance of overload groups.
</P>
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