Wednesday, 26 January 2005 Announcement ============ The members of the Components Team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are pleased to announce the beta release of Babel, version 0.10.0. What's New ========== The following features have been added, or completed, in this release: + Super methods are now supported in all language bindings except Python. + Generic arrays are now supported. + r-arrays (aka rarray) are a new type of array with a simpler interface from C, C++, F77 and F90 + Upgrade autoconf, automake and libtool to recent versions. + Add the Utah C++ backend (UCxx) + Improve Mac OSX build (still more work to do) + Add _load() and _unload() methods for each class + Fix Roundup issues: 62, 94, 96, & 99 (Also refer to the CHANGES file for more details.) What Babel Is ============= Babel is designed to address problems of language interoperability, particularly in scientific/engineering applications. At the simplest level, Babel generates glue code so that libraries written in one programming language are callable from other programming languages. Babel generates this glue code from an interface description written in SIDL, our Scientific Interface Definition Language. Babel supports full Object-Oriented features and exception handling even in non-OO languages such as C or Fortran77. Supported Languages =================== Babel currently supports calling libraries written in C, C++, Fortran77, Fortran90, Java, or Python from drivers written in either C, C++, Fortran77, Fortran90, Python or Java. (Python support also requires the Numerical Python set of extensions at http://numpy.sourceforge.net/ ). Fortran90 requires CHASM 1.0.1 to be installed before Babel. Supported Platforms =================== Linux Solaris AIX (except Python) (More expected in next few months.) Broken Platforms (hopefully to be resurrected) ============================================== Cygwin Caveat ====== Babel is research in progress. This is a beta release looking for more friendly users and now some power users. Babel has been used on a few real projects now, there are still too few examples, but the documentation is improving. Availability ============ The software is available for free download at http://www.llnl.gov/CASC/components User Resources ============== Two email lists have been set up for the Babel community: babel-users@llnl.gov (unmoderated discussions) babel-announce@llnl.gov (announcements only) To subscribe to one or both of these email lists, send email to with the text "subscribe babel-announce", "subscribe babel-users", or both (one per line). Contacting the Authors ====================== If you have any questions or concerns with the installation process or usage of Babel, feel free to contact the project team at components@llnl.gov. To report bugs or suggest feature enhancements, please submit a report in the bug database at https://www.cca-forum.org/bugs/babel/, or send email to babel-bugs@cca-forum.org. $Id: ANNOUNCE-0.10.0.txt 1113 2005-02-03 15:44:38Z epperly $