Friday, 7 December 2001

Announcement
============
  The members of the Components Team at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory <components@llnl.gov> are pleased to
announce the beta release of Babel, version 0.6.1.

What's New
==========
Bugfix release: 0.6.1
 + hardened Python support (client & server beta)
 + minor updates to (DRAFT) Users' Guide (PS, PDF & HTML)
 + fix abstract class bugs in Python, C++, F77 (bug #317) (added test)
 + fix crash when SIDL_DLL_PATH undefined (bug #310)
 + fix output directory error (bug #314)
 + added support for KCC on Linux-x86
 + C++ binding uses std::string and std::complex instead of
   string and complex.
 + increased test suite, currently > 5000 tests (increases in 
   Python testing and new abstract class test)
 + Renamed C++ intrinsic method is_nil() to _is_nil() and
   not_nil() to _not_nil() to avoid potential namespace collision.
 + bug fixes in decaf example
 + bug fix in Python client-side and server-side exception handling
 + use newer autoconf, automake, etc.
 + improve Python doc comments
 + libtool change to support KCC
 + fix C++ client-side reference counting problem

(See CHANGES 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++, F77, or Python from drivers written in either C, 
C++, F77, Python or Java.  (Python support also requires 
the Numerical Python set of extensions at 
http://numpy.sourceforge.net)

Supported Platforms
===================
Linux 
Solaris
Cygwin

(More expected in next few months.)

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 <majordomo@lists.llnl.gov> 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 
http://www-casc.llnl.gov/bugs/.

$Id: ANNOUNCE-0.6.1.txt 564 2001-12-07 19:15:06Z epperly $