Friday, 4 January 2002 Announcement ============ The members of the Components Team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are pleased to announce the beta release of Babel, version 0.6.2. What's New ========== Bugfix release: 0.6.2 + fix boolean array arguments (bug #331) + add regression test for boolean arrays + fix typo in Java binding Boolan -> Boolean + add missing SIDL files to the decaf example distribution + modify nightly QC to build examples + stop old version of automake/autoconf from clobbering files generated by newer versions + distribute CHANGES file (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 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-0.6.2.txt 574 2002-01-04 18:51:03Z epperly $