Monday, 7 April 2003 Announcement ============ The members of the Components Team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are pleased to announce the beta release of Babel, version 0.8.4. What's New ========== The following features have been added, or completed, in this release: * configuration improvements (remove dependence on jar -u) (bug 404 in bugzilla) * add missing symbols to _fAbbrev.h files for F90 interfaces & abstract classes (the primary reason for this release) (bug 507 in bugzilla) * Add an F90 driver for the CCA example to test F90 backend * Add SIDL backend regression tests * Add doc comments for enumerated types * Fix JNI_INCLUDE configuration problems (bug 506 in bugzilla) * the C++ binding for array has changed to SIDL::array (bug 509 in bugzilla). NOTE THIS INTRODUCES A BACKWARD INCOMPATIBILITY. * the C++ binding for array has changed to SIDL::array. NOTE THIS INTRODUCES A BACWARD INCOMPATIBILITY. (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, 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/ ) Supported Platforms =================== Linux Solaris (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 http://www-casc.llnl.gov/bugs/ . $Id: ANNOUNCE-0.8.4.txt 788 2003-04-07 17:06:12Z epperly $