Matthew 
| Since I'm about to be freed from my unwilling thrall for The Man, and am champing at the bit to get back to all my usual activities, I thought it might be useful to solicit opinion from all you good folks so I can hit the amateur road running, as it were.
So, if anyone's got any ideas / requests for any of the above 6 (C++ and/or D) libraries, please feel free to post them up, or email them to me. The early bird catches the worm, so to speak.
FYI, things I'm already planning include:
- ACESTL - subproject of STLSoft that STL-ifies the Adaptive
Communications Environment. There're quite a few components in the (not
yet released) first version, as a result of my work back in the real
world, of late.
- STLSoft - erm, well, erm ... ok, Documentation!! (Grrr)
- DTL - I realise that the reason STLSoft advances with such seeming
speed is that I actually _use_ it all the time, and whenever there's a
component, or even a sub-project, that's missing, I just cook it up. So,
I think for DTL to advance, I need to actually use it. So, I plan to
start writing some real tools / apps in D, which will hopefully exercise
the use cases, and flesh out the libs. Of course, the first step for me
_and_ for others, will be a release of DTL 0.3 / 0.4 to provide clean
building, rationale, documentation, cross-platform test samples, etc.
But once that's done, I think the _using it_ approach will work best,
and that's what I'll be doing. Since big-W and I will be doing our book
in earnest very shortly, and since we've already agreed that we can't
agree on a document format, it may be that the best idea would be to
write a text<=>.DOC<=>html tool, in D of course. That'll probably
provide impetous for both DTL and also for the COM stuff, which I've
been itching to have a go at for several years. Maybe we can do this on
DSource??
- Rangelib - loads has happened in Rangelib, but I've not had the
chance to release any of it, so expect more on this (including more than
the lonely two posts on that ng so far).
- recls - I'm planning more mappings - Python, Ch - and also adding
new functionality, such as the ability to recursively-search based on
file attributes, to use reg-ex in the pattern matching, and to search
VSS and/or CVS, and the Windows registry. (Also, for the D folks, I have
ideas for _dramatically_ cutting down the source _and_ code size of the
library, which Walter's been rightly bugging me about for some time.)
- Open-RJ. Walter scored a major coup for D (on me, anyway) in
showing just how incredibly succinct the Record JAR / Open-RJ format
could be coded up in D. Although not a perfect / complete
implementation, the fact that it was only one page (!) gave me pause. So
I'll be giving in on this one, and writing it in 100% pure D pretty
soon. If anyone wants to use the format right now, you can get the D
mapping and the C-lib from http://openrj.org/
- http://shellext.com - I'm planning to get a couple of new shell
extensions done before the end of the year, but am always open to any
new ideas.
Ok, that still leaves a universe of possibilities out there, so please feel free to send in your requests. I plan to spend the next few months working on libraries, articles and books, and not seeing the inside of another office until the Autumn if I can help it!
btw, all the best to you, whatever your creed/denomination, at this time of year. For those who do celebrate the overeating, the portly bearded man with the red hat, and the obligatory giving of unwanted gifts, I know of a rather amusing little read that's recently been published that'd make an excellent gift, if you're short on ideas ...
Cheers
Matthew
P.S. For anyone who may be interested, there're lots of half completed column ideas that'll be written up in the next few weeks, so expect a burst from myself and Bjorn Karlsson (my partner in crime on The C++ Source; http://www.artima.com/cppsource) in the new year, either in The C++ Source, or on www.cuj.com.
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