On Thu, 2014-10-02 at 23:19 +0200, Makarius wrote:
We also need to find out how many people are still there to use SML. So far there are already 9 supporters on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2036744/ml-ide-and-compiler-for-windows-o... and the green tick has changed as well :-)
FWIW, I am teaching a Functional Programming course with approx. 50 students annually at Master's level.
"Unfortunate" (like "fix") is a word of this odd street language that has emerged in recent years and is better ignored. The enclosing theory file is like a project file, but with slightly odd syntax for that purpose, although not too bad compared to the traditional "use" script.
I agree that the syntax could be less odd. Still, no syntax at all would be even better IMHO, and seems within reach for trivial (single-file) projects.
Further note that "print" is also not Standard ML, although TextIO.print is covered by the Basis Library.
In what sense is "print" not Standard ML?
David Matthews might be able to tell what happens with * (or +). I know myself from Isabelle/Pure bootstrapping, that formal references to very basic things are sometimes surprising, by construction of the initial environment.
It may be that Poly/ML already returns the most sensible reference, but that the IDE could treat this case specially to indicate more clearly that the declaration is not actually available. Anyway, this is just a very minor UI issue.
Best, Tjark