[Haskell-cafe] ANNOUNCE: Sifflet visual programming language, release 1.1

[gdweber at iue.edu]

Sifflet-lib 1.1 and sifflet 1.1 are now available on Hackage.

Sifflet is a visual, functional programming language
and support system for students learning about recursion.
Sifflet programmers define functions by drawing diagrams,
and the Sifflet interpreter uses diagrams to show how the
function calls are evaluated.

Sifflet-lib is the library containing many modules of the sifflet 
application.

New in This Release
-------------------

-   Relaxed versioned dependencies on cairo, gtk, glib (== 0.11.*
    instead of == 0.11.0) should make it possible to build with
    slightly newer versions of these libraries (and pango).
-   Sifflet export to Haskell now removes most unnecessary parentheses.
-   The module Sifflet.Data.Number is now Data.Number.Sifflet.
-   Many undocumented API changes in sifflet-lib.
    (I really hope nobody is using this library for
    development but me!  But if you are, contact me,
    and I'll send a partial list of the changes.)
    
About Sifflet
-------------

Sifflet is a visual, functional programming language
intended as an aid for learning about recursion.

*   A picture explains Sifflet better than words:
    please see the screenshot showing how to evaluate 3!:
    http://mypage.iu.edu/~gdweber/software/sifflet/home.html

*   Features:
    -   Visual editor.
    -   Visual tracer/debugger which shows how recursive and
        other function calls are evaluated.  To support active learning
        and avoid screen clutter, Sifflet displays only
        as much of the computation as the user requests.
    -   A carefully crafted tutorial with 31 pictures and about as many pages.
    -   Number, string, and list data types.
    -   A small collection of primitive functions.
    -   Runnable examples of compound functions.
    -   Sifflet functions can be "exported" to Scheme,
        Python 3, and Haskell.

*   Download:
    http://hackage.haskell.org/package/sifflet-lib
    http://hackage.haskell.org/package/sifflet

*   Home page:
    http://mypage.iu.edu/~gdweber/software/sifflet/home.html

*   Tutorial:
    http://mypage.iu.edu/~gdweber/software/sifflet/doc/tutorial.html

-- 
   ___   ___  __     _      
  / _ \ / _ \| |    | |     Gregory D. Weber, Associate Professor
 / /_\// / | | | /\ | |     Indiana University East
/ /_\\/ /__| | |/  \| |     http://mypage.iu.edu/~gdweber/
\____/\_____/\___/\__/      Tel. (765) 973-8420; FAX (765) 973-8550