[MLton-user] Unicode support, port from Moscow ML

[Stephen Weeks]

> does there is any information available about planned time, when
> unicode (utf-8) will be supported?

Unicode will be supported in the next public release, which I would
guess will take place in summer 2005.  We have begun work on adding
support, and hope there will be an experimental version in our CVS in
a month or two.  You can also check

	http://mlton.org/Unicode

where we will add more information as the support is added.

> And anther one question: is it difficult to port some modules (ODBC, 
> PostgreSQL, dbm) from Moscow ML? Does there is some docs about that?

Most of the port should be easy.  One challenge will come because the
implementation of these modules relies on Moscow ML's FFI and on
dynamic linking.  MLton also has an FFI and supports dynamic linking,
albeit with different syntax and capabilities from Moscow ML.  Have a
look at

	http://mlton.org/ForeignFunctionInterface

In particular, the following page shows how dl{close,open,sym}.

	http://mlton.org/CallingFromSMLToCFunctionPointer

If those don't provide enough help to complete the port, please let us
know.  Also, as we are actively trying to grow our list of available
libraries, please let us know once the port is done by adding it to

	http://mlton.org/Libraries