[MLton-user] Basic and Pervasive

[Raymond Racine]

Can someone comment on the future of "pervasive" and some nice utility
code currently found in mlton/basic.

For example, I have 2 immediate needs.
1) Trace/Logging (Log4J like)
2) Pretty/Print layout.

The SML/NJ was pretty nice in that it would "auto" pretty print values. 
I found layout.sml and trace.sml in mlton/basic.  Layout will work just
fine for me at the application dev level.  Trace I am not sure as of
yet.  I am more familiar with Java and C++ like Log/Trace packages.

In fact there are a number of useful things in mlton/basic, however,
most of them are written atop of "pervasive".

Q. What is the future of "pervasive"? 

Q. Will pervasive be phased out (at least where there is overlap) in
lieu of the latest standard basis?

Q. Should useful utilities that application developers would find useful
like layout.sml be pulled out (copied/forked) into an "application
level" library and re-targeted to the standard basis?  
[I am assuming here that pervasive and utility code in mlton/basic must
remain as is as the compiler and platform porting needs necessitate it.]

Q. If I were to attempt to write some generic utility code that would be
useful for using MLton to develop applications, should the
utility/library code be written to pervasive or the standard basis?

Ray