07:15 <Yurik> re

08:04 <Yurik> re

10:32 <two-face> hi

11:52 <Yurik> re

11:53 <Yurik> guys, anybody knows TeX?

11:57 <whee> Yurik: I used to use LaTeX (switched to ConTeXt)

11:57 <whee> what's up?

11:58 <Yurik> how can I change font size in math mode? (In particular, I need to make large $\mu$)

12:00 <whee> http://www.rhi.hi.is/unix/tex/lshort/node57.html

12:00 <whee> looks like by using \displaystyle

12:02 <Yurik> thanks, I'll look to

13:11 <Segora> hi

13:12 <two-face> hey

15:07 <Yurik> re

15:35 <nkoza> hi, im about to learn ocaml and i have a ton of questions to get a little better the big picture of the language

15:37 <nkoza> ocaml has optional dynamic dispatch?

16:05 <nkoza> anyone alive? i have more questions :)

16:17 <pnou> lol

16:17 <pnou> what does dynamic dispatch mean?

16:18 <nkoza> suposse that you have an object with a method

16:18 <nkoza> called 'doThing'

16:18 <nkoza> and you want to call that method using an string with their name

16:19 <nkoza> i don't know if what i'm saying is clear :)

16:22 <pnou> no you can't do that

16:22 <pnou> it would be untypable

16:23 <nkoza> so, you can't do a general proxy object?

16:24 <pnou> no, ocaml is a static language

16:24 <nkoza> ok

16:24 <nkoza> another question...

16:24 <nkoza> are classes first class objects ?

16:27 <pnou> you mean first class type?

16:45 <two-face> re

19:46 <nkoza> back

19:46 <nkoza> pnou: are you here?

19:46 <nkoza> with classes as first class object i mean.. you can pass a class to a function, use it to instantiate an object, etc

19:47 <nkoza> i mean.. in python, object.__class__ is an object, you can manipulate it as you wish

19:48 <nkoza> i don't know if ocaml has that

19:50 <zack> no, ocaml has not class as first class objects

22:37 <whee> mmmmm 10.2.2

22:39 <nkoza> can you redefine classes / methods / functions at runtime?

22:43 <zack> nkoza: not in the Python sense

22:44 <nkoza> ocaml have some level of introspection?

22:45 <zack> nkoza: what do you mean for "introspection"?

22:45 <nkoza> zack: for example, query what member variables or methods has an instance

22:46 <nkoza> zack: like seeing an instance.__dict__ in python

22:46 <zack> ok, then no, ocaml keeps no runtime introspection informations for object

22:47 <nkoza> so, how do you do to serialize/deserialize an object?

22:47 <zack> defining your own serializing function inside the class :-)

22:47 <zack> there is no generic function to serialize object (yet)

22:48 <zack> Marshal module doesn't work on objects indeed

22:49 <nkoza> there isn't any orthogonal persistence scheme yet?

22:50 <zack> sorry, I don't understand ...

22:50 <nkoza> i mean, you create the objects and are saved to disk in a transparent way

22:50 <nkoza> like smalltalk.. making an image of your data at execution time

22:50 <zack> as I already said, there is no generic function to serialize objects

22:51 <nkoza> ok

22:51 <zack> you have to defined your own serializing functions class-per-class

22:51 <nkoza> can you define your own 'metaobject' protocol ?

22:51 <nkoza> (sorry by the big number of questions, i'm trying to get the big picture :)

22:52 <zack> nkoza: no problem, but you talk too complicated for me :)

22:52 <zack> what is a 'metaobject' protocol? :-)))

22:54 <nkoza> you define your own object system

22:56 <nkoza> (this isn't a flame, i only want to know) what are the advantages of ocaml over c++, apart from declaration of types not be needed?

22:58 <whee> my main reasons for using ocaml over anything else are the type inference, speed, and just the whole functional language thing (first class functions, partial evaluation, etc)

22:59 <whee> it's much quicker to develop an ocaml program than it is one in c++ because of not having to deal with tons of pointers and memory issues as well

23:00 <nkoza> sure, i forgot gc :)

23:00 <nkoza> my questions are more pointed to compare ocaml against common lisp

23:01 <whee> well it's faster than lisp and offers more higher level things (I think, been a while since I've used lisp)

23:01 <whee> plus you don't have the problems with different lisp interpreters and how they implement things that aren't defined in the standard like sockets and all

23:01 <whee> so it's more cross platform there

23:02 <whee> I can't remember enough about lisp to compare the languages :\

23:04 <nkoza> coming from a c++/python background, my first impresion of ocaml drawbacks is the lacking of classes as first class objects (i don't know if any other mechanism replaces it) and instrospection (so, i must code each one of the serializers for all the classes, like in c++, I don't know if MetaOCaml fix that)

23:04 <whee> I actually don't use objects much so I'm not even sure what you mean by that :\

23:05 <whee> I get by with basic modules for most of my programs

23:07 <nkoza> ocaml has native threads support?

23:07 <whee> with pthreads, yes

23:08 <whee> what's introspection btw?

23:09 <whee> the ability for an object to know its own type?

23:12 <whee> oh nevermind you answered it earlier

23:12 <whee> I don't think ocaml really lends itself to a dynamic approach like that at the moment, that could be problematic with the type syste

23:12 <whee> m

23:16 <whee> seems like an odd feature to not have

23:17 <whee> but more likely there was some discussion on it before and it's not there for a reason

23:21 <nkoza> on making ocaml more dynamic?

23:22 <whee> yeah

23:22 <whee> I'm looking around the caml-list and there's a cople threads on it

23:22 <whee> but I can't find anything definitive

23:24 <whee> metaocaml looks interesting