Version 1.6 of the Ciao Prolog System is Available --------------------------------------------------
Ciao is a complete Prolog system, supporting ISO-Prolog, but its novel modular design allows both restricting and extending the language. This makes it possible to work with fully declarative subsets of Prolog and also to extend these subsets (or ISO-Prolog) both syntactically and semantically. Most importantly, these restrictions and extensions can be activated separately on each program module so that several extensions can coexist in the same application for different modules.
Ciao currently includes extensions for feature terms (records), functional logic programming, higher-order (with predicate abstractions), constraints, object-oriented programming, persistence, several control rules (breadth-first search, iterative deepening), concurrency (threads/engines), a good base for distributed execution (agents), concurrent built-in database, and parallel execution. Libraries also support WWW programming, sockets, external interfaces (C, Java, TclTk, relational databases), etc.
Ciao Prolog 1.6 is the current stable Ciao Prolog distribution since the last stable version (Ciao Prolog 1.4). The major changes and improvements over Ciao Prolog 1.4 include:
* Source-level debugger in emacs, breakpts. * Emacs environment improved, added menus for Ciaopp and LPDoc. * Debugger embeddable in executables. * Stand-alone executables available for UNIX-like operating systems. * Many improvements to emacs interface. * Menu-based interface to autodocumenter. * Threads now available in Win32. * Many improvements to threads. * Modular clp(R) / clp(Q). * Other computation rules: And-fair breadth-first and iterative deepening. * Improved syntax for predicate abstractions. * Library of higher-order list predicates. * Better code expansion facilities (macros). * New delay predicates (when/2). * Compressed object code/executables on demand. * The size of atoms is now unbound. * Fast creation of new unique atoms. * Number of clauses/predicates essentially unbound. * Delayed goals with freeze restored. * Faster compilation and startup. * Much faster fast write/read. * Improved documentation. * Other new libraries. * Improved installation/deinstallation on all platforms. * Many improvements to autodocumenter. * Many bug fixes in libraries and engine.
The manual includes a list of changes for previous versions.
Ciao Prolog 1.6 is available for downloading from
http://www.clip.dia.fi.upm.es/Software/Ciao
Ciao 1.6 patch #0 had an installation problem. This is now corrected, and Ciao 1.6 patch #1 is already available. If you downloaded Ciao 1.6 patch #0 please download Ciao 1.6 patch #1.
Happy logic programming!
The Ciao Prolog Development Team