GF 3.8 Release Notes
June 2016

==Installation==

See the [download page http://www.grammaticalframework.org/download/index.html].


==What's new==

Roughly 400 changes have been pushed to the source repository since
[the release of GF 3.7.1 release-3.7.1.html] in October 2015.


===GF compiler and run-time library===


====New features and notable changes====

- GF shell: ``vd`` can now output
  [universal dependency http://universaldependencies.org/] diagrams
  in various formats, see ``help vd``.
- The C runtime now includes an experimental library for managing
  and querying ontologies built on top of the abstract syntax of
  a grammar. Since the ontology is based on an abstract syntax,
  it is language independent by design. For now the library is
  only used in the GF Offline Translator. The library uses
  the B-tree backend of [SQLite https://www.sqlite.org/]
  which makes it scalable even for non-trivial ontologies.


====Other changes and bug fixes====

- GF shell: a simple post-processing step has been added in the ``cc`` command
  to try compute ``pre{...}`` tokens instead of leaving them uninterpreted.
- GF shell: an argument parsing problem has been fixed in the ``cc`` command.
  The problem was introduced before the release of GF 3.7.1 and prevented
  commands like ``cc "last"`` and ``cc "last"++"year"`` from working,
  but they should work again now.
- Python binding: with the OS X installer package (``gf-3.8.pkg``),
  the Python binding should now work directly out of the package.
  (The installer puts the modules under ``/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages``,
  where the Python interpreter can find them.)
- Various improvements and bug fixes in the C run-time system and its bindings
  to other languages.


====Changes of interest to compiler developers====

- The compiler source code has been updated for compatibility with GHC 8.0.1.


===Resource Grammar Library===

- New languages:
  - Nynorsk by Stian Rødven Eide (fairly complete, supports API)
  - Ancient Greek by Hans Leiß (partial, no API yet)
  - Slovene by Krasimir Angelov (partial, no API yet, donated by [Digital Grammars http://www.digitalgrammars.com/])

- Various fixes for several languages.
  - English and Scandinavian: relative clauses and slash questions have been modernized to
    using preposition stranding by default. This also enables the use of //that// in English,
    which solves a problem of choosing between //which// and //who// when animacy information
    is not available. The previous defaults (//which//,//who//,//whom//, pied piping) are available
    in ``Extra`` modules.

- Numerous fixes in the translation dictionaries.
  - two new wide-coverage languages: Estonian and Russian
  - The abstract syntax of the translation dictionary is now annotated
    with glosses, examples and sense IDs from WordNet. This gives us
    a basis on how to choose the best translations for different languages.
  - We have started splitting many of the lexical entries in the abstract
    syntax of the dictionary into different entries for senses that
    translate differently accross languages.


===Apps and Cloud services===

- GF Offline Translator (for Android) now includes a user interface similar
  to the Phrasomatic. This lets the user explore the controlled
  language fragment of the wide coverage grammar. Althought
  the code is already there, the new release of the app
  will be postponed to get some of its other features stable.
- GF Offline Translator (for Android) now offers glosses and examples for
  most of its lexical items. This means that now it can be used as a more
  explanatory dictionary.
- Minibar can now show universal dependency diagrams for grammars that
  support it (e.g. the ResourceDemo grammar).
- PGF service: there is a new command ``deptree`` that can output
  universal dependency diagrams for grammars that support it (there
  has to be a label configuration file).
- Wide Coverage Translation Demo:
  there is now a new button "Grammars..." which show a list where users can
  select which application grammars to use for translation, in addition to
  the wide coverage grammar. Application grammars can give higher quality
  translations in the domain they cover.
  You can change the order in which the selected grammars are tried
  by dragging them up and down in the list.