Questions and Hopefully Constructive Criticism

I have quite a few questions and a few criticisms with respect to the 
MTL. I'm hoping Dr. Lumsdaine or Jeremy Siek might take some time to 
help me understand the state of things.

Why isn't a CVS or Subversion Repository available?
I have asked this question before
http://www.osl.iu.edu/mailman/private.cgi/mtl-devel/2002/06/0369.php
and I've never seen an answer. I also thought I have read material that 
indicated intent to incorporate the MTL into the Boost library. Is this 
due to some intellectual property restriction with respect to making 
read-only development version (CVS or Subversion) available? I'd like to 
help if I could.

Patches always required:
I have never been able to use a version of the MTL a have downloaded 
from the web site without patching the code. There are patches on the 
web site, but they haven't ever totally got me where I needed to be. I 
always have a "custom" version that I have to generate. It gets really 
confusing when multiple patches have to be applied to a particular 
version due to the order in which they need to be applied. Public 
read-only access to you source repository would solve this problem.

MTL Version 4.0?
Back in 2002 we were told the MTL version 3 with expression templates 
was on the way.
http://www.osl.iu.edu/mailman/private.cgi/mtl-devel/2002/06/0373.php
I asked about this a year later.
http://www.osl.iu.edu/mailman/private.cgi/mtl-devel/2003/08/0535.php
I didn't get a reply.

After a long period of inactivity with respect to releases and patches, 
I got excited when version 2.1.2-22 was released. Again I had to patch 
it to a greater extent than the patches provided on the web site. I was 
also encouraged when it was announced that a new version (4; not sure 
what happened to version 3) would be developed. The first announcement 
indicated a release at the end of summer 2005. Next it was changed to 
fall 2005. Could Peter Gottschling or Dave Abrahams comment on this?

Enumeration names in the code:
The fact the enumerations used in the code use an all uppercase 
convention has caused problem. PACKED and RECT conflict with Windows API 
headers that contain similarly named macros. Is there a style guide used 
by the MTL developers? Is it available somewhere for review? If there is 
one, could it be amended to not use all uppercase names with a rational 
that other C headers may use this convention for macros?

Finally, I would like to mention I have been using the MTL for roughly 
five years. I appreciate the fact that you have made it available. I'm 
sure there are intellectual property issues, funding constraints, time 
constraints, and other issues related to this project I do not 
understand, but I'm hoping someone can explain the situation to me so I 
can decide what course of action to take. I would like to help with 
patches and development, but that is very difficult without access to 
the current state of the source code.

Thanks in advance for any light you may shed on the situation.
Pete 


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