There are syntactic differences, but the notions of type inference,
polymorphism, higher order functions and pattern matching appear to
be those of SML, as originated by Robin Milner. This being the case I
would have expected acknowledgement of Robin Milner and the debt due to SML.
SML is the result of many years of work and was awarded the
British Computer Society Award for Technical Achievement in 1987.
The report "Introduction to Standard ML" (374KB PostScript) is at
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/fox/mosaic/intro-notes.ps
Other SML info is on the web at
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/fox/mosaic/HomePage.html
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/fox/mosaic/sml.html
Further information on SML can be found in the reports listed at
http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/publications/lfcsreps/EXPORT/author/authorM.htm
under Milner, Robin.
See also http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/lfcsinfo/research/semantics/research.html.
There is a newsgroup: comp.lang.ml.
There is an MIT press book:
The Definition of Standard ML
Robin Milner
Mads Tofto
Robert Harper
ISBN 0-262-13255-9 1990 cloth $30.00
ISBN 0-262-63132-6 paper $15.00
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