HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: wots going on here!?
Date: 29 Aug 1992 16:01:32 GMT
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu

jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu writes:
> [...]
>Since the error occurred at apply time, not at eval time, there is no
>environment defined, and the system is telling you that.
>
>Since there is no environment associated with the error, the system
>must choose one to give you in the new read-eval-print loop (REPL)
>that it will create (the one with the error prompt).  The system is
>telling you that it is using the environment of the "surrounding" REPL.
> [...]

You know, I have to agree with the original poster that this is not the
sort of thing one would wish to present to a beginner.  Remember, you're
on page 184 before you learn what an "environment" is.  Meanwhile all
that argle-bargle is pretty intimidating.

Other versions of Scheme manage to be less intimidating.  That's one of
the advantages of Chez Scheme.  TI Scheme is pretty intimidating by
default but you can turn off the intimidation and I always do so in the
init files I give students.
From: jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Guillermo J. Rozas)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: (none)
Date: 2 Sep 92 01:17:46 GMT
Reply-To: jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu
Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab.
In-reply-to: brianbec@microsoft.COM's message of 1 Sep 92 13:25:25 GMT

In article <9209011326.AA03050@outmail.microsoft.com> brianbec@microsoft.COM (Brian Beckman) writes:

|   >I agree this would be nice to have, however, I try to use the shell as
|   >little as possible :-).
|
|   Why not just hook up a scheme environment to *ALL* the OS entry points
|   and use scheme as your shell?  You could even call it the "schell"
|   or "schnell" :-).  Dutch, German, or English pronunciation optional.
|   This wouldn't be hard, especially with siod or xscheme.  Get out the old
|   man pages and just start typing.  Or use some sort of dynamic linking.
|   Siod is ineluctably going this way, in fact.  Gjc just
|   announced a new version (2.9) with hookups to more C runtime &
|   OS entry points (some file I/O this time).

Scheme syntax is a little to inconvenient for some of these
operations.

What I often do is write a scheme program to generate a script which I
then hand to my shell, or DOS, or whatever.
Xref: sparky comp.lang.scheme:2121 comp.lang.lisp:2340
From: gjc@mitech.com (George J. Carrette)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme,comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Announcing SIOD v2.9
Date: 31 Aug 92 09:33:58 GMT
Organization: Mitech Corporation, Concord MA

Announcing SIOD version 2.9

New features: a set of data-file I/O primitives:
              fopen, fclose, getc,putc, fputs, fread, fwrite, fseek, ftell
              fast-read, fast-print

              a simple trace package (optional C procedure to link in)

Available for anonymous ftp from nexus.yorku.ca
in the implementations section: pub/scheme/imp.
Also available from world.std.com under src/lisp.

---------

The fast-read and fast-print primitives allow control over when and how
"symbols" are optimized into index references. This simple feature, along
with the ability to to ftell/fseek on a file, can be used to implement
various lisp "database" capabilities.

---------

-gjc
From: kend@data.rain.com (Ken Dickey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: stand-alone executables
Date: 26 Aug 92 16:38:19 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Microtek DSD, Hillsboro, OR

jimb@occs.cs.oberlin.edu (Jim Blandy) writes:
>In my experience, stand-alone executable files generated by scheme
>compilers tend to be very large.  For example, compiling the program
>	(display "Hello, World!")
>	(newline)
>using the Gambit scheme compiler on an HP9000/375 running BSD produces
>a 400k executable file.
...
>This seems odd to me.  Gambit's interpreter, gsi, is 400k, which
>suggests to me that Gambit's standalone generation system just throws
>the whole interpreter in with your code.

This is exactly what happens.  If you don't use Eval, however, you
can load only the kernel and any other code you require.  There is no
funbction there to remove unused code automagically, however--and you
have to be careful to bring in all the code you require.

>This is a pretty small sample of scheme systems; is this behavior
>common?

If you are doing Scheme, you most typically want the full runtime
system.  It is a bit like doing "hello world" in a database query
language--you get the database code as well.

The two (major) commercial vendors, Cadence Research, and Lightship,
do offer application builders which strip out unused code.  MacScheme
seems to do a reasonable job of this.  I have not used the Chez app
builder.


>..  Is it so challenging to do the sort of
>linking C compilers do, and throw away the unnecessary library
>routines?

If you don't use Eval (or load source code) Scheme is the ideal
vehicle for this.  The C interpreters I have worked with are huge and
slow.  There has not been much interest in batch Scheme environments.
I don't think that there is a large amount of work to do this, just
very little interest.


>I'd like to be able to invoke small scheme programs from the shell and
>not have it take several seconds to load and occupy several megabytes
>of swap space.

I tend to work the other way.  Use Scheme (e.g. Gambit) as a shell
either directly or have a Scheme server which is already loaded.  I
agree that it would be nice to make small, stand-alone executables,
but for me this is the 1% case and not a high priority. I would
encourage you to do the implementation work so that we all can
benefit.  (I can give you a sketch of how it is done.)

-Ken
From: mcclain@regent.enet.dec.com 
Subject: Problem with edwin in MIT Scheme 7.2A for MS-DOS	
Keywords: MIT Scheme 7.2A,edwin,MS-DOS	
Reply-To: mcclain@regent.enet.dec.com 
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 13:38:15 GMT


I just pulled the alpha release of MIT Scheme 7.2 off altdorf, I instaled it and then built edwin, the problem is I can't get edwin to come up inside my scheme sesion.

I have instaled ANSI.SYS
I have SET TERM = ANSI.SYS

I start scheme with the "-edwin" option

But when I evauate (edwin) I get back

	Can't find usable display type

Anyone know what I am missing?

Please reply via e-mail since my net-news server is being flaky

Thanks in Advance

John W.F. McClain
Theses opinions are MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE, digital can't have them. (Unless they want to...)
From: sm86+@andrew.cmu.edu (Stefan Monnier)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: X-scm on DECstation 3100
Date: 29 Aug 92 17:36:13 GMT
Organization: Junior, Math/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA


I recently discovered the X-scm on nexus.yorku.ca.

I, of course, immediately downloaded it and tried to compile!

BUT: at the 1st step, a problem arises: when I call imake, I get an
error message mentionning that cpp couldn't find imake.tmpl

Effectively, I also couldn't find any imake.tmpl neither in the distribution
nor in the rest of the system (near X11 libs, unix std commands, man
pages, ...)

I understand it is a sort of make canvas (well, I may be completely
wrong!)

Has someone already ported X-scm to DECstation ?
How could I get an appropriate imake.tmpl ?
Could someone help me ?

Thanks a lot!

	Stefan Monnier


-----------------------------------------------------
-- On the average, people seem to be acting normal --
-----------------------------------------------------
From: jaffer@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Aubrey Jaffer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: turtlscm4a10 scheme with graphics for PC available.
Date: 26 Aug 92 16:39:03 GMT
Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab.

Turtlscm (scm4a10 with turtle graphics commands for MSDOS systems)
from M{kinen Sami <sjm@cc.tut.fi> is available from
altdorf.ai.mit.edu:archive/scm/turtlscm4a10.lzh
nexus.yorku.ca:pub/scheme/new/turtlscm4a10.lzh

scm4a10 is described as follows:
======================================================================
This message announces the availability of Scheme release scm4a10.

Scm conforms to Revised^4 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme
and the IEEE P1178 specification.  Scm is written in C and runs under
Amiga, Atari-ST, MacOS, MS-DOS, NOS/VE, VMS, Unix and similar systems.
ASCII and EBCDIC are supported.

Documentation is included explaining the many Scheme Language
extensions in scm, the internal representation and how to extend or
include scm in other programs.

SCM can be obtained via FTP (detailed instructions follow) from:
altdorf.ai.mit.edu:archive/scm/scm4a10.shar
altdorf.ai.mit.edu:archive/scm/scm4a10.tar.Z
nexus.yorku.ca:pub/scheme/new/scm4a10.shar
nexus.yorku.ca:pub/scheme/new/scm4a10.tar.Z

SLIB is a portable scheme library which SCM uses:
altdorf.ai.mit.edu:archive/scm/slib1b7.shar
altdorf.ai.mit.edu:archive/scm/slib1b7.tar.Z
nexus.yorku.ca:pub/scheme/new/slib1b7.shar
nexus.yorku.ca:pub/scheme/new/slib1b7.tar.Z

  ftp altdorf.ai.mit.edu [18.43.0.246] (anonymous)
  cd archive/scm
or
  ftp nexus.yorku.ca (anonymous)
  cd pub/scheme/new

This directory contains the distribution version 4a10 of scm.
  `scm4a10.shar' is a shar file of the C code distribution.
  `scm4a10.tar.Z' is a compressed tar file of the C code distribution.
  `slib1b7.shar' is a shar file of a Scheme Library.
  `slib1b7.tar.Z' is a compressed tar file of a Scheme Library.

Remember to use binary mode when transferring the *.tar.Z files.
Be sure to get and read the GNU General Public License (COPYING).
It is included in the scm4a10.shar and scm4a10.tar.Z files.

To receive an IBM PC floppy disk with the source files and MSDOS
executable send $60 ($65 for i386 version) to
   Aubrey Jaffer, 84 Pleasant St. Wakefield MA 01880, USA.
Net 30 day purchase orders are minimum $100.

If you like scm you can support the developement and maintainence of
it by buying a disk from me or by sending money to the above address.
Money received will also help speed the release of a free symbolic
mathematics system (written in scheme).
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
From: rhyspj@occs.cs.oberlin.edu (Rhys Price Jones)
Subject: Soliciting names for ACM/SIGCSE panelists
Organization: Oberlin College Computer Science
Distribution: comp
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 22:19:51 GMT
X-Posted-From: occs.cs.oberlin.edu
X-Posted-Through: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

I am looking for participants in a panel discussion  for next year's
SIGCSE to discuss issues affecting choice of language in CS1 - the
introductory CS course.  Please e-mail me suggested names for
advocates of your particular favorite introductory language.

Thanks

--
Rhys Price Jones                            
Cyd-athro Cyfrifiaduriaeth                   ____
Associate Professor Computer Science        /   / /
Oberlin College                            /   / /
King 223C                                 /___/ /__      __
Oberlin OH 44074 - USA - UDA             / \   /  / / / (
(216) 775 8697                          /   \_/  /_/_/ __)
<rhyspj@occs.cs.oberlin.edu>                      __/_/
From: 9241593t@lux.latrobe.edu.au (B. Leach)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: wots going on here!?
Date: 1 Sep 92 14:53:37 GMT
Organization: La Trobe University
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5

Well, I have decided that my installation of scheme must be ok, because
I finally got it to do something usefull, whats more what I had to get
it to do!

> Ok, would any one here agree with me when I say that scheme is awful for
> the beginer?!?

yes.

I still have problems deciphering(sp?) error messages, but I think Im
getting there..

> Heres the problem...  I am using MIT scheme running under ultrix.. but
> [blah, blah..]

I have used a PC-scheme that had edwin builtin, is there a "hidden"
edwin builtin to the MIT scheme?

> If at all possilbe any hints can be sent to the following address!

Stick to C... :)

Thanks for the concern all...!

--

| Bernard - 9241593t@lux.latrobe.edu.au                   |
| "Thou shalt not suffer a Pepsi, for it is the AntiCola" |
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: wots going on here!?
Date: 1 Sep 1992 04:20:08 GMT
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu

jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu writes:
>BTW, the current version (in house) of MIT Scheme prints the
>following:
>
>(bar 23)
>;The object #[undefined-value] is not applicable.
>;To continue, call RESTART with an option number:
>; (RESTART 2) => Specify a procedure to use in its place.
>; (RESTART 1) => Return to read-eval-print level 1.

I think it would be a major improvement to say "not a procedure" or
"not a function" [I am not religious about this] instead of
"not applicable."

But the *really* right error message would be something like
"IF didn't return a value" (or COND didn't, or whatever it is).
The fact that the non-value was used in function position isn't
really what's wrong in this situation.

Btw, is "read-eval-print level 1" the level I was at before the
error?  Putting it another way, what level am I at after getting
this message?  That's another unclear thing about the message.
I think it would be better if that option were called either
"evaluate expressions with local variables available" or else
"cancel this computation, return to toplevel" -- whichever it means.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
From: thinman@netcom.com (Technically Sweet)
Subject: Re: wots going on here!?
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 92 17:33:32 GMT
Organization: International Foundation for Internal Freedom

jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Guillermo J. Rozas) writes:
> [ purposefully erroneous code deleted ]

>(bar 23)
>;The object #[undefined-value] is not applicable.
>;To continue, call RESTART with an option number:
>; (RESTART 2) => Specify a procedure to use in its place.
>; (RESTART 1) => Return to read-eval-print level 1.

>Of course, you can also invoke (DEBUG).

Yes, Mr. Jinx, but where does it SAY that you can invoke (DEBUG)?
DO YOU GET THE POINT YET?

-- 

Lance Norskog

Data is not information is not knowledge is not wisdom.
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: wots going on here!?
Date: 31 Aug 1992 16:51:43 GMT
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu

jeff@aiai.edinburgh.ac.UK (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>However, I think it's important for the break look (debugger) to be
>as much like the top level as possible.  In particular, it should
>work to type expressions in the usual way.  Popping back one level
>should be easy, such as typing a single character.

I think the last two sentences of that paragraph contradict each other.
Either the debugging language is Scheme, or it's something else.  If
it's Scheme, there aren't any "hot key" characters.  If it isn't Scheme,
then it's another language you have to learn, at the same time that you're
having enough trouble learning Scheme.

My experience as a teacher is that it's really hard to enable students
to think about Scheme intellectual issues for the first week or two,
because they have to learn *so many* languages:

	- Scheme
	- EMACS
	- shell
	- Annex terminal concentrator

Perhaps with all that baggage to deal with it's foolish for me to draw
the line at adding "Scheme debugger" to the list.  But I still think
that one's worse than the others because it's part of the same context.
I mean, you have to ASK to get from the shell to Scheme, and vice versa.
But finding yourself in the debugger is something that happens to you.

Certainly there should be plenty of advanced debugging capabilities
available for advanced users.  But it should be possible to turn them
off!  I won't even argue about what the default should be, as long as
I can provide my students with a startup file that turns off the debugger.

P.S.  Yes of course if an error happens inside a procedure you should be
told its name.  My example was too simple, I guess.  What Logo does on
an error is tell you the error, the procedure in which it happened, and
the line of the procedure definition that contains the error.
From: Zoran_Popovic@CS.CMU.EDU (Zoran Popovic)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: CLOS - SCOOPS extensions to scheme
Date: 4 Sep 92 01:37:36 GMT
Reply-To: Zoran.Popovic@cs.cmu.edu
Distribution: comp
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Originator: zoran@HOSTESS.GRAPHICS.CS.CMU.EDU


I may be asking for too much but I am looking for a scheme with following
properties:

  * object-oriented extensions (multimethods, and operator overloading would
    be great!)

  * good foreign function interface (i.e. I want to call C easily from scheme,
    and maybe even pass lambdas as callbacks to C)

  * is relatively small so that it does not make an application into a huge
    cpu-devouring monolith.

  * works on SGI machines or at least on some MIPS architecture


If you know of any scheme that has even a subset of these properties
please let me know.  I will summarize.


Zoran
-- 
						Zoran Popovic
						zoran+@cs.cmu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme.c
From: stark@ceu.uottawa.ca (Ryan M. Stark)
Subject: (none)
Organization: The Internet
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 12:12:02 GMT

University of Ottawa Civic Hospital
Clinical Epidemiology Unit
Voice: 613 761 5165
Fax:   613 761 9688
OS: HP-UX cortex A.08.07 A 9000/730 2002274961
Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.30]

Please take me off the mail list. thanks

Ryan Stark
Ottawa. Canada
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme.c
From: LKS@KUNRC1.URC.KUN.NL
Subject: mailing list
Organization: The Internet
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 08:36:00 GMT



hello,

could you, pleas, put us on the c-scheme mailing list?

thanks,

h. pinxteren
lcn
From: birkholz@crl.dec.com (Matt Birkholz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme.c
Subject: Re: help generating runtime.com band for scheme-7.2 on 386 Unix
Date: 3 Sep 92 21:19:34 GMT
Organization: DEC Cambridge Research Lab


   Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 18:08:21 GMT
   From: bri@pegasus.mit.edu (Brian D. Carlstrom)
   Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme.c

   In article <761@jahangir.UUCP> pgw@jahangir.UUCP (phil wilson) writes:
   >I've downloaded src.tar.Z from altdorf:/archive/scheme-7.2, and
   >compiled the microcode into a scheme with only minor twiddling.  The
   >scheme, however, won't run without a runtime.com band.  Now I need, I
   >presume, to transform the .scm files in the runtime directory into a
   >runtime.com band, or some other form that the scheme microcode can
   >load..  But I've been unable to figure out how to do this.  Any
   >pointers would be greatly appreciated.  I'm running System V.3 on a
   >386, if it matters.

   i'm at the same point with 386bsd. any help would be appreciated.

   -bri

src.tar.Z is not sufficient to bootstrap MIT-Scheme.  MIT-Scheme's reader
and syntaxer are written in MIT-Scheme.  That's why altdorf:~ftp/archive/
scheme-7.2/DOS-386/ALPHA.TXT says you need to get 387RUN.ZIP or
NO387RUN.ZIP:

		Under $SCHEME/lib:
	  387RUN.ZIP    ->      RUNTIME.COM     (runtime band)
	  NO387RUN.ZIP  ->      RUNTIME.COM     (runtime band)

	RUNTIME.COM is a binary dump (a "band", or a saved world
	image) of the runtime system.  This is the runtime
	environment, written in Scheme (and compiled to native 386
	code), providing the read-eval-print loop and a rich set of
	runtime utilities.  The version in 387RUN.ZIP contains
	floating point instructions, so you need to have a 387, 487,
	or a 486 (not an SX!)  to use it.  Use the one in
	NO387RUN.ZIP if you don't have a floating point coprocessor.
	You need at least one of the two runtime system bands to use
	Scheme.

There are pre-syntaxed (.bin) files for the reader and syntaxer (and the
rest of the runtime system) that were converted to portable standard binary
(.psb) format and made available in altdorf:~ftp/archive/scheme-7.1/
psb.tar.Z.  They probably won't work in 7.2 and you probably don't want to
try.  Getting from source to a compiled compiler (i.e. a compiler compiled
by an interpreted compiler) requires _days_ worth of _cpu_ time.  You
probably want to just download altdorf:~ftp/archive/scheme-7.2/DOS-386/
no387run.zip.  Please read altdorf:~ftp/archive/scheme-7.2/DOS-386/ALPHA.TXT
while you're at it.

Note: the microcode provides the primitives that encapsulate operating
system services.  The binary dump's (band's, .com's) are dumps of a Scheme
heap without those primitives.  Thus, you can use a band on different
operating systems as long as you load it with a microcode implementing all
the necessary primitives on the local operating system.  (Of course, the
machine architecture has to be the same, else byte-ordering or machine code
instructions will be all wrong.)
--
Matt Birkholz						Cambridge Research Lab
birkholz@crl.dec.com		<DARWIN><		Digital Equipment Corp.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme.c
From: bri@pegasus.mit.edu (Brian D. Carlstrom)
Subject: Re: help generating runtime.com band for scheme-7.2 on 386 Unix
Keywords: 386 scheme
Organization: mit
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 18:08:21 GMT

In article <761@jahangir.UUCP> pgw@jahangir.UUCP (phil wilson) writes:
>I've downloaded src.tar.Z from altdorf:/archive/scheme-7.2, and compiled
>the microcode into a scheme with only minor twiddling.  The scheme, however,
>won't run without a runtime.com band.  Now I need, I presume, to transform the
>.scm files in the runtime directory into a runtime.com band, or some other
>form that the scheme microcode can load..  But I've been unable to figure out 
>how to do this.  Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
>I'm running System V.3 on a 386, if it matters.

i'm at the same point with 386bsd. any help would be appreciated.

-bri
From: soumen@obelix.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Soumen Chakrabarti)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme.c
Subject: hp apollo 700 scheme
Date: 28 Aug 92 00:44:37 GMT
Organization: The Internet

hi,
	we wish to install mit scheme on apollo series 700 machines.
i ftp'd the archive/scheme-7.2/ README and INSTALL files from
altdorf.ai.mit.edu but there does not seem to be direct binaries
suitable for the hp machine. then i got the source code (src.tar.Z)
and unpacked it. i tried to make the microcode directory but the
assembler gives an error message and stops.
	could someone please tell me exactly what needs to be done
to get scheme up on these hp machines? ask any questions and i will
get an answer about the model # etc.
	thanks
                                            soumen.
Xref: sparky comp.lang.scheme:2111 comp.windows.x:15882 alt.sources.d:1077