HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit)
Subject: Re: Matrix package 0.1 available
Organization: York U. Student Information Systems Project
Distribution: comp
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 06:08:15 GMT

Todd R. Eigenschink writes:

   Oz, please post a followup to this with the location of the file, once
   you've situated it somewhere.

Thanks Todd, the package is now located in the Scheme repository
[nexus.yorku.ca:pub/scheme] under new as matrix.scm. [it is just
a link to ../scm/matrix.scm].

enjoy...	oz
---
With diligence, it is possible to   |  electric: oz@sis.yorku.ca
make anything run slowly. -T.Duff   |  ph:[416] 736 2100 x 33976

			
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
From: oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit)
Subject: Re: Where I can find IEEE P1178 standard?
Organization: York U. Student Information Systems Project
	<1993Jan21.113805.3467@news.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 19:12:23 GMT

Chris Haynes writes:

   IEEE (like other standards organizations) explicitely proscribes the
   distribution of standard drafts, electronically or otherwise, after
   publication of the standard.

My fault, I have now removed that old draft of 1178. I apologize
for any inconvenience this may have caused to other Schemers and
those involved in the creation of the standard.

oz
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
From: dan@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Daniel R. Grayson)
Subject: Re: Problems with PC Scheme (Texas Instruments)
Reply-To: dan@math.uiuc.edu
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 20:05:55 GMT

craiger@nprdc.navy.mil (J. Philip Craiger) writes:

>I am currently running the student edition of PC Scheme at home on an
>NEC 386/25s.  I haven't had any problems whatsoever; however, I
>installed it on my 486 at work this morning and I am having difficulty
>getting it to run.  When given even something as simple as (+ 1 1) I
>get a message that "Operand + not found", or something to that effect.

Gee, I wish someone would tell us how to get this to work.  I was beginning
to think it was my fault.  It seems that about half of the symbols in the
dictionary are missing.

Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
From: hoffman@cmf.nrl.navy.mil (Eric Hoffman)
Subject: Re: Unspecified values in R4RS
Organization: Connection Machine Facility, NRL
	<OZ.93Jan22174029@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> <1jqqjc$b4p@agate.berkeley.edu>
	<OZ.93Jan23164145@ursa.sis.yorku.ca>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 22:41:01 GMT


> Any issues of interaction regarding "useless print values" is probably
> best dealt with using superior interaction mechanisms than the leftover
> crud from the seventies.

I too believe this, but I'm curious as to exactly what you had in mind.

 An animated debugger which shows the nested environments as trees
 which can be walked through?

 A live editor which allows one to query text objects as to their current
 bindings?

 A graphical representation of scheme objects and their compositions?

 Added libraries to tie scheme more closely to it's operating enviornment?
From: gjr@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Guillermo J. Rozas)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: Unspecified values in R4RS
Date: 22 Jan 93 13:12:25
Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab.
	<BRENT.93Jan22085102@rcx1.ssd.csd.harris.com>
	<1jp5n7$nm@agate.berkeley.edu> <OZ.93Jan22114638@ursa.sis.yorku.ca>
Reply-To: gjr@zurich.ai.mit.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: chamartin.ai.mit.edu
In-reply-to: oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca's message of Fri, 22 Jan 1993 16:46:38 GMT

In article <OZ.93Jan22114638@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:

|   Brian Harvey writes:
|
|      Leaving something unspecified in the standard invites some implementor to
|      give it a "useful" value; and that encourages users of that implementation
|      to use it; and that makes programs non-portable.
|
|   Are there such implementations? Isn't there some that return
|   #<unspecified>, which is not a "useful" value? Can we point to real
|   implementations, instead of talking about a hypothetical one?

Yes, except that practice precedes freedom.  The reason for the
unspecified (particularly in the case of SET!) was lack of agreement
among the original authors.

Some implementations (Scheme 311, if I remember correcly), following
Lisp tradition, returned the stored value.  Thus, in these
implementations

 	(let ((x 4))
	  (set! x (set! x 3))
	  x)

returned 3

Other implementations (MIT Scheme, in particular) returned the
previously stored value,  Thus

	(let ((x 4))
	  (set! x (set! x 3))
	  x)

returned 4

Because we could not agree what was better (or whether a third
alternative was) we left the returned value unspecified so that no
program abiding by the report could depend on it.
From: eigenstr@cs.rose-hulman.edu (Todd R. Eigenschink)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Matrix package 0.1 available
Date: 28 Jan 93 00:17:11
Organization: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Distribution: comp
NNTP-Posting-Host: nyssa.cs.rose-hulman.edu

I have mailed my latest version of my matrix package (I've finally
started to number it, and this is 0.1) to Oz for placement in the
Scheme archive at nexus.yorku.ca.  I've added a few more routines to
it, including Gauss-Seidel iteration, and have enhanced a few of the
features.

If anyone who's interested would look at it and try some stuff
out...I'd appreciate bug reports or mentions of things that aren't
R4RS-compliant.  I'm sure there are some of both (in fact, I _know_
about some R4RS things), but the more I know, the better it will get.

Also, if anybody can suggest new features that they might like, I'll
add them if I can...

Oz, please post a followup to this with the location of the file, once
you've situated it somewhere.

--
Todd Eigenschink (eigenstr@CS.Rose-Hulman.Edu)
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, IN
"That's the provably optimal kludge...because it seems like it."--Joel Klein
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
From: oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit)
Subject: Re: Where I can find IEEE P1178 standard?
Organization: York U. Student Information Systems Project
	<OZ.93Jan21143207@ursa.sis.yorku.ca>
	<1993Jan21.172223.9872@news.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 05:06:12 GMT

Chris Haynes writes:

   >This is a changing trend, and if IEEE finds other ways to fund its
   >activities, it would probably follow suit.

   The example did not list standards.

What do you think "CCITT Recommendations" (eg. "Blue Books", X.400, X.500
ad nauseam) are? Some of those were already available up until recently via
digital.resource.org, but ITU seems to have decided to do its own thing.
The part of the message I posted clearly indicates continued availability
of some of the most important telecommunication standards I know.

... oz
From: davis@passy.ilog.fr (Harley Davis)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: How to lookup symbols fast?
Date: 24 Jan 93 14:20:42 GMT
	<1993Jan19.212543.29200@gallant.apple.com>
	<JAFFER.93Jan20163704@camelot.ai.mit.edu>
Organization: ILOG S.A., Gentilly, France
In-reply-to: jaffer@zurich.ai.mit.edu's message of 20 Jan 93 21:37:04 GMT


In article <JAFFER.93Jan20163704@camelot.ai.mit.edu> jaffer@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Aubrey Jaffer) writes:

   (Kenneth Dickey) writes:
      ...
      >Is there anything better than a simple linear search of the
      >symbols?

      The rule of thumb is "for less than 100 elements, linear search beats
      hashing".  For 30 entries use an alist & assq.

   I tested this out.  The break-even for SCM using SLIB is 250 elements.
   The situation for compiled code would be less (perhaps 100).  Here is
   my code.  I used strings instead of symbols so that hash.scm would use
   OBJECT-HASH.  It is much slower for symbols.  In light of this result,
   I will be changing some of my code back to using alists.

This kind of measure is so totally implementation-dependent that
general "rules of thumb" are out of line.  For example, in Le-Lisp
version 16, the break-even point for symbols as keys is a giant 2
elements in the a-list.

-- Harley Davis
--

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
nom: Harley Davis			ILOG S.A.
net: davis@ilog.fr			2 Avenue Gallie'ni, BP 85
tel: (33 1) 46 63 66 66			94253 Gentilly Cedex, France
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: Unspecified values in R4RS
Date: 22 Jan 1993 16:00:39 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu

In response to my suggestion that "unspecified" be replaced by "nonprinting",
brent@ssd.csd.harris.com (Brent Benson) writes:
>Implementations are free to return a non-printing value for
>unspecified return values.  It seems like a bad idea to mandate a
>non-printing unspecified return value when there is no clear evidence
>that it is the most useful or understandable.  I think it's a good
>idea to let implementors try different ideas and see what works best.
>Implementators and users will gravitate towards what works.

It seems to me that this argument could be made about almost any issue.
For example, why specify that (car '()) should be an error?  Some people
like it better if (car '()) --> ().  So let's have the standard say that
it's unspecified.  Pfui; then nobody can understand anyone else's programs.

Leaving something unspecified in the standard invites some implementor to
give it a "useful" value; and that encourages users of that implementation
to use it; and that makes programs non-portable.

But my real concern comes from the fact that I've been writing a textbook
using Scheme.  Every time there is an "unspecified" in the standard, the
text ends up with an ugly explanation of why we can't tell the poor reader
what happens when you enter this expression.

I can see that there are a few cases in which it would impose a burden on
implementations to get rid of all the unspecifieds, such as some of the
more obscure ones in EQ? and EQV?.  But those don't bother me so much.
It's the easy cases, like DISPLAY, SET!, DEFINE, and so on, that I want to
get rid of.

It's not as if DEFINE were only invented last week, so we need another year
or two of experience with it before we can have opinions about what value
it should return.  If we don't know by now, then it doesn't matter, and you
might as well humor me!  :-)
Xref: sparky comp.lang.scheme:2970 comp.lang.lisp:3358
From: craiger@nprdc.navy.mil (J. Philip Craiger)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme,comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Problems with PC Scheme (Texas Instruments)
Date: 25 Jan 93 16:50:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: arctic.43195
Distribution: usa
Organization: Navy Personnel R&D Center

I am currently running the student edition of PC Scheme at home on an
NEC 386/25s.  I haven't had any problems whatsoever; however, I
installed it on my 486 at work this morning and I am having difficulty
getting it to run.  When given even something as simple as (+ 1 1) I
get a message that "Operand + not found", or something to that effect.
I tried it on another 486 and had the same problem, although it worked
on a 286 at work.  Could it be that it will run on anytthing but a
486?  I can't imagine why this would be the case.  

Thanks in advance for any help.

-PC

-- 
_______________________________________________

J. Philip Craiger, Ph.D. (Internet: craiger@nprdc.navy.mil)
Navy Personnel Research and Development Center -- Code 161
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
From: gandalf@sabrina.dei.unipd.it (ROBERTO AVANZI)
Subject: Re: Where I can find IEEE P1178 standard?
Organization: D.E.I. Universita' di Padova, Italia
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 08:18:16 GMT

In article <SOKOLSKY.93Jan19220354@walt.cs.msstate.edu> sokolsky@cs.msstate.edu (Alexander Sokolsky) writes:
>
>IEEE P1178 specification (IEEE Scheme standard): where are those
>specifications published? IEEE Transactions on *.* ?
>
>Yes I have Revised^4 Report.
>
>Thanks in advance.
>
>--
>	Alexander (Sasha) Sokolsky	MSU graduate student
>	P.O.Box 1510			(601) 325-8797 (office)
>	Mississippi State, MS 39762	(601) 325-5911 (home)

I believe you can FTP a draft of the report from nexus.yorku.ca, or from
some other scheme repository. It is not the final text (it is called p1178d4)
but it's very close, and I've been told there's almost no difference.
Hope this helps
Roberto

Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
From: "Chris Haynes" <chaynes@cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: Where I can find IEEE P1178 standard?
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 17:22:16 -0500

In article <OZ.93Jan21143207@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:
>Chris Haynes writes:
>
>   IEEE (like other standards organizations) explicitely proscribes the
>   distribution of standard drafts, electronically or otherwise, after
>   publication of the standard.
>
>This is a changing trend, and if IEEE finds other ways to fund its
>activities, it would probably follow suit.
>
>example: [deleted]

The example did not list standards.  I would be most interested in knowing
if any official (IEEE, ANSI, ISO, etc) standards are available on-line.
At some time in the future, I've no doubt it will be done, but it hasn't
yet to my knowledge.  A public-key authentication mechanism, were such a
thing in general use, could certainly provide the guarantee of
authenticity.  



-- 
     Chris Haynes -- Computer Science Department -- Indiana University
     Bloomington, IN 47405 -- 812-855-3376 -- FAX 812-855-4829
From: zoetl@isa.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (Gunnar Zoetl)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Thanks! (was: Re: Scheme compiler writing textbook sought)
Date: 25 Jan 1993 11:22:54 GMT
Organization: Institut fuer Systemarchitektur, TH Darmstadt, Germany
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun32.isa.informatik.th-darmstadt.de

Thanks for the help! I guess, as Ozan Yigit (sp?) already posted a
summary, there is no need for me to do this again :-)

Gunnar
-- 
C++ was invented because Vogon poetry | Sather was invented because C++
wasn't destructive enough. -anonymous | wasn't destructive enough.  -me
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
From: laurentb@scsun.unige.ch (BARTHOLDI Laurent)
Subject: R4RS source
Organization: University of Geneva
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 16:31:25 GMT

Hello you schemers,
Here in Geneva we are desperately needing to document our Scheme release
(PCS/Geneva, a scheme for IBM PCs). The simplest would be to distribute
the R4RS standard in part I, and the extensions/specificities in part II.
Unfortunately, I found the PS and DVI versions everywhere, but no TeX source.
Does someone know where I could find that? (all this is of course subject to
the condition we will not change it, alter its author-list, etc.) If we
possessed the TeX source, we would be able to make the whole documentation
much more uniform.

We would also like to get directly in touch with Professor Abelson. Does
somebody know his e-mail address?

Thanks for your help,
Larry Bartholdi
Scheme group, university of Geneva, Switzerland

Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
From: jjb@chmsr.isye.gatech.EDU (John Bartholdi)
Subject: mailing list
Organization: The Internet
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 19:52:18 GMT

Has my subscription run out?  Scheme In Review has ceased arriving at  
my mail box.  Please re-enroll me.

Thanks,

john.bartholdi@isye.gatech.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
From: dak@sqwest.wimsey.bc.ca (David A Keldsen)
Subject: Unspecified values in R4RS
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Surrey, B.C. CANADA
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 19:58:22 GMT


In our implementation of Scheme, we've added a special #<unspecified>
value to be returned from set!, et cetera, to help detect non-conforming
programs.  

Is the behavior:

(define a)
(let ((result (set! a 'foo)))
  (eq? result result))

=> #f

acceptable, legal, and true to the spirit of the language?

The relevant parts of R4RS seems to be:  [1.3.2, last paragraph]
"If the value of an expression is said to be ``unspecified,''
then the expression must evaluate to some object without signalling
an error, but the value depends on the implementation; this report
explicitly does not say what value should be returned."

Furthermore, in [6.2, under the description of eq?]

(let ((n (+ 2 3)))
  (eq? n n))		=> _unspecified_

although this must be a boolean, by the definition of
predicate [6.2, Equivalence Predicates].  This suggests that
the answer to "Is this behavior OK" is "yes."

How far can we go in helping programmers to detect dependencies
on undefined return values?  Should "unspecified" be a contagious
quality of Scheme objects, as inexact is for Scheme numbers?  
Are there any papers available on this topic?

Regards,
Dak
--
David A. 'Dak' Keldsen of SoftQuad, Inc.	dak@sq.com
Motto for the day:  "Curiouser and curiouser!"
Xref: sparky comp.lang.scheme:2982 comp.lang.lisp:3399
From: craiger@nprdc.navy.mil (J. Philip Craiger)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme,comp.lang.lisp
Subject: PC Scheme (full version, 3.03) runs on a 486
Date: 26 Jan 93 16:16:22 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Navy Personnel R&D Center

In regards to my post yesterday about the student edition of PC Scheme
not running ona 486, I found out this morning that the full-version
(ver. 3.03) will run on a 486, at least it does on mine.  The
limitation must be unique to the student version.  Thanks to all who
replied.

-PC

-- 
_______________________________________________

J. Philip Craiger, Ph.D. (Internet: craiger@nprdc.navy.mil)
Navy Personnel Research and Development Center -- Code 161
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
From: gandalf@sabrina.dei.unipd.it (ROBERTO AVANZI)
Subject: Re: gambit compiler??
Organization: D.E.I. Universita' di Padova, Italia
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 09:29:14 GMT

In article <mjerosc-220193164245@mslmac.erenj.com> mjerosc@nmrsun.erenj.com (Miguel Jerosch-Herold) writes:
>Question to MacGambit gurus:
>
>I got a version of MacGambit from sumex but am wondering where 
>the compiler is.  The corresponding menu item is not enabled 
>and when I use the compile command Gambit complains that 
>compile is not loaded.  So where can I find it.  Does it 
>allow one to create stand-alone applications?  
>
>Otherwise I think Gambit is great and it beats MacScheme from 
>Lightship.  The version I bought does not even have an interface
>to the toolbox!
>
>Thank you for any hints!
>
>Michael Jerosch-Herold
>mjerosc@nmrsun.erenj.com

trex.iro.umontreal.ca suffered a disk crash and therefore the ftp directory
with gambit has gone. it'll be restored in a few WEEKS.
if you want you may get gambit for the mac, with full sources, and the thomas
system from SABRINA.DEI.UNIPD.IT (IP number 147.162.2.106) by anonymous ftp,
in the pub/mac directory. I have put them there today to allow other people
download it. It's even newer than the one at stanford.
Cheers
Roberto Avanzi

PS as for MacScheme from Lightship, there is an enormous difference between
the full version and the student editions, which does not even have a compiler.
moreover the technology behind gambit's compiler is probably the best for
scheme up to date. and yes, you can generate stand alone applications, even
though this side is still quite crude. I am a gambit fanatic.
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: Unspecified values in R4RS
Date: 22 Jan 1993 18:40:46 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu

oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:
>Brian Harvey writes:
>
>   Leaving something unspecified in the standard invites some implementor to
>   give it a "useful" value; and that encourages users of that implementation
>   to use it; and that makes programs non-portable.
>
>Are there such implementations? Isn't there some that return
>#<unspecified>, which is not a "useful" value? Can we point to real
>implementations, instead of talking about a hypothetical one?

I think this response doesn't take into account the context of my quoted
remark.  I was arguing that, e.g., DISPLAY should be required to return
a nonprinting value, instead of "unspecified" as the standard now says.
Right now if you write a program like

(define (praise thing)
  (display thing)
  (display " is great!") )

you get interactions like

> (praise "Ice cream")
Ice cream is great!#f

which is not what you wanted.  Then *someone else* suggested that it's better
for the standard to leave this flexible, in case someone has a good idea for
a useful return value.  You should be asking that person (I forget who, sorry)
to point to a real example.  The real examples that *I* know are mostly about
returning a useless but annoying value, such as #f.

I suppose someone must think it useful that many implementations of DEFINE
return the symbol being defined; that's a real example for you, but *I* don't
find it useful, and I'd be happy to see DEFINE return the nonprinting value too.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
From: "Chris Haynes" <chaynes@cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: Where I can find IEEE P1178 standard?
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 11:37:56 -0500

In article <C1732H.8BB@dei.unipd.it> gandalf@sabrina.dei.unipd.it (ROBERTO AVANZI) writes:
>I believe you can FTP a draft of the [IEEE standard]
>from nexus.yorku.ca, or from
>some other scheme repository. It is not the final text (it is called p1178d4)
>but it's very close, and I've been told there's almost no difference.
>Hope this helps
>Roberto

IEEE (like other standards organizations) explicitely proscribes the
distribution of standard drafts, electronically or otherwise, after
publication of the standard.  This keeps folks from believing they have the
standard when they don't.  If something close to the standard is good
enough, use R4RS.  If you have to have the real thing, you've got to pay
for it.  For those who missed the standard distribution information, here
it is again.

    IEEE Std 1178-1990, Standard for the Scheme Programming Language, is
    available for $28 from

	IEEE Service Center
	445 Hoes Lane
	P.O. Box 1331
	Piscataway, NJ 08855-1331

    or by calling 1-800-678-4333.  Checks and credit cards are accepted.




-- 
     Chris Haynes -- Computer Science Department -- Indiana University
     Bloomington, IN 47405 -- 812-855-3376 -- FAX 812-855-4829
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: Problems with PC Scheme (Texas Instruments)
Date: 25 Jan 1993 22:45:37 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu


FTP to altdorf.ai.mit.edu

cd pub/pc-scheme
binary
get pcscm3_3.exe

===========================

Version 3.0, the one that comes with the student edition, doesn't run on
the 486, but this free upgrade will work fine.
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: Unspecified values in R4RS
Date: 23 Jan 1993 07:03:08 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu

oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:
>But if you want trivial interactions such as these to work as you would
>like them to, you may just as well do something like what David Kelsden
>sent me the other day:
>
>   (define void (string->symbol ""))
>
>   (define (praise thing)
>     (display thing)
>     (display " is great!")
>     void)
>
>Is this not easier than changing the whole language definition? ;-)

*You* can write programs like that, and *I* can write programs like
that, but *my students* are going to fall into any pitfalls that the
language leaves in their path.

I'm not suggesting that an entirely pitfall-free language is possible
or desirable, but this particular pitfall (stupid return values from
commands called for effect) seems to be easily avoidable and to have
no redeeming features.

It really depends whether you want Scheme to be a language only good for
Knights of the Lambda Calculus, while beginners are left in the hands of
Pascal lovers, or whether you'd like Scheme to be an easy language to
learn.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme