HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: DanN@juliet.cs.umass.edu (Dan Neiman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Common Lisp for Dec Alpha AXP?
Date: 21 Jan 93 17:00:18 GMT
Organization: Computer and Information Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA


    Our group is considering purchasing some DEC Alpha AXP workstations
and would like to run Common Lisp on them.  Is anyone aware of any 
vendors who currently have, or are planning on, a port of their 
CL environment to the Alpha machines?

Thanks,

dann



Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: SWM@stony-brook.scrc.symbolics.com (Scott McKay)
Subject: Re: Lisp vs English (was Re: Why Isn't Lisp a Mainstream Language?)
X-Unparseable-Date: Wed
Organization: LCS news/mail gateway
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 15:32:52 GMT

    Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 05:22 EST
    From: Chris Dollin <kers@hplb.hpl.hp.com>

    *I* find ``x == y'' easier to read than ``(== x y)'' or ``(eq x y)'',
    and at this point Your Kilometerage May Vary.

You hit the nail on the head when you said "*I* find".  The only
reasonable conclusion one can draw about this bickering over syntax is,
that it is pointless.  What syntax people prefer is a matter of taste.

I believe that an important point that is being lost in the shuffle is
whether or not the language is malleable enough to provide "control
abstraction" (analogous to the way classes, structures, etc., provide
data abstraction).  If the language cannot provide good control
abstraction, then *it's not good enough*.  (Of course, the lack of
control abstraction does not render a language useless any more than the
lack of data abstraction does -- it just makes life much more difficult
than it needs to be, and really, isn't programming is hard enough
already?)
					   
In my opinion, almost every modern programming language fails to provide
control abstraction.  One reason Lisp manages to provide it is that the
syntax of the language makes it easy to use Lisp as its own meta-
language.  There are other ways to do this (e.g., add features to the
language that allow the language to talk about its own parsed
representation), but to the best of my knowledge, there aren't any
languages that do this in any serious way.
From: ad@dcs.st-and.ac.uk (Tony Davie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Why Isn't Lisp a Mainstream Language?
Date: 21 Jan 93 16:00:33 GMT
Organization: St.Andrews University

I personally like a functional language with more syntax than LISP.
Haskell is my favourite but Miranda and ml are good too. The things I like
about them in particular are their pattern matching and static type checking.

But, if you like that sort of thing, LISP's main feature is that it has a
particularly simple syntax. Don't bugger around with it. If you want higher
level syntax, use a syntactically higher level language, not a bastardised
modified LISP, which isn't suited to it. It's not that sort of language.

Tony Davie
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: arifin@iti.gov.sg (Arifin Othman (JSAIC))
Subject: CL (freeware) for the PC
Keywords: Common Lisp
Organization: National Computer Board, Singapore
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 03:32:46 GMT

	I am currently working on a network diagnostics tool.  I had written
a similar system for the Unix platform using UTILISP (University of Tokyo
Lisp).

	I'm looking for a freeware Common Lisp (or CLOS) that runs on the PC
platform.  Preferably to have an interface to MS Windows and graphics calls.

	Anyone out there knows if there is such a freeware?  Had
contemplated to use GoldWorks, but to big a size (resources).  Would
appreciate if you could e-mail to me at either of the following:

	arifin@itivax.bitnet
	arifin@iti.gov.sg
	arifin@ncb.gov.sg

	I hardly read this news group, so would appreciate if you could just
mail to me instead.

	Thanks in advance.


Arifin Othman


-- 
Arifin Othman			      | Internet: arifin@iti.gov.sg
Japan-Singapore AI Centre	      | Bitnet:   arifin@itivax
			              | Tel:      (65) 770-3142
National Computer Board of Singapore  | Fax:      (65) 779-6162
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Lisp syntax beauty? (was Re: Why Isn't Lisp a Mainstream Language?)
Date: 28 Jan 93 19:48:38 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <dfs.727981585@kehleyr> dfs@doe.carleton.ca (David F. Skoll) writes:
>In <KRULWICH.93Jan25102251@zowie.ils.nwu.edu>
>krulwich@zowie.ils.nwu.edu (Bruce Krulwich) writes:
>
>
>>It seems to me that if you mentally think of the language spec as what
>>in other languages would be "language + standard libraries," things
>>make much more sense.  The fact that LISP systems are based on
>>run-time environments and REPL modes makes it hard to provide a good
>>seperation between the two, and in any case from a language definition
>>point of view there's no diffference (unless you want things to be
>>optional, the way scheme does).
>
>I think the paragraph above sums up nicely why Lisp is not a
>mainstream language.  Having to "think" of it as something else is not
>something most programmers want to do.

Let me get this straight.  They know the "truth" about Lisp but don't
want to have to think of it some other way?  Suppose we define it as
a language + libraries (as EuLisp does).  Would that make any
difference?

>They want a language that's portable, small, standard and cheap. 

Scheme.

>Common Lisp programs are (in theory) quite portable, but in practice
>are no more portable than C programs.

They're more portable in some ways, less in others.  For instance, I
have no trouble porting my CL programs from one machine/OS to another.
I have more trouble going from one CL implementation to another.

One thing CL lacks is a standard (or de facto standard) for object
files and libraries, as C does.

>  Common Lisp is not small, so it's not that good for small
>applications.

Depends, but it's usually so.

>  And Lisp is not cheap - if you want to distribute Lisp
>applications, you usually have to pay $$$ to the Lisp vendor to
>distribute Lisp run-time licenses.

Most of the Lisps I use are free.  That's right: zero $$$.

>Also, the good Common Lisp compilers are not free - are quite expensive,
>in fact.

Not so!  CMU CL has an excellent compiler.

>Compare this to C, for example, which has no run-time royalties, and
>has a free ANSI-standard compiler.

Ok, I compare it, and I find that CL has the same.  As does Scheme.

>Another problem is that Lisp enthusiasts are not that good at
>marketing Lisp. :-) When you tell people "well, think of this as..."
>they switch off.  :-)

No doubt because their minds are soooo.... open!

-- jd
From: connolly@livy.cs.umass.edu (Christopher Ian Connolly)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Why Isn't Lisp a Mainstream Language?
Date: 24 Jan 93 20:10:50 GMT
Reply-To: connolly@livy.cs.umass.edu (Christopher Ian Connolly)
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <1993Jan21.230642.18561@netlabs.com> lwall@netlabs.com (Larry Wall) writes:
>In article <19930120191159.1.SWM@SUMMER.SCRC.Symbolics.COM> SWM@stony-brook.scrc.symbolics.com (Scott McKay) writes:
>: In what way is Lisp "bland ... all the way through"?
>
>There's little visual distinctiveness to distinguish mentally
>distinctive constructs.

Uh, so English is just as bland?  Or should we be using curly braces
instead of parentheses?  Syntactic Sugar...help!...I'm going
hyperglycemic!!  Somebody change my readtable...quick!!
Christopher Ian Connolly			connolly@cs.umass.edu
Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics		wa2ifi
University of Massachusetts at Amherst		Amherst, MA 01003
From: secrist@msdsws.enet.dec.com (Strong datatypes for weak minds.)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Why Isn't Lisp a Mainstream Language?
Date: 21 Jan 93 02:56:49 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation


In <1993Jan18.194216.16169@ncar.ucar.edu>, wgreen@eckhart.scd.ucar.edu 
(Wayne Green) writes...

	; ...rising popularity with the introduction of an affordable 
	; Lattice compiler. I mention the Turbo Prolog tools too. 
	; Affordable Prolog with a usable user interface.

Affordable... and failed in the market place !

Regards,
rcs

Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: rmoises@rdd.lmsc.lockheed.com (Roger Moises)
Subject: Re: Common Lisp error (Sun) - SUMMARY
Reply-To: rmoises@rdd.lmsc.lockheed.com
Organization: Lockheed Missiles & Space Co., Inc.
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 17:17:59 GMT

  The original posting:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Configuration:  Sun SPARC 10 Model 30, SunOS 4.1.3
                32 Mb memory, 100 Mb swap
                Allegro CL 4.1, compiled on SPARC 2/SunOS 4.1.1

Problem description:

   A user has been able to run a 4.1 common lisp image on any of our
SPARC 1 or SPARC 2 machines. When trying to run on our new SPARC 10,
the following error is displayed:

   The environment this lisp is running in has used up too much stack.
It must be restarted.

Questions:

1. Is there some glaring incompatibility here that I've missed?
2. Is there some SunOS parameter that must be changed?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

  Many thanks to the people who informed me that the stack start 
location has changed between the two platforms, and that Franz has 
a patch (patch0138) available from bugs@franz.com or from ftp.uu.net
(/vendor/franz/patches/misc/sparc-acl-4.1-stack-fix-patch.tar.Z).

Thanks to:

Andrew Philpot <philpot@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov>
Thomas Berlage <berlage@hera.gmd.de>
mkant@glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu


-------------------------------------
Roger T. Moises - UNIX System Manager
Lockheed Missiles & Space Co., Inc. Palo Alto, CA
e-mail:     rmoises@titan.rdd.lmsc.lockheed.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: hall@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu (Marty Hall)
Subject: Re: Why Isn't Lisp a Mainstream Language?
Organization: AAI Corp AI Lab, JHU P/T CS Faculty
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 19:54:01 GMT


No, no, all this misses the point. The *real* reason I like LISP is because
all of the following could be legal:

(rationalize My-Behavior)
(setf (car Marty)
      'Lamborghini)
(make-instances-obsolete IBM-PCs)
(export 'Arms)
(dribble "Basketball")
(coerce My-Boss Raise)
(proclaim '(inline skates))

					- Marty

Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: pole@evb.com (Tom Pole)
Subject: Re: Lisp syntax beauty? (was Re: Why Isn't Lisp a Mainstream Language?)
Organization: EVB Software Engineering, Inc.
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 19:02:25 GMT

In article <C1GEsq.94@stl.dk> flv@stl.dk (Flemming Vestergaard) writes:
>In <dfs.727723285@noonian> dfs@doe.carleton.ca (David F. Skoll) writes:
>
>>I've noticed a thread extolling the beauty of Lisp syntax.  While I agree
>>that mostly, Lisp syntax is easy to understand and consistent, I wonder
>>what sort of mental disease struck the creators for the "format" function.
>>Take a look at all the baroque format directives in Common Lisp.  I mean,
>>who really needs the number 394829348234982435 formatted in English words??
>>Just try (format t "~R~%" 394829348234982435) for fun!
>
>Well, it is fun. But from this corner of the world I suppose that it is
>a more serious problem (if not a disaster) that Common Lisp provides 
>input and output functions that are suited only for English/American.
>
>(format t "~R" 4) -> four really doesn't help very much in most of the world.


I'm a bit confused. The fact that the output is in 'American' is somehow
different from the code being in 'American'. Don't 'C', Fortran, Basic, Ada
compilers' source code in all countries use "print", "open", "type", 
"character", "in", "out", etc., etc. This may be a complaint, but surely 
not a complaint about Lisp syntax/semantics. 

I don't believe it would be terribly difficult to write a lisp extention
to allow a format method to be defined on a foreign language object
to produce the textual versions of numbers. I believe that Lisp
syntax/semantics and its dynamic/extensible nature would also make
such an extention easier to implement in Lisp than in most other 
languages.

>And yes-or-no-p cannot be used either.

	Thomas

>
>I do think it is a mistake to include natural language specific functions
>in a language standard.


>
>Flemming


-- 

Thomas Pole
From: nesmith@cs.uni-sb.de (Daniel Nesmith)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Need help with macro writing
Date: 27 Jan 93 01:52:25 GMT
Organization: Computer Science, University of the Saarland, Germany

Here's a suggestion (using woap as an abbreviation):

; first woap1 swaps the body and the keys but getting rid of the enclosing list around
; the keywords
> (defmacro woap1 (keywordlist &body body) `(woap2 ,body ,@keywordlist))
WOAP1
; now get values of the keyword arguments, swap them with the body, splice into body
> (defmacro woap2 (bodylist &key stream type object) 
    `(woap (,stream ,type ,object) ,@bodylist))
WOAP2
;; now test
> (macroexpand-1 '(woap1 (:stream t :type tt :object ttt) (print object) (bla bla)))
(WOAP2 ((PRINT OBJECT) (BLA BLA)) :STREAM T :TYPE TT :OBJECT TTT)
T
> (macroexpand-1 *)
(WOAP (T TT TTT) (PRINT OBJECT) (BLA BLA))
T
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: dfs@doe.carleton.ca (David F. Skoll)
Subject: Re: Lisp syntax beauty? (was Re: Why Isn't Lisp a Mainstream Language?)
Organization: Dept. of Electronics, Carleton University
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 18:59:41 GMT

In <1jpe0qINNnf1@tamsun.tamu.edu> hmueller@orca.tamu.edu (Hal Mueller)
writes:

>In article <dfs.727723285@noonian> dfs@doe.carleton.ca (David F.
Skoll) writes:

>>who really needs the number 394829348234982435 formatted in English words??
>>Just try (format t "~R~%" 394829348234982435) for fun!

>Well, if i DID need it, I'd hate to write it!  Fortran and C versions
>are left as an exercise.

Actually, it wouldn't be too bad in C (if you can ignore the
fixnum/bignum problems :-)) I agree that Lisp has many built-in
conveniences.  Maybe too many - we have Allegro Common Lisp on our Sun
network, and the image is 11MB long.  That's a huge overhead, and
anyone supporting the full Common Lisp spec probably couldn't do it in
much less.

I like Lisp.  I've worked on a large CAD program, and for that, Lisp
was great.  But for small-to-medium programs, I find the overhead of
Common Lisp way too high.

--
David F. Skoll
From: gat@forsight2.jpl.nasa.gov (Erann Gat)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Lisp syntax beauty? (was Re: Why Isn't Lisp a Mainstream Language?)
Date: 23 Jan 1993 04:09:48 GMT
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NNTP-Posting-Host: forsight2.jpl.nasa.gov

In article <dfs.727732459@kehleyr> dfs@doe.carleton.ca (David F. Skoll) writes:
>In <1jpi0sINN47q@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov> gat@forsight2.jpl.nasa.gov (Erann
>Gat) writes:
>
>>(You seem to be complaining about two orthogonal issues, by
>>the way, the syntax of format strings and their functionality.
>
>You are right.  I wrote my article hastily.  But the "format" function
>is representative of one aspect of Common Lisp which I believe
>prevents it from becoming a "mainstream" language - Common Lisp
>attempts to do almost everything, with the result that 90% of the Lisp
>image is devoted to functions a small-to-medium program will never use.
>
>And people have been arguing that Lisp is a very good general
>purpose language.  A function that prints English names of numbers
>is a pretty special-purpose function!

There is an ongoing discussion on comp.lang.lisp.mcl which might be of
interest to followers of this thread.  The discussion centers on the issue
of how to produce small applications using Lisp.  The suggestion has been
made that Common Lisp should be considered an operating system and not
an application.  In that case, having a zillion obscure functions is no
more unreasonable than having a large C library.  (BTW - MCL (Macintosh
Common Lisp) implements all of CLTL2 and is 1.5 Megabytes, about a tenth
the size of Allegro.)

Erann Gat
gat@aig.jpl.nasa.gov

Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: dfs@doe.carleton.ca (David F. Skoll)
Subject: Lisp syntax beauty? (was Re: Why Isn't Lisp a Mainstream Language?)
Organization: Dept. of Electronics, Carleton University
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 17:21:25 GMT

I've noticed a thread extolling the beauty of Lisp syntax.  While I agree
that mostly, Lisp syntax is easy to understand and consistent, I wonder
what sort of mental disease struck the creators for the "format" function.
Take a look at all the baroque format directives in Common Lisp.  I mean,
who really needs the number 394829348234982435 formatted in English words??
Just try (format t "~R~%" 394829348234982435) for fun!

--
David F. Skoll

Xref: sparky comp.lang.lisp:3306 comp.lang.lisp.mcl:2063
From: joungwoo@mensa.usc.edu (John Kim)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.lisp.mcl
Subject: Measuring elapsed CPU time
Date: 21 Jan 1993 01:43:08 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: mensa.usc.edu
Summary: How do you measure elasped CPU time?
Keywords: CPU time


I'm trying to measure teh elasped CPU time during a lisp form has been run.
The problem with the Common Lisp's builtin function TIME is that it does not
return the various elapsed times but returns the return value of the form
(ie, TIME's arg) plus I don't know if I am getting accurate elapsed CPU time
either. 
	So I tried using builtin function GET-INTERNAL-RUN-TIME as follows,
but the following function defined by me usually it gives me either 0 or 1 no
matter how time-consuming task I give it. 

(defun CPU-time (form)
  "returns the actual elapsed CPU(?) time not including I/O processing 
in msecs.
"
  (let ((start-time nil)
        (end-time nil)
        )
    (setq start-time (get-internal-run-time))
    form
    (setq end-time (get-internal-run-time))
    (print start-time)
    (print end-time)
    (- end-time start-time)
    ))

Am I doing something wrong in the above function definition or is there a
better way to do this? Or are most tasks heavily I/O bound but so lightly
CPU-bound that the internal clock for GET-INTERNAL-RUN-TIME hardly ticks?

Thank you in advance. (Please email me.)

John

P.S. I tried both Lucid Common Lisp/Sparc on Sun and Macintosh Common Lisp
(MCL 2.0) and the result is the same.

P.P.S. In the worst case, is there a way to print the msg (not the return
value) of TIME which goes to *TRACE-OUTPUT* to a string (so I can parse teh
string later)?
-- 
Joung-woo John Kim				joungwoo@mensa.usc.edu
Computer Science Dept.
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0781

Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.scheme
From: gwilson@majestix.cs.uoregon.edu (Gregory Vance Wilson)
Subject: Re: SCM Wishlist
Organization: University of Oregon Computer and Information Sciences Dept.
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 19:29:23 GMT

In article <74521@cup.portal.com> Chewy@cup.portal.com (Paul Frederick Snively) writes:
>gwilson@majestix.cs.uoregon.edu (Gregory Vance Wilson) writes:
>> > jaffer@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Aubrey Jaffer) writes:
>> > Some things which could be added to SCM are:
>> 
>> Some other things that might speed its adoption by the rest of us:
>> 
>> * a textbook on software engineering which uses Scheme as a
>>   language for its examples
>
>Probably the single best software engineering textbook extant uses
>Scheme as its delivery vehicle: `Structure and Interpretation of
>Computer Programs,` from The MIT Press.

I'm afraid I disagree --- SICP is a wonderful book about how to program, and
think about programs, but it isn't really about managing program development
(which is what I mean by "software engineering").  It's been a while since I
read it, so forgive me if I'm off base, but I don't recall any discussion of
planning program development, managing revision control, developing test
suites and schedules, black box vs. glass box testing, negotiating and
validating interfaces, etc.  If there is a book about such things which uses
Scheme as its core language, I'd be very grateful for a pointer to it.

 ========================================================================
  Gregory V. Wilson                          || Work as though you lived
  Dept. of Computing and Information Science || in the early days
  University of Oregon                       || of a better nation.
  gwilson@cs.uoregon.edu                     || - Alasdair Gray
 ========================================================================

Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.lisp.mcl
From: ted@nmsu.edu (Ted Dunning)
Subject: Re: Measuring elapsed CPU time
Organization: Computing Research Lab
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 20:01:24 GMT


In article <EMCOOP.93Jan21091840@bcars148.bnr.ca> emcoop@bnr.ca (hume
smith) writes:

   this sort of thing needs a macro.

or a thunk.

   in your construct, the form has
   been evaled by the time the function starts, and all your timer
   ends up timing is how long it takes the evaluator to find the value
   of the symbol "form".

absolutely true.


you can also wrap up the expression inside a lambda expression and
apply that inside the timer function if you prefer the scheme style.
From: hmueller@orca.tamu.edu (Hal Mueller)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Lisp syntax beauty? (was Re: Why Isn't Lisp a Mainstream Language?)
Date: 22 Jan 1993 18:22:18 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, Texas A&M University
NNTP-Posting-Host: orca.tamu.edu

In article <dfs.727723285@noonian> dfs@doe.carleton.ca (David F. Skoll) writes:
>who really needs the number 394829348234982435 formatted in English words??
>Just try (format t "~R~%" 394829348234982435) for fun!

Well, if i DID need it, I'd hate to write it!  Fortran and C versions
are left as an exercise.

-- 
Hal Mueller                     If guns are outlawed, only the government
hmueller@orca.tamu.edu          will have guns.
From: simon@lia.di.epfl.ch (Simon Leinen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Need help with macro writing
Date: 27 Jan 93 09:46:42 GMT
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
In-reply-to: schneide@divsun.unige.ch's message of 26 Jan 93 21:50:13 GMT
X-Md4-Signature: ba52b657dc891fbbc6bac791e8bd3d93

In article <1993Jan26.215013.12107@news.unige.ch>
schneide@divsun.unige.ch (SCHNEIDER daniel) writes:

   I am a bit stuck with macro writing. I'd like to translate this:

   (with-output-as-presentation1 (:stream t :type tt :object ttt) (print object) (bla bla))

   into this:

   (WITH-OUTPUT-AS-PRESENTATION (T TT TTT) (PRINT OBJECT) (BLA BLA))

You can use &KEY arguments in sublists of the argument lists for macros:

(defmacro with-output-as-presentation1 ((&key stream type object) &body body)
  `(with-output-as-presentation (,stream ,type ,object) ,@body))
-- 
Simon.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: rmoises@titan.rdd.lmsc.lockheed.com (Roger Moises)
Subject: Common Lisp error (Sun)
Reply-To: rmoises@titan.rdd.lmsc.lockheed.com
Organization: Lockheed Missiles & Space Co., Inc.
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 93 19:18:35 GMT

Configuration:  Sun SPARC 10 Model 30, SunOS 4.1.3
                32 Mb memory, 100 Mb swap
                Allegro CL 4.1, compiled on SPARC 2/SunOS 4.1.1

Problem description:

   A user has been able to run a 4.1 common lisp image on any of our
SPARC 1 or SPARC 2 machines. When trying to run on our new SPARC 10,
the following error is displayed:

   The environment this lisp is running in has used up too much stack.
It must be restarted.

Questions:

1. Is there some glaring incompatibility here that I've missed?
2. Is there some SunOS parameter that must be changed?

  Any and all help is appreciated...

-------------------------------------
Roger T. Moises - UNIX System Manager
Lockheed Missiles & Space Co., Inc. Palo Alto, CA
e-mail:     rmoises@titan.rdd.lmsc.lockheed.com