HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: tmr@cs.bham.ac.uk (Tim Read)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop
Subject: Reference Card
Date: 21 Nov 92 15:36:27 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK

Another thing that comes with emacs that would be nice to have with
ved/pop11 would be a reference card. I.e. two sides of A4 that contain all
(most?) of the little gems of information that help newbies.

Perhaps if people post things that they found useful in the early days, a
reference card could grow from this group.

For my two penneth, the things I would like to see would be:

1) Use ENTER wordswith foo, to find all words containing foo.
2) Use ENTER hk, and dk to find key bindings and set them.

 Tim

--
    --------------------------------------------------------------------
    Tim Read, Email: tmr@cs.bham.ac.uk, The Attention and Affect Project
    Room LG23, School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham,
    B15 2TT, England, Phone: +44-(0)21-414-4766, Fax: +44-(0)21-414-4281
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From: sfk@otter.hpl.hp.com (Steve Knight)
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 22:52:38 GMT
Subject: Re: Reference Card
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop

Tim's favourite VED gems are ...
> 1) Use ENTER wordswith foo, to find all words containing foo.
> 2) Use ENTER hk, and dk to find key bindings and set them.

I'd like to add to this list the improved version of ENTER
wordswith that accepts regular expressions (see the PLUG archive R4)
and ENTER show_keys that produces a table of all the key bindings
(see the archive again).

Steve


Xref: sparky comp.lang.pop:50 alt.lang.basic:855
From: axs@cs.bham.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop,alt.lang.basic
Subject: Re: Ok, so pop *pop* may be a valid lang, but where's basic?
Date: 13 Nov 92 22:49:35 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK

wlsmith@valve.heart.rri.uwo.ca (Wayne Smith) writes:

> Date: 12 Nov 92 16:34:10 GMT

> Flame me all you want, but if some obscure UK language developed 20
> years ago

Actually the bulk of the development has happened since 1981
when it was first ported to a VAX (later to various Unix platforms).

See
%E Anderson, James
%T Pop-11 Comes of Age
%I Ellis Horwood
%D 1989
%O A collection of papers on the history of dialects of Pop, the
%O features and benefits of the language, and some applications using
%O Pop-11.

The most recent developments are the addition of a sophisticated
interface to the X window system, supporting the dynamic linking of
widget sets, and the latest of at least three different object
oriented extensions to Pop-11, known as Objectclass (with multiple
inheritance, multi-methods and a smooth integration with the Pop-11
record class facility) designed and implemented by Steve Knight at
Hewlett Packard Research Labs, Bristol UK (one of the contributors
to the above book.)

Three or four books on Pop-11 emerged in the mid 80's (I was
co-author of one of them) but they are all out of date relative to
the main dialect of Pop-11, the Poplog version (used as a basis for
implementing Prolog, Common Lisp and Standard ML in Poplog).

I am part way through producing a revised Pop-11 "primer" and if
there's enough interest I could try posting chapters to this news
group as they become available (perhaps they are too long for that)
or, when our ftp site is working, making them available there.

> ...can make it into a comp.lang group, why is basic still shit-upon
> and relegated to the status of an alt group? (alt.lang.basic)?

Actually basic has a lot of nice features, and modern structured
basics with recursive procedures, local variables, and nice
graphical facilities, are not open to all the objections of the
early versions.

So who is preventing the formation of comp.lang.basic??

Aaron
-- 
Aaron Sloman, School of Computer Science,
The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, England
EMAIL   A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk  OR A.Sloman@bham.ac.uk
Phone: +44-(0)21-414-3711       Fax:   +44-(0)21-414-4281
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop
From: mulcihy@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov
Subject: PD Pop
Organization: McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Company
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 13:26:26 GMT

Is there a public domain Pop for unix or msdos?
David Mulcihy
mulcihy@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov
From: sfk@otter.hpl.hp.com (Steve Knight)
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 22:50:05 GMT
Subject: Re: Clarity VS Efficiency in POP11
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop

In comp.lang.pop, tmr@cs.bham.ac.uk (Tim Read) writes:
> My conclusion is that (bearing in mind I am using an 86 MIP workstation), I
> will not worry about efficiency until I notice that my program is running
> slowly. 

It's good to hear from you Tim.  I can only half agree with this view,
though.  One can loosely divide efficiency improvements into 2 types;
local and global.  Local improvements are those that would be confined
to a single procedure (or a well defined collection).  Global improvements 
are those that require changes on a bigger scale.

What people tend to talk about when they discuss efficiency are small-
scale local improvements.  And these should not be tackled immediately,
since they are so easy to repair if required.  However, global 
efficiency issues should be designed in from as early as possible.

For example, if you have a very large data structure in your program
then you should always consider implementing it via a structured
file.  In one case I was involved in, not so long ago, shifting 
5Mb of data out of main store onto disc was the critical decision that 
allowed the program to run at all (and thereby determine the more
serious design problems.)  As it happened, the data consisted of a 
linear sequence of floating point values -- so this was exceedingly
easy.

> An example of what I mean is using a temporary closure within a
> loop, which looks nice and neat, but will cause extra garbage collections,
> as opposed to using an lblock (As Aaron pointed out).

Presumably "lblock" is a typo for "lconstant"?  I would agree that 
worrying about using partial application is foolish.  The current cost
of partial application are due to the design flaw of making closures
mutable.  Because they are mutable, the compiler cannot optimise
even the simplest of partial applications into constants.  I intend
to press for revision of this aspect of POP-11 in the Pop9x work.

> Until I notice that it takes longer for the program to run than it does for
> the data to be output, I'll lose no sleep over it....

I'll summarise my point here.  If you leave considerations of efficiency
very late then you may miss important design decisions that have to be
made early.  My recommendation is to put efficiency concerns at the top
of the agenda -- along with equally vital concerns such as designing
for debugging.  However, once the broad issues of efficiency are dealt
with it is then a mistake to dabble in the fine detail.

Steve
From: kers@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Chris Dollin)
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 14:11:34 GMT
Subject: Re: FTP'able pop for msdos
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop

In article ... bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey) writes:

   kers@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Chris Dollin) writes:
   >Saffron, or Karl, or Salt. Something like that.
			       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

   Could you please explain the category that these are examples of?  (Don't 
   say "words"!)  :-)

``words'' are an important concept in Pop, just as ``symbols'' are in Lisp.

The category is, of course, ``names related in some plausible way to the 
actual name of the labguage I have in mind''. (Anyone who thinks this isn't a
``proper'' category, read Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, by Lakoff.)

Ahem.

Saffron is (if I recall correctly) a flavouring, as well as a colour. Salt is a
flavouring. Doesn't everyone know who Karl is? 

No, not that one. The philosopher.

Appropriate to this newsgroup?

Karl Popper. (The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Conjectures and Refutations,
The Open Society and its Enemies, The Poverty of Historicism, etc.)

Enough clues yet?

--

Regards, Kers.
"If anything anyone licks, they'll find it all ready in sticks."
From: kers@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Chris Dollin)
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 07:56:11 GMT
Subject: Re: FTP'able pop for msdos
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop

In article ... diarmuid@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (Diarmuid Pigott) writes:

   Really the title says it all - is there an ftp'able version of POP-11 or
   similar for MS-DOS? Efforts to find it through archie etc have failed.
   (Or is it copyright and am I being dumb?)

So far as I know, there are no FTP'able versions of Pop at all. Pop also tends
not to run on MS-DOS machines, historically (I think) because of their pig-poor
addressing and underpowered CPUs; this has changed recently. (Poplog does run
on Sequent Symmetrys, which are high-end *86's. I think.)

Pop is available

	* inside Poplog, which runs on various Unix engines and VMS; perhaps
	some other systems which Aaron or Steve can remind me of;

	* as AlphaPop, which runs on the Mac;

There's also a Pop look-a-bit-like called Glo (Glow?) which, I *think*, runs on
the PC; there was a review in Byte a few months back.

Some person somwhere was rumoured to be doing a Pop look-fairly-like called
Saffron, or Karl, or Salt. Something like that. But I don't think they've done
anything with it recently. Lazy frogs.
--

Regards | "Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be
Kers.   | a violent psychopath who knows where you live." - John F. Woods
From: tmr@cs.bham.ac.uk (Tim Read)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop
Subject: Yet another anoying feature of VED
Date: 17 Nov 92 15:01:29 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK

I would like to be able to start up ved with several files at once, doing:

ved foo1.p foo2.p foo3.p

(after a long pause) just starts ved with one file called:
 "foo1.p foo2.p foo3.p" - not what I want.

In emacs doing this (ie emacs foo1.p foo2.p foo3.p) will correctly load in
the files I require. Can some kind soul tell me how to do this with ved?

Thanks in advance,

 Tim

--
    --------------------------------------------------------------------
    Tim Read, Email: tmr@cs.bham.ac.uk, The Attention and Affect Project
    Room LG23, School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham,
    B15 2TT, England, Phone: +44-(0)21-414-4766, Fax: +44-(0)21-414-4281
    --------------------------------------------------------------------
From: sfk@otter.hpl.hp.com (Steve Knight)
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 17:08:09 GMT
Subject: Re: FTP'able pop for msdos
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop

In comp.lang.pop, diarmuid@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (Diarmuid Pigott) writes:
> Really the title says it all - is there an ftp'able version of POP-11 or
> similar for MS-DOS? Efforts to find it through archie etc have failed.
> (Or is it copyright and am I being dumb?)

Well, I think the number 2 question for the FAQ has just been raised :-
    "Can I get POP for my MS-DOS/Macintosh/Archimedes/..."

I only know of one implementation for the PC and that's one called
GLOW.  I've only seen this system reviewed once in (wait for it ...)
the UK section of Byte magazine & no one I know has tried it out.
Alas, I've lost the relevant article.  So, please please will someone
post the contact details for the GLOW implementation?

Incidentally, GLOW is a fairly major deviant from the "mainstream" of
Pop languages.

Steve
From: tmr@cs.bham.ac.uk (Tim Read)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop
Subject: Clarity VS Efficiency in POP11
Date: 21 Nov 92 12:27:34 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK

I am posting this after a good conversation I had in the bar (that well
known debugging room) last night. 

It is my feeling as a competent beginner in POP11, that putting too many
efficiency hacks into your code tends to lose the inherent clarity that
POP11 provides. 

My conclusion is that (bearing in mind I am using an 86 MIP workstation), I
will not worry about efficiency until I notice that my program is running
slowly. An example of what I mean is using a temporary closure within a
loop, which looks nice and neat, but will cause extra garbage collections,
as opposed to using an lblock (As Aaron pointed out).

Until I notice that it takes longer for the program to run than it does for
the data to be output, I'll lose no sleep over it....

Comments ?

 Tim



--
    --------------------------------------------------------------------
    Tim Read, Email: tmr@cs.bham.ac.uk, The Attention and Affect Project
    Room LG23, School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham,
    B15 2TT, England, Phone: +44-(0)21-414-4766, Fax: +44-(0)21-414-4281
    --------------------------------------------------------------------
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop
Subject: Re: A little Pop history
Date: 15 Nov 1992 21:20:26 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu


Of course, these examples are entirely equivalent to what could be done
in Lisp.  I think you should post examples using some of the more unusual
POP features, such as pattern matching.
From: axs@cs.bham.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop
Subject: Re: PD Pop
Date: 17 Nov 92 22:59:25 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK

mulcihy@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov writes:

> Date: 17 Nov 92 13:26:26 GMT
> Organization: McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Company
>
> Is there a public domain Pop for unix or msdos?

Alas not public domain. The Poplog and Pop-11 development at Sussex
University has to be funded by fee and royalty income to pay for
the people working on it full time.

In the USA I think you can get an evaluation copy of Unix or VMS
Poplog or MAC Alphapop from

    Prof Robin Popplestone
    Dept. of Computer and Information Science
    Lederle Graduate Research Center
    University of Massachusetts
    Amherst, MA  01003, USA

or

    Prof Robin Popplestone
    Computable Functions Inc.,
    35 South Orchard Drive,
    Amherst, MA 01002, USA

    Phone(413) 253-7637         Email pop@cs.umass.edu

There's also an educational discount of about 85%

It runs on SPARC systems, HP non-risc Unix systems, MIPS machines,
DEC RISC + Ultrix, VAX+Ultrix, Silicon Graphics, and VAX+VMS.

I don't think there will ever be an msdos version because it
requires a large linear address space. A port to the PC windows
environment is in progress, but I have no idea whether or when it
will be completed.

> David Mulcihy
> mulcihy@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov

I hope that helps.
Aaron
-- 
Aaron Sloman, School of Computer Science,
The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, England
EMAIL   A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk  OR A.Sloman@bham.ac.uk
Phone: +44-(0)21-414-3711       Fax:   +44-(0)21-414-4281
From: sfk@otter.hpl.hp.com (Steve Knight)
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 21:57:47 GMT
Subject: Re: FTP'able pop for msdos
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop

> Ok, I'll bite. Is there a demo or whatever of Glow, or Karl or anything
> that I can use on a (My god I'm sorry but I don't have any other
> compouters so no smart-arse comments about the pros and cons of the
> things) ms-dos computer.

Definitely not, I am sad to say.  If you are running SCO UNIX on your
PC then there would be a possibility.

As posted earlier -- there is currently a port of Poplog to run under
Windows 3.1/NT in progress.  I haven't had any update on the status of 
that work, however.  [If anyone from BMT is reading this, let's have
an update, please.  I'm very interested in this port.]

Steve
From: sfk@otter.hpl.hp.com (Steve Knight)
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 21:54:23 GMT
Subject: PLUG Source Code Archive (R4)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop

PLUG Source Code Archive: Release 4
-----------------------------------

The latest release of the Pop Languages User Group (PLUG) public
software archive is available via anonymous ftp from HP Labs 
Bristol.  A summary of commands for accessing the archive is shown
below.

    ftp hplb.hpl.hp.com
    > cd pub
    > bin
    > get plug.tar.Z

This latest release includes Jon Meyer's regular expression matching
extensions for VED, a profiler that uses showtree to display the results,
the latest version of ObjectClass, James Anderson's affine & 
perspective transformation code (demonstrated at PLUG92) from his
PhD thesis, the TIME & SPACE syntax words used in the PLUG92 tutorial
on efficient programming, and a variety of other submissions.

The quality of the PLUG archive is improving all the time.  All
submissions are reviewed and integrated properly into the $popplug
hierarchy.  If you would like to make a submission to the POPLOG
source code archive, please mail directly to me at
    sfk@hplb.hpl.hp.com
with a header line that mentions the source code archive directly.

Steve
From: sfk@otter.hpl.hp.com (Steve Knight)
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 18:47:39 GMT
Subject: Re: A little Pop history
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop

Luc says (hi Luc!):
> While we're on the subject of the history of Pop languages, I'd like
> to say that, in my humble opinion, it was a mistake to call Poplog's
> Pop, Pop-11; for if a different company produces a programming
> system with a language called Pop-12, there is a great danger that
> potential clients will tend to assume that it's better because it is
> apparently newer.

Nah ... surely they'll just think it will only run on the PDP-12 ?

:-)

Steve
From: sfk@otter.hpl.hp.com (Steve Knight)
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 12:29:21 GMT
Subject: Re: A little Pop history
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.
From: cjp@aber.ac.uk (C J Price)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop
Subject: Re: PD Pop for the Mac?
Date: 20 Nov 92 08:48:00 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept., UCW Aberystwyth

Steve Knight answers "is there a PD Mac Pop" with:

>I'm afraid not ... the nearest offer is AlphaPOP marketed by Cognitive
>Applications for 300 pounds ($500?).  This system is fine for learning
>Pop but not good enough for writing applications, unfortunately. 

Steve should have made it clear that when he says "applications" he
means full-blooded worrying-about-performance-and-robustness
used-by-lots-of-people applications. 

We have a couple of copies of AlphaPop here, and they are reasonably
used. A colleague of mine built a spatial reasoning system in
AlphaPop. 

I only have a joke-Mac (Atari ST with Spectre GCR), but AlphaPop is my
first choice for writing bits of programs at home (I'd use Poplog on
the Suns in the office). It's great as a calculator too, but I suppose
300 quid is a bit steep for a calculator nowadays.

Summary: no I wouldn't build a product in AlphaPop but it is nice to
have if you only have a Mac around and you aren't paying for your own
copy.

Cheers,

Chris Price


--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Price, Department of Computer Science, University College of Wales,
             Aberystwyth, Dyfed, SY23 3BZ, United Kingdom.
email: cjp@uk.ac.aber (within UK) cjp@aber.ac.uk (rest of world?)
Telephone: 0970-622444
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: axs@cs.bham.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop
Subject: Re: PD Pop for the Mac?
Date: 13 Nov 92 23:09:58 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK

jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) writes:

> Date: 13 Nov 92 14:23:04 GMT
> Organization: Glasgow University Computing Science Dept.
>
> Is there a public-domain Pop for the Mac?  (*NOT* under MPW, please God).

I've never heard of MPW. However the Brighton based company
Cognitive Applications Ltd produced an implementation of Pop-11
called Alphapop, which was, I think, very favourably reviewed in
Byte around May 1986 by Dick Pountain.

I think the price has dropped substantially since those days,
especially for academics, though development froze some years ago,
and it is now only a small though very usable subset of Poplog
Pop-11. For more information contact:

Cognitive Applications Ltd
4 Sillwood Terrace
Brighton
BN1 2LR
+44 (0) 273 821600

I believe that CogAPP not only sell it but also use it for quite a
lot of their Mac-based consultancy work, including an information
system for the National Gallery. (I am trying to recall what I was
told a couple of years ago. Someone may have more up to date
information.)

Aaron
-------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 
Aaron Sloman, School of Computer Science,
The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, England
EMAIL   A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk  OR A.Sloman@bham.ac.uk
Phone: +44-(0)21-414-3711       Fax:   +44-(0)21-414-4281
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop,alt.lang.basic
From: boutell@isis.cshl.org (Tom Boutell)
Subject: Cool it. Culture Clash. Crossposted. Stop.
Followup-To: alt.flame
Organization: Cold Spring Harbor Labs
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 19:01:19 GMT

This thread was crossposted. The person responding in defense of pop wasn't
a reader of alt.lang.basic. We all have our preferences. alt.lang.basic
isn't a comp. group because nobody has attempted to go through the procedure
to create comp.lang.basic. There is no secret cabal controlling newsgroup
creation. If you want a comp.lang.basic, follow news.groups and learn about
the process necessary to create it. I'll vote for it. If you haven't
tried to create one, don't post nasty messages to other newsgroups that
haven't gone out of their way to harrass you. Thanks so much.

This should be the last message crossposted on this subject. Followups
have been redirected to alt.flame, where they belong.

"I think both your constitutions are terrific,
 Now be good boys."

- CHESS

-- 
Tom Boutell, boutell@cshl.org

Clausthaler is the best non - alcoholic beer in the known universe.
Xref: sparky comp.lang.pop:80 alt.lang.basic:884
From: pitchers@prlhp1.prl.philips.co.uk (Steve Pitchers)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop,alt.lang.basic
Subject: Re: Ok, so pop *pop* may be a valid lang, but where's basic?
Date: 20 Nov 92 11:14:52 GMT
Reply-To: pitchers@prlhp1.UUCP (Steve Pitchers)
Organization: Philips Research Laboratories, Redhill, UK

Come on, everybody, let's let this drop!

Whether Pop deserves a place in the comp.lang heirarchy has absolutely 
nothing to do with whether BASIC deserves a place.

The comp.long.pop group is perfectly legit after having been through the
correct procedures (as far as I am aware).  Let's not get into a "Pop/BASIC
is best" competition.  If you want a comp.lang.basic group then let's have
a proper vote on it -- leave comp.lang.pop alone!

Steve   ---   pitchers@prl.philips.co.uk
   ~~~

PS: For the record, I used to spend many happy hours programming in
various forms of BASIC.  What I most liked about it was that it was so
easy to write complex software in very short timescales.  I still remain
a fan of BASIC, even though I never use it anymore.

When I discovered Pop11, I immediately realised that Pop is even better
for fast prototyping than BASIC is IMHO.  I was also surprised to find
that the variety of structured techniques easily available to you easily
outstrips any other language that I have come into contact with.  The
legitimacy of Pop11 is beyond doubt!