Apologies is this is a FAQ but I'm new to this group.
I'm getting a bit confused about different types of lisp and their
availability, particularly the common lisp variants. Please correct me
if my beliefs are incorrect and educate me on the gaps.
KCL is Kyoto common lisp and is PD/generally available?
AKCL is KCL with extras from Austin ? What's the availability on this
one? Purchase? Ftp from somewhere? or what?
Lucid seems to be tied up with Sun Micro in some way which I don't quite
understand. Is Lucid a variant of common lisp of which sun do a version
for suns or is lucid Sun's version of common lisp? If the former, where
can one get other versions of Lucid from?
Then there's also a common lisp from Franz (Allegro?) and ... and...
The hardware I have is Sun3 and Sun4 and OS version 4.1 and 4.1.1 at the
moment. Any pointers/info gratefully received.
Thanks in advance,
Martin
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Martin Earl, ······@uk.ac.umist.ccl
Centre for Computational Linguistics, ..!mcsun!ukc!uk.ac.umist.ccl!martin
UMIST, Manchester M60 1QD, UK Tel: +44 61 200 3111
In article <······················@cns.umist.ac.uk> ··@cns.umist.ac.uk (Martin Earl) writes:
>Apologies is this is a FAQ but I'm new to this group.
I plan on including some answers to this in the FAQ list I'm writing.
>KCL is Kyoto common lisp and is PD/generally available?
Right.
>AKCL is KCL with extras from Austin ? What's the availability on this
>one? Purchase? Ftp from somewhere? or what?
I think AKCL is free. There's also Ibuki Common Lisp, which I think is a
commercial derivative of KCL (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).
>Lucid seems to be tied up with Sun Micro in some way which I don't quite
>understand. Is Lucid a variant of common lisp of which sun do a version
>for suns or is lucid Sun's version of common lisp? If the former, where
>can one get other versions of Lucid from?
Lucid Common Lisp exists for many different systems. Lucid doesn't sell
Lisp for Suns directly; instead, Sun distributes Lucid CL with the name Sun
Common Lisp.
>Then there's also a common lisp from Franz (Allegro?) and ... and...
Franz also distributes Allegro Common Lisp for many systems, including
Suns.
>The hardware I have is Sun3 and Sun4 and OS version 4.1 and 4.1.1 at the
>moment. Any pointers/info gratefully received.
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Martin Earl, ······@uk.ac.umist.ccl
>Centre for Computational Linguistics, ..!mcsun!ukc!uk.ac.umist.ccl!martin
>UMIST, Manchester M60 1QD, UK Tel: +44 61 200 3111
Since you're in the UK, there's also a British Common Lisp vendor named
Procyon. I don't know whether they have a Sun version, though.
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.
······@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
Some additions to Barry Margolin's response to Martin Earl's question:
* KCL is free, but you have to sign a license agreement and send it to
Japan before you may use it. You can FTP the license form from
Rascal.ICS.UTexas.EDU, file /pub/kcl.broadcast. There are also
compressed tar files for KCL and AKCL. Make sure you get the latest
version of AKCL (akcl-1-530.tar.Z as of this morning).
* The remarks on AKCL and IBCL are correct. Personally, I have been
using AKCL for some time and found it quite usable. It runs on all
Suns you have, and many more architectures because the compiler
generates C code. This also means that the compiler is somewhat
slow to `native' CL compilers.
* The main contenders for the Common Lisp market on Suns *seem* to be
Franz (Allegro CL) and Lucid (Sun CL). I have used them extensively
and are VERY VERY pleased with both. My personal impression is that
the environment is a bit better in Allegro, while Lucid's compiler
is better, especially if you use local functions (FLET, LABELS etc.)
Both are pretty much compatible with the non-standard of CLtL II.
Both have (completely independent) graphical UIs, but I don't know
if they're standard parts of the products.
* There is a Common Lisp vendor in the UK (I think Cambridge or Bath)
named Harlequin. They sell a CL called ``LispWorks'' that includes
a ``native'' CLOS (i.e. they claim it's not derived from PCL,
although I think they use Gregor's walker) and a *fancy* user
interface based on CLUE. If you have fast machines, you will
probably enjoy it. Ask Harlequin if they give you a demo version,
which they did in the past. I can positively say that LispWorks
runs on Sun-3s and Sparcs.
* I think there is also an italian company called Delphi who sell a
Common Lisp.
* Someone will port the new version of CMU CL to SunOS. Currently it
runs on Sparcs and PMAXen, but only under Mach. I expect very much
from the resulting system, because its compiler (``Python'' by Rob
McLachlan) is very sophisticated. This will be freely
distributable, I think.
--
Simon.
An addition to Simon Leinen's additions to Barry Margolin's response
to Martin Earl's question:
* There is another UK Lisp provided as part of Poplog. Poplog is a
commercial product developed at Sussex University and marketed by
Integral Solutions Ltd worldwide and Computational Functions Inc
in the USA and Canada. Both give massive educational discounts,
and UK academics get special low prices direct from Sussex
University.
Poplog Common Lisp conforms to CLTL first edition and is one of
four incrementally compiled languages included in Poplog, the
others being Prolog, Standard ML and Pop-11. (You don't have to
have them all loaded when you run Poplog. E.g. Poplog Lisp starts
up needing less than 2 MBytes). A version of CLOS (PCL) is
included in the "contrib" directory. Version 14 runs on
Sun3&4 under SunOS >= 4.1 and includes a general interface to
X11R4 allowing widget sets to be dynamically linked in as required
on Suns, though there are problems with this on DECStations.
Enquiries:
In usa & canada ···@cs.umass.edu
UK academics ····@cogs.sussex.ac.uk
All others ···@integ.uucp
Aaron Sloman,
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences,
Univ of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QH, England
EMAIL ······@cogs.sussex.ac.uk
or:
························@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
UUCP: ...mcvax!ukc!cogs!aarons
or ······@cogs.uucp
Regarding Re: Flavours of Lisp; ······@think.com (Barry Margolin) adds:
> In article <······················@cns.umist.ac.uk> ··@cns.umist.ac.uk (Martin Earl) writes:
>>KCL is Kyoto common lisp and is PD/generally available?
> Right.
>>AKCL is KCL with extras from Austin ? What's the availability on this
>>one? Purchase? Ftp from somewhere? or what?
> I think AKCL is free. There's also Ibuki Common Lisp, which I think is a
> commercial derivative of KCL (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).
Both KCL and AKCL are available for anonymous ftp from
rascal.ics.utexas.edu.
KCL is controlled by a free license; you are required to sign a copy
of this and put it in the mail before you ftp the sources (yes, this
is an honor system; the license is also available for ftp, probably in
the README file). The only annoying clause in the license is one that
prohibits you from distributing modified versions of KCL; among other
things, this means you can't distributed bug-fixed binaries to your
customers (but see below).
AKCL is free and built on top of the public KCL sources. You get
both, then the AKCL makefile applies a bunch of patches (in its own
format) to copies of the KCL sources and builds AKCL. This
circumvents the license restriction. AKCL has many more features than
KCL, and comes with working (?) ports for many more machines.
IBCL (Ibuki Common Lisp) is a commercial product based on the original
KCL. The current version has roughly the same external features but
significantly different internals. The main thrust of IBCL is *much*
tighter integration with the C world. Ibuki seems to be ahead of
everyone else in such areas as making the entire Lisp runtime a Unix
shared library.
--
dan
In real life: Dan Pierson, Encore Computer Corporation, Research
UUCP: {talcott,linus,necis,decvax}!encore!pierson
Internet: ·······@encore.com
In article <······················@cns.umist.ac.uk> ··@cns.umist.ac.uk (Martin Earl) writes:
>Apologies is this is a FAQ but I'm new to this group.
No problem.
>I'm getting a bit confused about different types of lisp and their
>availability, particularly the common lisp variants. Please correct me
>if my beliefs are incorrect and educate me on the gaps.
OK.
>KCL is Kyoto common lisp and is PD/generally available?
Yes. It converts lisp to C so it is somewhat slow.
>AKCL is KCL with extras from Austin ? What's the availability on this
>one? Purchase? Ftp from somewhere? or what?
I believe that is where the name came from. You can ftp it free from
rascal.ics.utexas.edu. I just checked. This is from the README in
~ftp/pub:
akcl-xx.tar.Z is Austin Kyoto Common Lisp, which contains Bill
Schelter's improvments to Kyoto Common Lisp. (xx is a version
number). It requires kcl.tar, which requires a license. It includes
a convenient change mechanism by which you can distribute changes for
KCL (or other systems). Currently the version of Macsyma running in
KCL uses some of these changes. There is no license required to take
or use this file, though there is a copyright on merge.c (see the head
of the file).
>Lucid seems to be tied up with Sun Micro in some way which I don't quite
>understand. Is Lucid a variant of common lisp of which sun do a version
>for suns or is lucid Sun's version of common lisp? If the former, where
>can one get other versions of Lucid from?
Sun Microsystems markets Lucid Common Lisp under the Sun name ``Sun
Common Lisp''.
>Then there's also a common lisp from Franz (Allegro?) and ... and...
Franz is another vendor that makes a Common Lisp. They call their
Common Lisp ``Allegro Common Lisp''. It used to come for free on the
NeXT machine. I don't think it does any more.
>The hardware I have is Sun3 and Sun4 and OS version 4.1 and 4.1.1 at the
>moment. Any pointers/info gratefully received.
You forgot one more Common Lisp vendor (and this one may be the one
you are most interested in because you are in the UK), Harlequin.
Here is the info I have on all three:
Harlequin Limited
Barrington Hall
Barrington
Cambridge
CB2 5RG
Phone 0223 872522 (or 44223 872522 outside UK)
Fax 0223 872519
Telex 818440 harlqn g
··@uk.co.harlqn (or ··@harlqn.co.uk for US people)
Franz, Inc.
1995 University Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94704
Phone +1 415 548 3600
Fax +1 415 548 8253
Telex 340179 WUPUBTLXSFO
····@franz.com (don't know any other aliases)
Lucid.
See your local friendly Sun Microsystems rep.
················@lucid.com
We are evaluating all three and we currently have Lucid and Harlequin.
We want to get Franz too though. I just got Harlequin up today and it
looks like it has a nice Emacs like editor, browser for classes and
such, inspector debugger and window interface all using CLUE under X.
I believe Sun's Symbolic Programming Environment (SPE) is similar but
we don't have a copy so I can't say for sure. I can't comment on Franz
yet because we don't have a copy but I'm sure they put out fine stuff
like this too.
>Thanks in advance,
You're welcome.
>Martin
Scott
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Martin Earl, ······@uk.ac.umist.ccl
>Centre for Computational Linguistics, ..!mcsun!ukc!uk.ac.umist.ccl!martin
>UMIST, Manchester M60 1QD, UK Tel: +44 61 200 3111
TRW, Sunny Southern California, USA.
--
Scott Simpson TRW ·····@coyote.trw.com
People keep seem to be forgetting my (obviously biased) favorite,
Medley, available from Venue. I don't remember if anyone's mentioned
Ibuki or Delphi either.
...arun
·················@cis.ohio-state.edu
In article <······················@edsr.eds.com> ···@tantalum.eds.com (Bill Biesty) writes:
>Nope. I recently checked with them. It sells for $1800, though if you're a
>student (fuzzy definition) you can get it for $900. From talking to the sales
>rep. this price is less than half of what it costs on the the Sun Sparc
>platform ($4000). But 3-4 times the cost on a Mac (Finder, from APDA, $495).
>(All prices approximate.)
The Lisp from Apple is not a Franz product. The similarity
in name was due to a marketing arrangement between Franz
and Coral, the company that originally developed the
Macintosh product. Apple bought Coral, acquiring the
rights to the product, along with several of the programmers
who developed it. The product is now known as
Macintosh Common Lisp, and version 2.0 is presently in
Beta test.