From: Hans Kratz
Subject: Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
Date: 
Message-ID: <5kg1vt$3gc$1@nz12.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
Hi!

Does anybody have experience with Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
for Windows?

I am right now in a process of decision about what Common
Lisp implementation to buy (Franz or Harlequin) and I have
heard rumors that Harlequin's product is still quite buggy.

So is anybody using it? For what kind of projects?
How good is Harlequin's support?

I would greatly appreciate any responses!

Greetings,

Hans
--
------------------------------------------------          
| Hans Kratz ** ····@iss.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de |
| -------------------------------------------- |          
| SysAdmin                                     |          
| Institut fuer Stroemungslehre                |          
| Universitaet Karlsruhe                       |            
------------------------------------------------          

From: Marc Battyani
Subject: Re: Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
Date: 
Message-ID: <01bc5871$6523e050$7444fac2@marc>
Hans Kratz <····@islhp7.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de> wrote in article
<············@nz12.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>...
> Hi!
> 
> Does anybody have experience with Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
> for Windows?

I use it. I switched from ACLW to LW

> I am right now in a process of decision about what Common
> Lisp implementation to buy (Franz or Harlequin) and I have
> heard rumors that Harlequin's product is still quite buggy.
Go for Harlequin it works quite well now and it has a lot more
functionnalities.

> So is anybody using it? For what kind of projects?
> How good is Harlequin's support?
We use it to do business and industrial applications.
The e-mail support is excellent!

> I would greatly appreciate any responses!
Hope this helps.

Cheers 
Marc Battyani
(·············@compuserve.com)
From: Cyber Surfer
Subject: Re: Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
Date: 
Message-ID: <MPG.dd6cc406944e03b9897b7@news.demon.co.uk>
With a mighty <··························@marc>,
·············@compuserve.com uttered these wise words...

> I use it. I switched from ACLW to LW

Does LW use an editor like ACL/PC, that highlights matching 
paretheses, or does it use an Emacs clone, like FreeLisp? I prefer the 
simple editor in ACL/PC Lite (the ACL that I'm familiar with). In 
fact, I find the whole user interface for FreeLisp rather clunky. 
That's for a free Lisp, but LW?

However, the price of ACL/PC Pro is too high me. Hence my concern 
about the LW editor. Could you possibly enlighten me?

Thanks.
-- 
<URL:http://www.wildcard.demon.co.uk/> You can never browse enough
  Martin Rodgers | Programmer and Information Broker | London, UK
            Please note: my email address is gubbish.
From: Rainer Joswig
Subject: Re: Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
Date: 
Message-ID: <joswig-ya023180000405972123380001@news.lavielle.com>
In article <·························@news.demon.co.uk>,
············@gubbish.wildcard.demon.co.uk (Cyber Surfer) wrote:

> With a mighty <··························@marc>,
> ·············@compuserve.com uttered these wise words...
> 
> > I use it. I switched from ACLW to LW
> 
> Does LW use an editor like ACL/PC, that highlights matching 
> paretheses, or does it use an Emacs clone, like FreeLisp? I prefer the 
> simple editor in ACL/PC Lite (the ACL that I'm familiar with). In 
> fact, I find the whole user interface for FreeLisp rather clunky. 
> That's for a free Lisp, but LW?

LW has an extensive UI. The development image is around 20 MB big
and has an integrated Emacs-like editor.
It runs quite fast on a 64MB machine with Windows NT 4.0.

-- 
http://www.lavielle.com/~joswig/
From: Cyber Surfer
Subject: Re: Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
Date: 
Message-ID: <MPG.dd7a2be954c35889897b9@news.demon.co.uk>
With a mighty <·································@news.lavielle.com>,
······@lavielle.com uttered these wise words...

> > Does LW use an editor like ACL/PC, that highlights matching 
> > paretheses, or does it use an Emacs clone, like FreeLisp? I prefer the 
> > simple editor in ACL/PC Lite (the ACL that I'm familiar with). In 
> > fact, I find the whole user interface for FreeLisp rather clunky. 
> > That's for a free Lisp, but LW?
> 
> LW has an extensive UI.

I don't doubt this. That's not the issue. User interfaces are very 
subjective, so YMMV. See my disclaimer, below.

The UI may be extensive and yet still be to many people as clunky as 
hell. I mean the _look and feel_, not the API. FreeLisp reminds me of 
the software written for Windows 2.11 - unbelievably clunky. A bit 
like comparing a BMW with a steam driven car. I hope that CAPI makes 
LW far less clunky than FreeLisp, but as I've not seen it myself, I 
can't tell what Harlequin have done. CAPI may be wonderful, but what 
the hell does it look like?

I'm not knocking LW itself, but if it looks _anything_ like FreeLisp, 
then I'll stick with ACL/PC (in spite of the high price), thanks. I'll 
just have to give on the idea of delivering any code, which is no 
problem for me, as nobody seems to want my Lisp code anyway. Any hint 
of clunkiness and it'll be even harder to convince people.

Please note that even Windows 3.11 software looks clunky when compared 
with software for "the new shell" (Win95, NT 4.0)! Ok, I'm being 
picky, but cosmetic details like these can spoil you. Habits like 
right-clicking on everything in sight begin to form...

See my disclaimer, below.

> The development image is around 20 MB big
> and has an integrated Emacs-like editor.

Damn. I was hoping for a non-Emacs editor. I've been spoiled by 
ACL/PC. Of course, even Emacs' user interface can vary. I love the 
look of the latest XEmacs, tho I've only seen a screenshot. If the UI 
for the Emacs clone in LW is close to he UI in XEmacs, that might not 
be so bad.

However, I'll still miss the visual matching of parentheses and file 
dialogs, as used in the ACL/PC editor. I'd rather have a simple editor 
with these features than the most sophisticated extensible editor on 
the planet. Perhaps they can be added to Emacs, but I'm not impressed 
by an editor that doesn't use the standard file dialog.

I'm hoping that somebody will tell me that the editors in LW and 
FreeLisp are entirely different beasts, with nothing in common. ;)
An evaluation version of LW would also help a lot!

> It runs quite fast on a 64MB machine with Windows NT 4.0.

Speed isn't the issue, as I'm sure it's fast enough! Still, it's good 
to know that I have enough RAM. Of course, 16 MB and Windows 3.1 is 
more than enough for ACL/PC, and NT 4.0 and 32 MB is also adequate. 
You make the demands of LW sound more like those of VC++ 5.0, which I 
hope is _not_ your intention. I don't see why LW should need more than 
32 MB, under NT. On the other hand, that LW image is much larger than 
ACL/PC's, so I guess it could be possible.

Disclaimer: I've been spoiled by Windows - and ACL/PC. If you don't 
like Windows or non-Emacs editors, please don't flame me for liking 
them and the Windows style of user interface, as you'll be wasting 
your time. I like things like standard file dialogs, visual cues, etc. 
I dislike text-oriented interfaces. No amount of flames will change 
that, nor will they make me go away.

Also note: I work for a multimedia company, where surface details are 
rather critical. I'm not questioning whether or not something _works_, 
as I'm sure LW does work. I'm stressing my concern for the look and 
feel, which an entirely different issue. It may seem trivial to some 
people, but for some people this is _everything_. How can I stress 
that enough? 

So, is the user interface for LW anything like FreeLisp? Is LW capable 
of creating apps that compare well with the best user interfaces for 
Win95/NT 4.0 apps? How about the worst user interfaces for Win95/NT 
4.0 apps? I'm still waiting for Harlequin to offer an evaluation 
version of LW, so that I can see for myself what it can do. Does LW
use the Windows standard file dialog? The absence of such dialogs is 
something that makes _any_ Windows software particularly clunky.

Followups set to comp.lang.lisp only.

Thanks.
-- 
<URL:http://www.wildcard.demon.co.uk/> You can never browse enough
  Martin Rodgers | Programmer and Information Broker | London, UK
            Please note: my email address is gubbish.
From: Rainer Joswig
Subject: Re: Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
Date: 
Message-ID: <joswig-ya023180000505971156420001@news.lavielle.com>
In article <·························@news.demon.co.uk>,
············@gubbish.wildcard.demon.co.uk (Cyber Surfer) wrote:

> > LW has an extensive UI.
> 
> I don't doubt this. That's not the issue. User interfaces are very 
> subjective, so YMMV. See my disclaimer, below.

The best thing would be to ask Harlequin for a test drive.

> > The development image is around 20 MB big
> > and has an integrated Emacs-like editor.
> 
> Damn. I was hoping for a non-Emacs editor. I've been spoiled by 
> ACL/PC. Of course, even Emacs' user interface can vary. I love the 
> look of the latest XEmacs, tho I've only seen a screenshot. If the UI 
> for the Emacs clone in LW is close to he UI in XEmacs, that might not 
> be so bad.

The editor has a lot of nice menus.

> However, I'll still miss the visual matching of parentheses and file 
> dialogs, as used in the ACL/PC editor.

LW has all that.

> > It runs quite fast on a 64MB machine with Windows NT 4.0.
> 
> hope is _not_ your intention. I don't see why LW should need more than 
> 32 MB, under NT.

Because VM is slow. Because you also may want to start MSIE
to read the docs, which needs even more RAM.

-- 
http://www.lavielle.com/~joswig/
From: Cyber Surfer
Subject: Re: Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
Date: 
Message-ID: <MPG.dd804361941fa0e9897ba@news.demon.co.uk>
With a mighty <·································@news.lavielle.com>,
······@lavielle.com uttered these wise words...

> > I don't doubt this. That's not the issue. User interfaces are very 
> > subjective, so YMMV. See my disclaimer, below.
> 
> The best thing would be to ask Harlequin for a test drive.

I have, some time ago. They said something about an evaluation 
version, so I'm waiting.
 
> > Damn. I was hoping for a non-Emacs editor. I've been spoiled by 
> > ACL/PC. Of course, even Emacs' user interface can vary. I love the 
> > look of the latest XEmacs, tho I've only seen a screenshot. If the UI 
> > for the Emacs clone in LW is close to he UI in XEmacs, that might not 
> > be so bad.
> 
> The editor has a lot of nice menus.

Which one? BTW, I'm not too concerned about menus, tho a menu 
organanisation that used the native conventions would be nice.
It's really the parentheses matching that interests me.

> > However, I'll still miss the visual matching of parentheses and file 
> > dialogs, as used in the ACL/PC editor.
> 
> LW has all that.

Just like the ACL/PC editor? I don't mean commands to _skip_ over 
expressions. I can do with the mouse or the keyboard. It's the _visual 
matching_ that interests me.
 
> > > It runs quite fast on a 64MB machine with Windows NT 4.0.
> > 
> > hope is _not_ your intention. I don't see why LW should need more than 
> > 32 MB, under NT.
> 
> Because VM is slow. Because you also may want to start MSIE
> to read the docs, which needs even more RAM.

VM? Ouch, that sounds like it overcommits. Unlike ACL/PC, which uses a 
very  small amount of memory. As I said, 32 MB is more than enough for 
ACL/PC. I used to run Netscape at the same time, for reading docs 
(CLtL2, HyperSpec, etc), before I used more than 32 MB of RAM. The 80 
MB that I now have is for apps like Ghostscript and VC++, not ACL/PC.

Perhaps the extra 32 MB is needed for MSIE? ;-)

Thanks.
-- 
<URL:http://www.wildcard.demon.co.uk/> You can never browse enough
  Martin Rodgers | Programmer and Information Broker | London, UK
            Please note: my email address is gubbish.
From: Rainer Joswig
Subject: Re: Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
Date: 
Message-ID: <joswig-ya023180000505971913180001@news.lavielle.com>
In article <·························@news.demon.co.uk>,
············@gubbish.wildcard.demon.co.uk (Cyber Surfer) wrote:

> It's really the parentheses matching that interests me.

Matching parentheses are blinking I think.

> Perhaps the extra 32 MB is needed for MSIE? ;-)

No, I have NT 4.0 in the server version and running
LWW with 32 MB RAM generates a lot of swapping - more than
one would like.

-- 
http://www.lavielle.com/~joswig/
From: Cyber Surfer
Subject: Re: Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
Date: 
Message-ID: <MPG.dd96da9a2fa669e9897c1@news.demon.co.uk>
With a mighty <·································@news.lavielle.com>,
······@lavielle.com uttered these wise words...

> Matching parentheses are blinking I think.

Excellent.
 
> > Perhaps the extra 32 MB is needed for MSIE? ;-)
> 
> No, I have NT 4.0 in the server version and running
> LWW with 32 MB RAM generates a lot of swapping - more than
> one would like.

Aha. NTS is rather more demanding of RAM than NTW. No doubt that's the 
reason for the massive swapping! Of course, NTS compensates by making 
more efficient use of the CPU! I'm using NTW 4.0 with 80 MB of RAM, so 
I think I should have more than enough for LWW.

Many thanks.
-- 
<URL:http://www.wildcard.demon.co.uk/> You can never browse enough
  Martin Rodgers | Programmer and Information Broker | London, UK
            Please note: my email address is gubbish.
From: Paul Meurer
Subject: Re: Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
Date: 
Message-ID: <336f89f3.1133687@nntp.uib.no>
On Tue, 6 May 1997 17:33:45 +0100,
············@gubbish.wildcard.demon.co.uk (Cyber Surfer) wrote:

>With a mighty <·································@news.lavielle.com>,
>······@lavielle.com uttered these wise words...
>
>> Matching parentheses are blinking I think.
>
>Excellent.
> 
No, they don't blink, they are constantly hilited in green. Perfectly
OK.

>> > Perhaps the extra 32 MB is needed for MSIE? ;-)
>> 
>> No, I have NT 4.0 in the server version and running
>> LWW with 32 MB RAM generates a lot of swapping - more than
>> one would like.
>
>Aha. NTS is rather more demanding of RAM than NTW. No doubt that's the 
>reason for the massive swapping! Of course, NTS compensates by making 
>more efficient use of the CPU! I'm using NTW 4.0 with 80 MB of RAM, so 
>I think I should have more than enough for LWW.
>

I have NTW4.0 with 64MB RAM, and this is plenty for LWW. In the task
manager, the lispworks.exe process takes 16.2 MB, whereas NT alone
with all the services I run uses approx. 32 MB. I haven't found out
yet how much you can squeeze away with the tree shaker when generating
a standalone app.

I like the environment much more than Allegro's because everything is
integrated (emacs-like editor which is capable of handling text files
bigger than 32k, of course). E-mail support is excellent, as far as I
can tell until now. And you get an ODBC module at no extra cost
.
I have run some of the Gabriel benchmarks which show that Harlequin's
compiler generates somewhat faster code in average than Allegro's.
(But then MCL's code is faster on a 120MHz PowerPC 604 compared to a
PentiumPro 200.) If somebody is interested, I can post the exact
figures. (In all cases, I did not change the preset compiler speed etc
directives.)

Cheers,
Paul


Paul Meurer
Norwegian Term Bank
Allegt. 27
N-5007 Bergen
Norway
From: Lawrence G. Mayka
Subject: Re: Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
Date: 
Message-ID: <337125b1.89604854@news.sprynet.com>
····@hd.uib.no (Paul Meurer) wrote:

>with all the services I run uses approx. 32 MB. I haven't found out
>yet how much you can squeeze away with the tree shaker when generating
>a standalone app.

In my handful of simple experiments:

Hello world (text)				2.9 MB
Hello world (popup window)		3.6 MB
Othello (windowed application)		4.2 MB

These are .EXE sizes, generated on Windows 95.


Lawrence G. Mayka
·······@sprynet.com
From: Christopher Stacy
Subject: Re: Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
Date: 
Message-ID: <un2q7ne38.fsf@pilgrim.com>
I am running Harlequin's Lispworks for Windows on NT Server 4.0 on a 
Pentium 133Mhz.  With 32 MB I found the operating system to be sluggish.  
For about $200, I upgraded to 64 MB and the system runs a lot better.
I didn't compare Lispworks performance under the two configurations,
but based on the overall improved responsiveness (in things like X,
the Emacs, and the Internet and File Explorers), I'd say get the memory.
NT Server is so slow with only 32 MB that Lispworks will be the least of
your problems.  Lispworks seems to perform quite reasonably.
From: Lawrence G. Mayka
Subject: Re: Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
Date: 
Message-ID: <336cf284.30844843@news.sprynet.com>
····@islhp7.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de (Hans Kratz) wrote:

>Does anybody have experience with Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
>for Windows?
>
>I am right now in a process of decision about what Common
>Lisp implementation to buy (Franz or Harlequin) and I have
>heard rumors that Harlequin's product is still quite buggy.
>
>So is anybody using it? For what kind of projects?
>How good is Harlequin's support?

IMVHO, speaking as someone who has Harlequin's LispWorks 4.0 for
Win95/NT on his home machine for personal investigative purposes:

As you may know, Harlequin's LWW is a port of their Unix LispWorks
product, which they have been selling since the late '80s.  I don't
mean that they haven't improved it over time, but rather that it's a
mature Common Lisp implementation that has proved itself in industrial
usage.

Harlequin has also had a PC Transducer, by various names, for several
years--a tool that compiles a graphical Common Lisp program written on
Unix into a Windows executable.  Thus, Harlequin has considerable
experience with native Windows widgets.  For example, their (now
somewhat dated) FreeLisp giveaway has native widgets, and it has a
copyright of 1993.

LWW introduces a rather slick new Interface Builder for Harlequin's
CAPI (a GUI API, lighter than CLIM, and portable to Harlequin's Unix
product line).  In experimenting with the Interface Builder I did
encounter a few difficulties, which Harlequin promptly remedied by
email.  (Note that part of my past work experience has been as a
stress tester!)

LWW also incorporates, as a standard part of the product, a
treeshaking application generator.  I again encountered a couple of
treeshaking difficulties--in at least one case related to the oddities
of developing on Windows 95 instead of on NT, which Harlequin and
other SDE vendors probably expect most "serious" developers to use.
Again, remedies came promptly by email.

As with any software vendor, it helps to indicate clearly what is a
minor annoyance, what is a significant obstacle, and what is a real
showstopper.  The Report Bug editor command asks you for this kind of
classification.

Note that LWW does have multithreading (a.k.a. lightweight processes a
la PROCESS-RUN-FUNCTION).  My understanding is that ACLW will not have
this until the port of Unix ACL to Win32 is complete.

Note also that Harlequin admits that its CLIM for Win95/NT is not
really ready for prime time yet.  I'm looking forward to trying it out
when it is.


Lawrence G. Mayka
·······@sprynet.com
From: David Gadbois
Subject: Re: Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
Date: 
Message-ID: <5kq7r2$3k8$1@news3.texas.net>
Hans Kratz <····@islhp7.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de> wrote:
>Does anybody have experience with Harlequin LispWorks 4.0
>for Windows?
>
>I am right now in a process of decision about what Common
>Lisp implementation to buy (Franz or Harlequin) and I have
>heard rumors that Harlequin's product is still quite buggy.
>

I bought a copy of it recently and am in the process of porting a
bunch of code to it.

Pluses:

1. No run-time delivery licensing fees.

2. Fairly inexpensive (about US$500).

3. Solid ANS Common Lisp implementation.  The purely CL parts of my
code ported with only one minor problem:  You get an error if there
are duplicate entries in the :EXPORT list of a DEFPACKAGE.

4. It comes with the CL HyperSpec (God bless KMP).

Minuses:

1. I managed to get it to lock up or disappear a couple of times.
Maybe that is W/NT's fault.

2. The interface is pretty clunky.  That is definitely W/NT's fault.

3. What documentation there is is OK, but it is mostly just short
function and macro explanations.  By contrast, the Franz documentation
covers all the nooks and crannies of their implementation:  It is
obvious that there is a lot of feedback between their tech support
folks and their docos.

For example, I have been coding up a Winsock interface (has anyone
already done one?), and it took me quite a while to realized that you
really do have to call FLI::REGISTER-MODULE in order for it to link in
the DLL.

--David Gadbois