A few questions I would appreciate any answers...
1) GUI Libraries under Powerlisp
Does anyone know of of freely available or reasonably priced libraries to
utilise the Macintosh Toolbox (especially Event Manager, Window Manager
and Dialog Manager) from Powerlisp on Macintosh (a shareware CL
implementation) ?
2) IB for Powerlisp
Does anyone know of an Interface Builder that could be used with Powerlisp ?
3) Garnet under Powerlisp ?
Has anyone managed to use Garnet under Powerlisp on Macintosh and if yes,
is it really that heavy as CMU says on their web site for the Unix version
(30MB images and over), also, does it generate MacOS 8 lookalike dialogs
or only Motif lookalike ones ?
4) Powerlisp specific newsgroup ?
Is anyone using Powerlisp at all ? I didn't seem any mentioning of it in
this newsgroup nor did I find any newsgroup dedicated to it.
thank you in advance for your comments
regards
Benjamin
--
As an anti-spam measure I have scrambled my email address here.
Remove "nospam-" and ROT13 to obtain my email address in clear text.
From: Lieven Marchand
Subject: Re: Anyone knows a GUI-SDK or GUI-builder for Powerlisp on Mac ?
Date:
Message-ID: <m3n1wbtf1x.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
···············@xntv.pbz (Benjamin Kowarsch) writes:
> Has anyone managed to use Garnet under Powerlisp on Macintosh and if yes,
> is it really that heavy as CMU says on their web site for the Unix version
> (30MB images and over), also, does it generate MacOS 8 lookalike dialogs
> or only Motif lookalike ones ?
I've only used it under Unix but the reports of it being heavy are
dated. It ran fine on my old 486 with 16MB and on my new K6-2 with
128MB it's lighter than a lot of other stuff.
--
Lieven Marchand <···@bewoner.dma.be>
If there are aliens, they play Go. -- Lasker
In article <································@ppp008-max03.twics.com>, ···············@xntv.pbz (Benjamin Kowarsch) wrote:
> A few questions I would appreciate any answers...
>
> 1) GUI Libraries under Powerlisp
...
> 2) IB for Powerlisp
...
> 3) Garnet under Powerlisp ?
...
I'm biased, but on the Mac nothing beats MCL. It's
a bit more expensive but worth every penny. It
has support for all of the above. See http://www.digitool.com/ .
> 4) Powerlisp specific newsgroup ?
>
> Is anyone using Powerlisp at all ? I didn't seem any mentioning of it in
> this newsgroup nor did I find any newsgroup dedicated to it.
>
> thank you in advance for your comments
I haven't heard much noise about PowerLisp lately.
The authors site is at http://www.corman.net/.
He has in the meantime written a Common Lisp
for Windows (http://www.corman.net/CormanLisp.html):
Corman Lisp. You might reach some people
talking about Corman Lisp at http://www.dejanews.com/~cormanlisp .
Rainer Joswig
> I'm biased, but on the Mac nothing beats MCL. It's
> a bit more expensive but worth every penny.
I have downloaded the MCL demo recently and played with it. I was not
impressed. It crashed when running the examples, it crashed when opening
the preferences and if a software does that during the evaluation phase I
junk it right away. Also, the Interface builder was not even coming close
to what I had expected on a commercial system. I do not consider it a full
Interface builder, more a tool to assist in building parts for an
interface. That would be acceptable if it was shareware, but I expect
better with a quite expensive commercial product.
To illustrate what I believe is a very good interface builder I'd like to
refer to FaceSpan, perhaps the best interface builder I have seen so far.
Unfortunately it is only for AppleScript. I had expected MCL to have
something that would at least be comparable, given the cost of their
products and the way they advertise the interface builder on their
website.
FaceSpan doesn't make half as much noise about their interface builder yet
they are worlds apart.I wish I could find something like it for Lisp on
the Mac.
On the other hand I am quite impressed with Powerlisp, I downloaded a new
version that supports PowerMac and CLOS. At a shareware fee of $50 I don't
think I will come back to MCL so quickly as I am more or less evaluating
LISP as a language to make an informed decision whether or not to use it
for serious projects in telecom revenue assurance projects (interfacing to
telephone exchanges with proprietary protocols, fraud management, revenue
analysis, billing), which would then be on more serious platforms anyway
(Tandem, Sun, HP)
While I am trying to figure out whether I find LISP viable I will have to
use it on my Macintosh, perhaps writing some small applets for our project
office, like reporting tools, PERT chart management and printing and the
like. I am not actually a developer anymore, I am the project manager. I
don't want to select a tool only to find out later that I based my
decision on hype or anti-hype.
Therefore Powerlisp on the Mac is the evaluation tool for my LISP
exploration and in order to do something useful, I will need to know how
to call the Macintosh Toolbox, an interface builder would be nice to have
as it saves time.
Thank you for your input anyway.
> He has in the meantime written a Common Lisp
> for Windows (http://www.corman.net/CormanLisp.html):
> Corman Lisp. You might reach some people
> talking about Corman Lisp at http://www.dejanews.com/~cormanlisp.
We don't do Windoze. Our clients are telecom operators who loose a hell
lot of money if any of the revenue processing systems fail. The
requirement is non-stop all the time, no downtime, no surprises. I
remember Cable & Wireless tendering for a mediation system to process a
guaranteed minimum of 200 million calls per day, with guraranteed less
than 2 seconds downtime per incident and guaranteed less than 30 seconds
accumulated downtime per year. How long would you want to leave a whole
country being able to make long distance calls on your phone bill without
being able to process and track the cost ? No vendor wanted to give the
guarantee for such volumes and downtime requirements but Tandem and DEC,
and I know even they have to struggle to make it all work. In this
environment you cannot work with machinery or people who make you believe
that a computer crash is something you have to live with, this would be
suicide. We know that software can be written failure tolerant - the use
of Windoze has proven detrimental to upholding that philosophy. Though I
appreciate that the Mac is far from being as stable as I would like to
see, Macintosh users and programmers are more likely to accept the fact
that a crash is an exception and that proper design could have prevented
it. Therefore I would not base a LISP exploration on a Windoze
implementation either, which does not in any way prejudice the quality of
the implementation, having seen Powerlisp, I am sure Roger Corman did a
fine job.
regards
Benjamin
--
As an anti-spam measure I have scrambled my email address here.
Remove "nospam-" and ROT13 to obtain my email address in clear text.
In article <································@ppp014-max03.twics.com>, ···············@xntv.pbz (Benjamin Kowarsch) wrote:
> I have downloaded the MCL demo recently and played with it. I was not
> impressed. It crashed when running the examples, it crashed when opening
> the preferences and if a software does that during the evaluation phase I
> junk it right away.
Hmm, that is not the experience I have. I'd say you might be doing
something wrong - as this is not difficult with MacOS.
Contact me privately of you have questions.
> Also, the Interface builder was not even coming close
> to what I had expected on a commercial system. I do not consider it a full
> Interface builder, more a tool to assist in building parts for an
> interface. That would be acceptable if it was shareware, but I expect
> better with a quite expensive commercial product.
Yes, the interface builder is "weak". Still it is usable
in quite some ways.
> FaceSpan doesn't make half as much noise about their interface builder yet
> they are worlds apart.I wish I could find something like it for Lisp on
> the Mac.
It's a reasonable request. There have been written numerous
GUI builders with MCL - though MCL's builtin lacks features.
Anyway many MCL users are "programming" the interface and
are not using the GUI builder tools to do that.
> On the other hand I am quite impressed with Powerlisp, I downloaded a new
> version that supports PowerMac and CLOS.
As good as PowerLisp might be, it is lightyears behind MCL.
> At a shareware fee of $50 I don't
> think I will come back to MCL so quickly as I am more or less evaluating
> LISP
Everybody who wants to write real Lisp applications on the Mac
will come back to MCL - that's my experience of the last
14 years (having worked with people who wrote large
Lisp apps on the Mac and having written code myself). You will find
out if you look closer and if you get over your initial problem.
We have seen Lisps like Procyon Common Lisp, ExperLisp, PowerLisp etc
come and go. MCL is still there - exactly because
companies have written real applications with it.
> While I am trying to figure out whether I find LISP viable I will have to
> use it on my Macintosh, perhaps writing some small applets for our project
> office, like reporting tools, PERT chart management and printing and the
> like. I am not actually a developer anymore, I am the project manager. I
> don't want to select a tool only to find out later that I based my
> decision on hype or anti-hype.
I good way to find that out would be to ask on the MCL
mailing list for reference applications you could
try out.
> of Windoze has proven detrimental to upholding that philosophy. Though I
> appreciate that the Mac is far from being as stable as I would like to
> see, Macintosh users and programmers are more likely to accept the fact
> that a crash is an exception and that proper design could have prevented
> it.
Since I'm a Mac user and developer myself since the early
days I think I know how "reliable" the Mac is.
Anyway for a lot of tasks I'm developing purely in MCL
and deploying elsewhere.
From: Todd Nathan
Subject: Re: Anyone knows a GUI-SDK or GUI-builder for Powerlisp on Mac ?
Date:
Message-ID: <7o2vdr$c86$1@sloth.swcp.com>
--
Please remove dot nospamski dot from the return address.
----------
In article <·······················@194.163.195.67>, ······@lavielle.com
(Rainer Joswig) wrote:
> In article <································@ppp014-max03.twics.com>,
> ···············@xntv.pbz (Benjamin Kowarsch) wrote:
>
>> I have downloaded the MCL demo recently and played with it. I was not
>> impressed. It crashed when running the examples, it crashed when opening
>> the preferences and if a software does that during the evaluation phase I
>> junk it right away.
>
> Hmm, that is not the experience I have. I'd say you might be doing
> something wrong - as this is not difficult with MacOS.
> Contact me privately of you have questions.
I agree, as the MacOS is not the best thing in the world to have
a development environment in. I have been a Mac head and programmer
since Lisa days, left it to go elseware for years (9) and now
I am back (because NeXT was given money to save Apple, or at
least thats IMHO and surely the way things look now), doing some
ports and having a blast and a nightmare with MCL and particularly
the MacOS. As the wonderful Rainer said, it is not hard to get
messed up with the MCL, oh I wish it was on the MacOSX. Digitool,
you folks listening here? ;')
>
>> Also, the Interface builder was not even coming close
>> to what I had expected on a commercial system. I do not consider it a full
>> Interface builder, more a tool to assist in building parts for an
>> interface. That would be acceptable if it was shareware, but I expect
>> better with a quite expensive commercial product.
>
> Yes, the interface builder is "weak". Still it is usable
> in quite some ways.
Don't like it much myself, and is nothing like the Interface Builder
of the MacOSX system (ala. NeXT and OpenStep). But if memory serves
me right, was not IB written for the Mac first, and then Steve saw it
and said, hey you goto come work with me and killed the project delivery
for the Mac, and wasn't it written in Lisp, maybe in MCL?
>
>> FaceSpan doesn't make half as much noise about their interface builder yet
>> they are worlds apart.I wish I could find something like it for Lisp on
>> the Mac.
>
> It's a reasonable request. There have been written numerous
> GUI builders with MCL - though MCL's builtin lacks features.
> Anyway many MCL users are "programming" the interface and
> are not using the GUI builder tools to do that.
Where are these multiple GUI builders? I have seen them. Please
let us know.
>
>> On the other hand I am quite impressed with Powerlisp, I downloaded a new
>> version that supports PowerMac and CLOS.
>
> As good as PowerLisp might be, it is lightyears behind MCL.
Powerlisp is nice, yet you will return, feel the force. MCL is there
and going 'strong' in this market. For what it is worth, there was a human
on the other line when I called (thanks Jennifer) and within 2 days I had
the tutorial and tech manuals out to me, and they are a nice group
of folks, although not very flexible in some regards to pricing and
purpose of usage. Wish they were, yet that may be why they are still
around after 14 years+ and have a product still, although the market
is IMHO somewhat weak, yet Mac in general is not doing all that great.
>
>> At a shareware fee of $50 I don't
>> think I will come back to MCL so quickly as I am more or less evaluating
>> LISP
>
> Everybody who wants to write real Lisp applications on the Mac
> will come back to MCL - that's my experience of the last
> 14 years (having worked with people who wrote large
> Lisp apps on the Mac and having written code myself). You will find
> out if you look closer and if you get over your initial problem.
> We have seen Lisps like Procyon Common Lisp, ExperLisp, PowerLisp etc
> come and go. MCL is still there - exactly because
> companies have written real applications with it.
Are any of these not so old, and still available either in OSource or
freeware/shareware? I would like to see them. Rainer, I didn't know
I have been talking to a seasoned old mac hound. New perspective and
respect for sure.
>
>> While I am trying to figure out whether I find LISP viable I will have to
>> use it on my Macintosh, perhaps writing some small applets for our project
>> office, like reporting tools, PERT chart management and printing and the
>> like. I am not actually a developer anymore, I am the project manager. I
>> don't want to select a tool only to find out later that I based my
>> decision on hype or anti-hype.
>
> I good way to find that out would be to ask on the MCL
> mailing list for reference applications you could
> try out.
Well, that is kinda a catch-22. Rainer, you are basically the only person
that I know who has gone to the USENET with me on questions. Thanks for
that for sure too. The mailing list has got to have more than the
cll.mcl. As for making a decision, you should definitely implement
in MCL, and then compare it to a timeline on deliverables in another
system, say like CFront or Metroworks C++/Java or whatever they are
pushing now. I am just curious, what are you working on that requires
and even makes you folks interested in working with MCL for a solution
on a Mac? Have you looked at SK8 as an GUI builder built on top of
MCL? If GUI is what you are looking for, you may want to look at SK8
as an example of what can be done, quite amazing.
>
>> of Windoze has proven detrimental to upholding that philosophy. Though I
>> appreciate that the Mac is far from being as stable as I would like to
>> see, Macintosh users and programmers are more likely to accept the fact
>> that a crash is an exception and that proper design could have prevented
>> it.
>
> Since I'm a Mac user and developer myself since the early
> days I think I know how "reliable" the Mac is.
> Anyway for a lot of tasks I'm developing purely in MCL
> and deploying elsewhere.
I would agree with this, if you like the mac for whatever reason, and
folks are sold on it, then deliver on it. Change is hard to accept
and religion is almost as hard. Macheads are fanatics for the most
part and that is why IMHO that Apple is still alive. Aside from
the vert. markets of sorts they have, they are a hurting company and the
MacOS really bites sometimes. I would personally NOT deliver on it
yet developing on it with tools to port/migrate to more stable delivery
platforms certainly is an option, and have seen it done many times,
including projects at large companies which are generally not accepting
Mac based projects at any level of the delivery cycle. So if you have
done your research, and it shows, your middle and upper management
types may be willing to sign off on such an 'experiment', and of course
if they already have seen such projects done (which I have, and Rainer
hints at having done/seen/been part of) then it is that much easier.
Good luck and happy hunting. MCL is quite amazing at times, and then
again that can be not such a good thing for some. I find it and the
language quite an interesting mix. I am learning Lisp and MCL, I have
almost 18 years of CE experience and know quite a few OO languages
and methodologies, yet I find Lisp completely different and at times
very frustrating. Yet I have hope I will click with it like I did
in the late 80's with OO technologies like ObjC and the runtime
that sits under it. We will see.
\t
PS. I have to say that I have a vested interest in SK8, as I am attempting
to get it to compile, run and expand on it and put up a web site with
SK8 information in the next couple of months. It runs fine now, but
I want it to be compiled and running under MCL 4.2 and beyond. Thats
my standard disclaimer. Thanks!
In article <············@sloth.swcp.com>, "Todd Nathan" <···············@palomablanca.net> wrote:
> the MacOS. As the wonderful Rainer said, it is not hard to get
> messed up with the MCL,
That's right. But it's not a problem of MCL, but of the
MacOS in general. MCL gives you an interactive programming
environment for the toolbox and as you make mistakes
using the toolbox, you will get problems. MCL
doesn't not try to be that heroic and check everything
you give as argument to toolbox traps - the performance
would suffer and it really can't do that. If you look at the
SK8 sources, you see that there are introducing more
runtime error checking to the toolbox interface to
make it safer to call the toolbao while being
in an interactive multimedia environment.
> Don't like it much myself, and is nothing like the Interface Builder
> of the MacOSX system (ala. NeXT and OpenStep). But if memory serves
> me right, was not IB written for the Mac first, and then Steve saw it
> and said, hey you goto come work with me and killed the project delivery
> for the Mac, and wasn't it written in Lisp, maybe in MCL?
The thing Steve Jobs saw was written in LeLisp on the Mac, AFAIK.
> Where are these multiple GUI builders? I have seen them. Please
> let us know.
SK8 is one. ;-) Well, for example in ancient
times Expertelligence (http://www.expertelligence.com/)
was offering a tool called "Action!". I was always thinking
it had some connection to the pre-Next interface builder
running on LeLisp - but I could be wrong.
> Are any of these not so old, and still available either in OSource or
> freeware/shareware? I would like to see them.
I don't know. Procyon Common Lisp for example was available
for the Mac and for Windows (long ago). Later the windows
product has been sold to Franz and it was the base for
their Allegro CL 3.0.2 on Windows. The last time I have
used Procyon CL was maybe 7 years ago.
There are some other Lisps on the Mac (XLisp / XLispstat,
DrScheme, ...).
> Well, that is kinda a catch-22. Rainer, you are basically the only person
> that I know who has gone to the USENET with me on questions. Thanks for
> that for sure too. The mailing list has got to have more than the
> cll.mcl.
Usually the info-mcl mailing list is the primary
communication tool for MCL users. The news groups are not
really developer friendly as we have quite a bit noise
here and news:comp.lang.lisp.mcl seems to still have
a broken gateway into the info-mcl mailing list.
Rainer Joswig
From: Robert Swindells
Subject: Re: Anyone knows a GUI-SDK or GUI-builder for Powerlisp on Mac ?
Date:
Message-ID: <kyaft27m5.fsf@stimpy.rjs.net>
>> Don't like it much myself, and is nothing like the Interface Builder
>> of the MacOSX system (ala. NeXT and OpenStep). But if memory serves
>> me right, was not IB written for the Mac first, and then Steve saw it
>> and said, hey you goto come work with me and killed the project delivery
>> for the Mac, and wasn't it written in Lisp, maybe in MCL?
>The thing Steve Jobs saw was written in LeLisp on the Mac, AFAIK.
I would expect he saw ExperInterfaceBuilder rather than the LeLisp
version.
I have a copy of a paper describing the LeLisp system. It predates
NeXT by several years.
>> Where are these multiple GUI builders? I have seen them. Please
>> let us know.
>SK8 is one. ;-) Well, for example in ancient
>times Expertelligence (http://www.expertelligence.com/)
>was offering a tool called "Action!". I was always thinking
>it had some connection to the pre-Next interface builder
>running on LeLisp - but I could be wrong.
Jean-Marie Hullot worked for Expertelligence after leaving INRIA
and before he designed NeXTStep.
He gave a very good talk to the British Computer Society just before
he joined NeXT.
Robert Swindells
In article <·············@stimpy.rjs.net>, Robert Swindells <···@stimpy.rjs.net> wrote:
>...
> He gave a very good talk to the British Computer Society just before
> he joined NeXT.
>
> Robert Swindells
Thanks for the info!
Rainer Joswig
> I agree, as the MacOS is not the best thing in the world to have
> a development environment in.
It is not exactly my intention to use the Mac as a development platform.
My intention is to do a little useful thing on Lisp to see whether it may
be something we could use for serious development (under Unix).
I use the Mac, because there isn't really any alternative for me. I am a
project manager, living in Japan, many projects in the Far East require
double byte language support, yet I need an English OS and English
application software. Also I need to be compatible with things like
MS-Office and MS-Project (unfortunately). Show me any OS that allows you
to use (almost) any English application (i.e.MS-Word) and you can write
Japanese on it, yet has available what you need to communicate with the
rest of the world's office users (i.e. MS-Word, PPT etc docs). Also, as I
am travelling a lot it needs to be available on a state of the art
notebook. As far I know, there is only one and that is MacOS.
There is a reason why the relative installed base of Macs in Japan is
double that of the US. Almost all long time western IT folks in Japan use
Mac.
I am not a developer I am a user. I'd like to explore Lisp and combine it
with doing something useful. Therefore I am not keen on spending a lot of
money, hence Powerlisp. But I will need to be able to create dialogs,
otherwise nothing useful would come out of it really, without a user
interface.
While I appreciate very much Rainer's help and comments regarding MCL, and
I am following up on that, I would still like to hear from folks using
Powerlisp, how they create dialogs etc. Unfortunately there seems to be no
one using it :-(
> I am back (because NeXT was given money to save Apple, or at
> least thats IMHO and surely the way things look now), ...
In my opinion that was different:
*Steve Jobs* was given money to *use* NeXT to save Apple. :-)
> and even makes you folks interested in working with MCL for a solution
> on a Mac? Have you looked at SK8 as an GUI builder built on top of MCL?
I saw references to SK8 on theweb and found it interesting, but when I
wanted to download it, all the links were broken. Anyway, that would be
something only for Mac, so out of the Scope of my current exploration. But
definitely very interesting.
> I would agree with this, if you like the mac for whatever reason, and
> folks are sold on it, then deliver on it. Change is hard to accept
> and religion is almost as hard. Macheads are fanatics for the most
> part and that is why IMHO that Apple is still alive.
I am not at all a Mac fanatic. But as a user you got to be pragmatic. I
can't bang my head against the wall all the time, just because I like a
certain technology. I have to deliver to serve my customers. When I was
still a techie, I was a VMS advocate and I liked to play with anything
that carried new ideas, the more radical the more curious it made me. One
example was the Novix 4000, remember that one ? Forth was it's machine
language, awesome at the time. Also Lisp machines and Lisp on VMS, as a
system manager, I had a huge VAXcluster with truckloads of memory to play
with, which made Lisp a really nice tech toy. And the NeXT you mentioned
definitely got my attention.
But at at the end of the day, it's got to make sense commercially. Many of
these technologies, cute as they were, weren't managed to make commercial
sense. Others, like Windoze, which are technologically awful - and I
wouldn't want to touch it with a pair of pliers - they skyrocketed.
That's why some people appear religious about the things they use. They
can't stand the fact that someone with an awfully taped together car, a
stolen engine and foul play won the formula one championship, where they
themselves played by the rules, had the fancier cars and probably even
better drivers.
I am wondering, whether LISP as a concept is that good, that it can proof
to me to be a viable commercial tool, not using a state of the art
implementation, but a fairly limited shareware as a testbed, the test of
which incorporates to do something small but useful.
Anyone, doing Powerlisp and know how to create dialogs on the Mac ... ?
rgds
Benjamin
--
As an anti-spam measure I have scrambled my email address here.
Remove "nospam-" and ROT13 to obtain my email address in clear text.
From: Reini Urban
Subject: Re: Anyone knows a GUI-SDK or GUI-builder for Powerlisp on Mac ?
Date:
Message-ID: <37a60ed2.38452051@judy.x-ray.local>
···············@xntv.pbz (Benjamin Kowarsch) wrote:
>While I appreciate very much Rainer's help and comments regarding MCL, and
>I am following up on that, I would still like to hear from folks using
>Powerlisp, how they create dialogs etc. Unfortunately there seems to be no
>one using it :-(
i talked to him recently, that was about one months ago... :)
no really, he must be on holiday or something like this with his kids.
I really advise you to try out DrScheme (besides the obvious MCL). This
has far better graphics than PowerLisp (xlisp has none) and as actively
developed and used. Roger is only doing Corman Lisp now.
Drscheme is wxwindows based, which is crossplatform compatible. and it
is completely free unlike Powerlisp. their recent alpha 100 release is a
lot of fun for me.
--
Reini
From: Steven D. Majewski
Subject: Re: Anyone knows a GUI-SDK or GUI-builder for Powerlisp on Mac ?
Date:
Message-ID: <7o78pr$4l7$1@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
In article <·················@judy.x-ray.local>,
Reini Urban <······@sbox.tu-graz.ac.at> wrote:
>
>I really advise you to try out DrScheme (besides the obvious MCL). This
>has far better graphics than PowerLisp (xlisp has none) and as actively
>developed and used.
>
xlispstat is a version of xlisp with enhancements for vector and matrix
math, statistics and interactive statistical graphics. It has very
easy to use, cross-platform graphics and GUI functions. It does not
support all the the GUI capabilities of any platform -- just the basic
common subset, and it's not Common Lisp (although it comes close to
being a compatible subset) and has a non-CLOS prototype object system.
( I don't know if this fits the needs of the original poster, but I wanted
to correct the statement that there's no graphics version of xlisp. )
See <http://www.xlispstat.org/> for more info.
---| Steven D. Majewski (804-982-0831) <·····@Virginia.EDU> |---
---| Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics |---
---| University of Virginia Health Sciences Center |---
---| P.O. Box 10011 Charlottesville, VA 22906-0011 |---
Thanks a lot for all the comments so far.
However, I am not evaluating Lisp in the traditional sense of evaluating
one or more particular implementations for one or more particular
platforms.
This is a task to follow later and then the focus will be on Unix.
I am just exploring LISP, to get a feeling for it so I can argue about its
pros and cons with my techies as they will not want to use it, I know that
already.
For that purpose I would like to write something small but useful on my Mac.
Basically, combining the necessary with the convenient.
As I have started off with Powerlisp, to do something useful I would need
to create dialogs (call the dialog and window managers in the Macintosh
Toolbox etc.), which I have no idea how to do in Powerlisp in particular
or Lisp in general.
Anyway, as it appears nobody is actually using Powerlisp, I realise, that
I have to look out for something else or I wont get any help. It's a pitty
really - seemed like a nice tool.
Benjamin
--
As an anti-spam measure I have scrambled my email address here.
Remove "nospam-" and ROT13 to obtain my email address in clear text.
From: Michael Schuerig
Subject: Re: Anyone knows a GUI-SDK or GUI-builder for Powerlisp on Mac ?
Date:
Message-ID: <1dvzfi6.25k1481uvtkvoN@[192.168.1.2]>
Benjamin Kowarsch <···············@xntv.pbz> wrote:
> I am just exploring LISP, to get a feeling for it so I can argue about its
> pros and cons with my techies as they will not want to use it, I know that
> already.
Don't just go for the feeling! If I was one of your techies I would not
care at all about how a particular language, tools, whatever feels to
you. I'd be interested to see how this new gadget makes my job easier.
So, if you wanted to impress me show off a real life prototype that
easily handles a task that almost wrecked my mind when I had to
implement it with the old tools.
A GUI isn't really part of this. Or are your really hard problems in the
GUI? I don't believe so.
Michael
--
Michael Schuerig
···············@acm.org
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/
> Don't just go for the feeling! If I was one of your techies I would not
> care at all about how a particular language, tools, whatever feels to
> you. I'd be interested to see how this new gadget makes my job easier.
> So, if you wanted to impress me show off a real life prototype that
> easily handles a task that almost wrecked my mind when I had to
> implement it with the old tools.
>
> A GUI isn't really part of this. Or are your really hard problems in the
> GUI? I don't believe so.
The core of our application is a rule engine for processing billing data.
The GUI is browser based, in Java, and that may stay that way. Anyway, I
do not intend to do anything in that direction. That's the job of the
developers.
What I have in mind is a small app that will do something for our project
office (my domain), like collecting data from MS-Project and contact and
task management and generate automatically the weekly reports that steal
everyone's time (they are usually required by steering committees). This
could again be based on a very simple rule engine, as a proof of concept.
I have already done something like that in AppleScript, but without a rule
engine, it's based on text macro expansion and templates.
Now, if I can't generate dialogs, the utility will not be of any use other
than for demo purposes, because the project administrator will not want to
deal with a command line interface, and rightly so, especially on the
Macintosh.
I hope that explains why I would like to be able to create dialogs.
Benjamin
--
As an anti-spam measure I have scrambled my email address here.
Remove "nospam-" and ROT13 to obtain my email address in clear text.
Benjamin Kowarsch <···············@xntv.pbz> wrote:
> > Don't just go for the feeling! If I was one of your techies I would not
> > care at all about how a particular language, tools, whatever feels to
> > you. I'd be interested to see how this new gadget makes my job easier.
> > So, if you wanted to impress me show off a real life prototype that
> > easily handles a task that almost wrecked my mind when I had to
> > implement it with the old tools.
> >
> > A GUI isn't really part of this. Or are your really hard problems in the
> > GUI? I don't believe so.
>
> The core of our application is a rule engine for processing billing data.
> The GUI is browser based, in Java, and that may stay that way. Anyway, I
> do not intend to do anything in that direction. That's the job of the
> developers.
>
> What I have in mind is a small app that will do something for our project
> office (my domain), like collecting data from MS-Project and contact and
> task management and generate automatically the weekly reports that steal
> everyone's time (they are usually required by steering committees). This
> could again be based on a very simple rule engine, as a proof of concept.
>
> I have already done something like that in AppleScript, but without a rule
> engine, it's based on text macro expansion and templates.
>
> Now, if I can't generate dialogs, the utility will not be of any use other
> than for demo purposes, because the project administrator will not want to
> deal with a command line interface, and rightly so, especially on the
> Macintosh.
>
>
> I hope that explains why I would like to be able to create dialogs.
Yes, it does. But I don't think it is helping your cause very much. That
kind of demo won't convince your techies to use Lisp in the future for
their rather different kinds of problems.
Michael
--
Michael Schuerig
···············@acm.org
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/
> > I hope that explains why I would like to be able to create dialogs.
>
> Yes, it does. But I don't think it is helping your cause very much. That
> kind of demo won't convince your techies to use Lisp in the future for
> their rather different kinds of problems.
Not, if I build a rule-engine for the report generator, which is my
intention. If Lisp prooves advantegous in this respect, I am happy to
settle to use it for just that (in the mediation device) and let them have
Java for all the rest.
Benjamin
--
As an anti-spam measure I have scrambled my email address here.
Remove "nospam-" and ROT13 to obtain my email address in clear text.
> I really advise you to try out DrScheme (besides the obvious MCL). This
> has far better graphics than PowerLisp (xlisp has none) and as actively
> developed and used. Roger is only doing Corman Lisp now.
Would you have the URL ?
Also, is scheme really lisp ?
I don't know anything about it but the fact that it is related to lisp.
> Drscheme is wxwindows based, which is crossplatform compatible. and it
> is completely free unlike Powerlisp. their recent alpha 100 release is a
> lot of fun for me.
I may seem ignorant, but what is "wxwindows" ?
I don't assume this is a typo and you meant X.11 ;-)
Benjamin
--
As an anti-spam measure I have scrambled my email address here.
Remove "nospam-" and ROT13 to obtain my email address in clear text.
On Tue, 03 Aug 1999 21:13:59 +0900, Benjamin Kowarsch <···············@xntv.pbz> wrote:
>I may seem ignorant, but what is "wxwindows" ?
>I don't assume this is a typo and you meant X.11 ;-)
WxWindows is a windowing API which is layered on top of Xlib, GTK (also for
Xlib), Win32, and I believe MacOS, though I'm not sure of the latter. It's
used to write GUI applications across OS boundaries.
==========================================================================
KC5TJA/6 | -| TEAM DOLPHIN |-
DM13 | Samuel A. Falvo II
QRP-L #1447 | http://www.dolphin.openprojects.net
Oceanside, CA |......................................................
···············@xntv.pbz (Benjamin Kowarsch) writes:
> > I really advise you to try out DrScheme (besides the obvious MCL). This
> > has far better graphics than PowerLisp (xlisp has none) and as actively
> > developed and used. Roger is only doing Corman Lisp now.
>
> Would you have the URL ?
MzScheme, DrScheme and the rest are developed by Rice University's PLT
Group, at http://www.cs.rice.edu/CS/PLT/
> Also, is scheme really lisp ?
This depends on your definition of "Lisp", which is controversial in
this group. If you view Lisp as a language family, then you might say
that Common Lisp and Scheme are part of the language family, in much
the same way that Modula-2, Ada and C are part of the Algol family.
I don't find this definition of language families very helpful,
because it leaves implicit what properties are necessary to belong to
a language family. Is it syntax? Scoping rules? Communities?
I'd rather view Common Lisp and Scheme as two programming languages,
which share some traditions, values and people, but which differ
wildly in other traditions, values and people. Look up Kent
M. Pitman's postings on the CL and Scheme communities in this group
via deja.com to get more enlightened comments about this.
In my experience, since CL and Scheme do indeed cater to different
communities and value systems, there is not that much overlap in
uses. Mostly, people that come to the greater "Lisp community" will
at first stradle between CL and Scheme (and possibly other members of
the "family", like Emacs Lisp, or Dylan or others), but will then
mostly settle down where they find that their values are catered for.
After that, there is often just as little use of the other choices as
there is use of other languages...
Given what uses for Lisp you seem to be investigating, I'd suggest you
take a look at Scheme, but I'd guess that probably CL would be a more
natural choice in the end.
I'd also really suggest that you evaluate CL not based on only one
implementation, since many factors of language suitability are not
based on the language itself, but on attributes of the (available)
implementation(s).
IIRC, there exists now a version of Franz's ACL for Linux on PPC
(don't know if this means MkLinux or native Linux or both), so
maybe installing a small Linux distribution might be an option (in
the future) for trying Franz's ACL. I'd like to suggest further
implementations, but apart from the normal Mac implementations and
this option, I'm not currently aware of other major implementations
that might suit your platform needs.
> I may seem ignorant, but what is "wxwindows" ?
> I don't assume this is a typo and you meant X.11 ;-)
wxWindows is a cross-platform C++ GUI framework, which works under
X11, Windows, MacOS and possibly others, IIRC.
Regs, Pierre.
--
Pierre Mai <····@acm.org> PGP and GPG keys at your nearest Keyserver
"One smaller motivation which, in part, stems from altruism is Microsoft-
bashing." [Microsoft memo, see http://www.opensource.org/halloween1.html]
From: Rob Warnock
Subject: Re: Anyone knows a GUI-SDK or GUI-builder for Powerlisp on Mac ?
Date:
Message-ID: <7o94h8$1p904@fido.engr.sgi.com>
Pierre R. Mai <····@acm.org> wrote:
+---------------
| MzScheme, DrScheme and the rest are developed by Rice University's PLT
| Group, at http://www.cs.rice.edu/CS/PLT/
...
| wxWindows is a cross-platform C++ GUI framework, which works under
| X11, Windows, MacOS and possibly others, IIRC.
+---------------
And just to complete [or confuse?] the picture, the GUI-builder portion of the
PLT family is called "MrEd" <URL:http://www.cs.rice.edu/CS/PLT/packages/mred/>
and can be used without DrScheme, if you like, to build standalone GUI apps.
MrEd sits on top of MzScheme (and wxWindows) and provides:
- A windowing toolbox for creating windows and menus
- A drawing toolbox for drawing to windows, bitmaps,
and printer devices
- An editor toolbox for creating multimedia editors
MrEd's GUI toolbox is integrated with MzScheme's thread system.
MrEd dispatches events via synchronous (single-threaded) callback
procedures, but also supports multiple eventspaces, which permit
asynchronous (multi-threaded) event handling among different sets
of windows.
If I understand it correctly (and I may not), the layering is something
roughly (and with poor "ASCII art") like this:
DrScheme
| \
| Aries
| Zodiac
| / McMicMac [Hmmm... In the full DrScheme stack,
MrEd / doesn't MzScheme need to take input
| \______ *from* McMicMac too...?]
| / \
MzScheme wxWindows
/ | \\ / | \
/ | \\ __ | \
/ | / \ \_|____\
/ | / \ | \\
DOS, Unix+X Win95/98/NT MacOS
BeOS, or
OSKit
\______/
No window support
in these
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock, 8L-855 ····@sgi.com
Applied Networking http://reality.sgi.com/rpw3/
Silicon Graphics, Inc. Phone: 650-933-1673
1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy. FAX: 650-933-0511
Mountain View, CA 94043 PP-ASEL-IA
* Benjamin Kowarsch wrote:
> I may seem ignorant, but what is "wxwindows" ?
> I don't assume this is a typo and you meant X.11 ;-)
wxwindows is a package which provides a portable API (from C/C++) to
Windows & X11 (and possibly to the Mac too, there was at least some
work in that direction).
--tim
From: Chris Double
Subject: Re: Anyone knows a GUI-SDK or GUI-builder for Powerlisp on Mac ?
Date:
Message-ID: <wkwvvesgub.fsf@xtra.co.nz>
···············@xntv.pbz (Benjamin Kowarsch) writes:
>
> Anyone, doing Powerlisp and know how to create dialogs on the Mac ... ?
>
Have you tried contacting Roger Corman, the author of PowerLisp. He
may be able to help you in that area. In the CormanLisp documentation
his email is listed as 'lisp (at) corman (dot) net'
Chris.
> > Anyone, doing Powerlisp and know how to create dialogs on the Mac ... ?
> >
>
> Have you tried contacting Roger Corman, the author of PowerLisp. He
> may be able to help you in that area. In the CormanLisp documentation
> his email is listed as 'lisp (at) corman (dot) net'
Yes I have tried that about 10 days ago, but I figured he must be busy as
I did not get a reply. Probably he's getting more email than he can keep
up with.
Who could blame him.
benjamin
--
As an anti-spam measure I have scrambled my email address here.
Remove "nospam-" and ROT13 to obtain my email address in clear text.
From: Paolo Amoroso
Subject: Re: Anyone knows a GUI-SDK or GUI-builder for Powerlisp on Mac ?
Date:
Message-ID: <37a83d76.64506@news.mclink.it>
On Mon, 02 Aug 1999 01:07:09 +0900, ···············@xntv.pbz (Benjamin
Kowarsch) wrote:
> think I will come back to MCL so quickly as I am more or less evaluating
> LISP as a language to make an informed decision whether or not to use it
> for serious projects in telecom revenue assurance projects (interfacing to
> telephone exchanges with proprietary protocols, fraud management, revenue
> analysis, billing), which would then be on more serious platforms anyway
> (Tandem, Sun, HP)
I'm not an expert in the field--an euphemism for "I haven't a clue"--but
your words triggered a reference to a paper you might find interesting:
"Using Common Lisp to Model and Validate Mission Critical Software"
David Lamkins
Proceedings of the "Lisp in the Mainstream - 40th Anniversary of Lisp"
Conference, 1998 - http://www.franz.com/elugm99/conference/past.html
Here's the abstract:
"At DRC [Dynamic Research Corporation], we used Common Lisp to build an
independent Model of a large C++ system, then compared the production
system's operation to that of the model. This exposed several latent flaws
in the production code, which we were able to correct before delivering the
system to our customer. The simplicity and compactness of the Lisp model
was an aid to understanding and validating system operation. Two thousand
lines of Common Lisp code captured the essential features of 30-40 thousand
lines of C++ code. The model's throughput was initially within a fraction
of three of the production system when executed on identical platforms. At
the end of the eight-week project, one simple optimization reduced the
performance difference to less than ten percent. Thanks to our positive
experiences, we anticipate additional uses of the model code as: a testbed
for new feature development, a portable sales tool deployed on laptop
computers, and a core around which a low cost product can be developed for
a new target market."
The large C++ system mentioned in the paper is a telecommunications fraud
detection system. David Lamkins is an MCL user, but I don't know whether he
used MCL for the project.
Paolo
--
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it>
* Paolo Amoroso wrote:
> "Using Common Lisp to Model and Validate Mission Critical Software"
> David Lamkins
> Proceedings of the "Lisp in the Mainstream - 40th Anniversary of Lisp"
> Conference, 1998 - http://www.franz.com/elugm99/conference/past.html
> The large C++ system mentioned in the paper is a telecommunications fraud
> detection system. David Lamkins is an MCL user, but I don't know whether he
> used MCL for the project.
He did, and this was an extremely cool paper I thought.
--tim
From: William Deakin
Subject: Re: Anyone knows a GUI-SDK or GUI-builder for Powerlisp on Mac ?
Date:
Message-ID: <37A804D9.99849B9C@pindar.com>
Paolo Amoroso wrote:
> "Using Common Lisp to Model and Validate Mission Critical Software"
> David Lamkins
> Proceedings of the "Lisp in the Mainstream - 40th Anniversary of Lisp"
> Conference, 1998 - http://www.franz.com/elugm99/conference/past.html
This looked very interesting so I followed the link and got a 404 :-(
:-) will
In article <·················@pindar.com>, ········@pindar.com wrote:
> Paolo Amoroso wrote:
>
> > "Using Common Lisp to Model and Validate Mission Critical Software"
> > David Lamkins
> > Proceedings of the "Lisp in the Mainstream - 40th Anniversary of Lisp"
> > Conference, 1998 - http://www.franz.com/elugm99/conference/past.html
>
> This looked very interesting so I followed the link and got a 404 :-(
Try http://www.franz.com/lugm99/conference/past.html
But the paper is not there.
You might want to look at:
http://psg.com/~dlamkins/left/DRC_LUGM.html
From: William Deakin
Subject: Re: Anyone knows a GUI-SDK or GUI-builder for Powerlisp on Mac ?
Date:
Message-ID: <37A8233E.DE034F30@pindar.com>