Software Scavenger wrote:
> Is it possible to statically link compiled C code into a LWW image
> instead of having it in a DLL?
Not sure. Have you asked xanalys?
:)w
Will Deakin <···········@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<················@hotmail.com>...
> Software Scavenger wrote:
>
> > Is it possible to statically link compiled C code into a LWW image
> > instead of having it in a DLL?
> Not sure. Have you asked xanalys?
No, but they're welcome to answer, if they read this forum. If they
don't read this forum, I have to wonder why. Has this become just a
forum for personal bickering? Has the main Lisp forum moved
elsewhere? Or has Lisp become so unpopular now that there is no
longer any need for a centralized forum?
The idea of a forum such as this is that everyone can benefit from the
discussions. It's not just for one person to ask private technical
questions of another person. Clearly, whatever the answer is to my
question, people can benefit from reading it here. They might not
even have reached the point of verbalizing the question, but the
discussion might give them useful hints for their own problems. And
individuals might contribute insight beyond whatever the vendor's
answers might be.
For those reasons, all technical questions should be asked here first,
before even thinking of asking the vendor directly. Besides, we need
to do whatever we can to increase the ratio of technical discussion to
personal bickering.
To keep this message on topic, I will add more questions about C code
in DLL's: Does anyone know how long the various versions of Microsoft
Windows tend to take to dispatch a call to a function in a DLL? Could
this be a major factor in the slowness of calling a foreign function?
If so, could some kind of static linking help?
* Software Scavenger wrote:
> No, but they're welcome to answer, if they read this forum. If they
> don't read this forum, I have to wonder why. Has this become just a
> forum for personal bickering? Has the main Lisp forum moved
> elsewhere? Or has Lisp become so unpopular now that there is no
> longer any need for a centralized forum?
Vendors typically have support mechanisms which involve, for instance,
mailing some address which enters the problem into a some kind of
fault tracking system and so on. They generally don't use newsgroups
for this. While it's very nice that (some of?) the vendors read (and
post to) c.l.l I think it's an absurd idea to assume there is any
obligation at all on them to be filtering it for potential bug
reports. There are also a fair number of reasons why a vendor might
not want to respond in an open forum (although of course it's nice
when they do as it increases the signal/noise ratio...).
> The idea of a forum such as this is that everyone can benefit from the
> discussions. It's not just for one person to ask private technical
> questions of another person. Clearly, whatever the answer is to my
> question, people can benefit from reading it here. They might not
> even have reached the point of verbalizing the question, but the
> discussion might give them useful hints for their own problems. And
> individuals might contribute insight beyond whatever the vendor's
> answers might be.
Yes, this is true. And c.l.l at its best (which it doesn't seem to be
at the moment) serves this purpose very well, I think. But it's not a
substitute for a support line.
--tim
Tim Bradshaw wrote:
> it's not a
> substitute for a support line.
>
> --tim
Very well said.
Thanks Tim.
Cheers
Rolf Mach
--
__________________________________________________________________________________________
XANALYS - www.xanalys.com
Data Analysis and Lisp Development Tools
Software zur Datenanalyse und Lisp Entwicklungsumgebungen
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Rolf Mach
Business Development & Sales Manager, Europe
An der Schaafhansenwiese 6
D-65428 Ruesselsheim, Germany
Phone ++49 +6142 938197
Fax ++49 +6142 938199
·····@xanalys.com
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Watson - PowerCase - Quenza - LispWorks
Tim Bradshaw <···@cley.com> wrote in message news:<···············@cley.com>...
> for this. While it's very nice that (some of?) the vendors read (and
> post to) c.l.l I think it's an absurd idea to assume there is any
> obligation at all on them to be filtering it for potential bug
> reports. There are also a fair number of reasons why a vendor might
> not want to respond in an open forum (although of course it's nice
> when they do as it increases the signal/noise ratio...).
Bug reports aren't relevant to this thread. The issue was whether
Lispworks can do static linking of foreign functions as an alternative
to DLL's. If it can't, it's no big deal, and certainly not a bug.
The subject line has the word "Lispworks" in it, and of course Xanalys
is free to ignore it, but they can hardly complain that they have to
do a lot of filtering to find such subject lines, as they could simply
do a global search for "Lispworks". So if they ignore it, it's only
because they don't care to answer such questions here, not because
it's hard to find them. Maybe they don't want to answer questions
about features Lispworks doesn't have, because such discussions might
be construed to reflect negatively on Lispworks, or maybe they don't
consider this forum important enough to bother. But whatever their
reason, it has nothing to do with bug reports and nothing to do with
difficulty of filtering messages.
* Software Scavenger wrote:
> Tim Bradshaw <···@cley.com> wrote in message news:<···············@cley.com>...
>> for this. While it's very nice that (some of?) the vendors read (and
>> post to) c.l.l I think it's an absurd idea to assume there is any
>> obligation at all on them to be filtering it for potential bug
>> reports. There are also a fair number of reasons why a vendor might
>> not want to respond in an open forum (although of course it's nice
>> when they do as it increases the signal/noise ratio...).
> Bug reports aren't relevant to this thread.
Sorry, s/bug reports/support issues/ in my article.
I can't, frankly, be bothered responding to the rest of your article.
Work for an organisation that does support sometime and you'll
understand.
--tim
"Software Scavenger" <··········@mailandnews.com> wrote
[irrelevant stuff deleted...]
> To keep this message on topic, I will add more questions about C code
> in DLL's: Does anyone know how long the various versions of Microsoft
> Windows tend to take to dispatch a call to a function in a DLL? Could
> this be a major factor in the slowness of calling a foreign function?
> If so, could some kind of static linking help?
Depending on how you load the DLL, there is 0 or 1 indirection to call a
function so no performance bottleneck.
Marc
Software Scavenger wrote:
> No, but they're welcome to answer, if they read this forum. If they
> don't read this forum, I have to wonder why.
...and if they do read this forum, I have to sometimes wonder why[1]
> Or has Lisp become so unpopular now that there is no longer
any > need for a centralized forum?
Hmmm. Applying the Socratic method[1], this statement appears to
be predicated on the premise that c.l.l. is a centralised forum.
I might argue that it isn't. Then I could ask if it is correct to
judge the popularity of a computer language on the nature and
popularity of a related usenet forum...
> The idea of a forum such as this is that everyone can benefit from the
> discussions. It's not just for one person to ask private technical
> questions of another person. Clearly, whatever the answer is to my
> question, people can benefit from reading it here. They might not
> even have reached the point of verbalizing the question, but the
> discussion might give them useful hints for their own problems. And
> individuals might contribute insight beyond whatever the vendor's
> answers might be.
Sure. I agree. But, first, I humbly suggest you take a chill
pill. More than this, I strongly agree with what you say here.
Yes, this is an open forum. And, yes, it is good to use this
forum to bounce ideas off people.
But as an example, somebody might suggest that you talk to
xanalys support. And if they come back with a good response,
maybe you could post that too and *share* this information. This
is what *I* would do.
However, is your agressive and narky response to a -- albeit a
touch flippant -- post, conducive to sharing?
> For those reasons, all technical questions should be asked
here > first, before even thinking of asking the vendor directly.
No. I would suggest that you did *both*.
> Besides, we need to do whatever we can to increase the ratio
> of technical discussion to personal bickering.
Yes! This I agree wholeheartedly!
:|w
[1] ;)
Will Deakin <···········@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<················@hotmail.com>...
> But as an example, somebody might suggest that you talk to
> xanalys support. And if they come back with a good response,
> maybe you could post that too and *share* this information. This
> is what *I* would do.
Lisp is more of a meta-language than an ordinary language. It's about
programs that write programs, etc. Likewise, Lisp programmers are
more into meta-answers than ordinary answers. If ordinary answers to
technical questions were provided, we wouldn't have all these
interesting discussions about whether it's better to ask a question in
the forum or on a support line, or whether a question is the correct
question to ask, or the question shows the wrong attitude, or whether
a Lisp vendor should answer technical questions in the forum or only
on a support line. Without such meta-discussions, and/or without all
the usual personal bickering, comp.lang.lisp would not be the same
forum at all.
You want me to share concrete technical information and destroy the
very character of comp.lang.lisp?
Software Scavenger wrote:
> Lisp is more of a meta-language than an ordinary language. It's
> about programs that write programs, etc. Likewise, Lisp programmers
> are more into meta-answers than ordinary answers. If ordinary
> answers to technical questions were provided, we wouldn't have all
> these interesting discussions about whether it's better to ask a
> question in the forum or on a support line, or whether a question is
> the correct question to ask, or the question shows the wrong
> attitude, or whether a Lisp vendor should answer technical questions
> in the forum or only on a support line.
(laughs) -- touch�. This is spot on. This newsgroup is as much about
questioning questions about questions than answering questions...
> Without such meta-discussions, and/or without all the usual
> personal bickering, comp.lang.lisp would not be the same forum
> at all.
Absolutely. (I suppose I have a meta-aggenda -- maybe a hidden
meta-aggenda[1] -- involving wooly liberal rubbish like: if we were
less rude[2] we could back on track and start to discuss the important
issues. Like how many sexp's can fit on the head of a pin or what is
the sound of one lamda expression executing...)
> You want me to share concrete technical information and destroy
> the very character of comp.lang.lisp?
I'm not sure it would be well recieved -- for all the excellent
reasons you cite -- however it would be interesting to try this
approach. But only as an experiment in meta-logical usenet posting.
:)w
[1] would this make this a meta-meta-aggenda? I am also aware that
this is singularly futile...
[2] Although I'm not sure rude is right -- maybe aggressive or
something. Good old fashioned scarcasm, personal abuse and swearing is
fine by me.
··········@mailandnews.com (Software Scavenger) writes:
> Will Deakin <···········@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<················@hotmail.com>...
>
> > But as an example, somebody might suggest that you talk to
> > xanalys support. And if they come back with a good response,
> > maybe you could post that too and *share* this information. This
> > is what *I* would do.
>
> Lisp is more of a meta-language than an ordinary language. It's about
> programs that write programs, etc. Likewise, Lisp programmers are
> more into meta-answers than ordinary answers. If ordinary answers to
> technical questions were provided, we wouldn't have all these
> interesting discussions about whether it's better to ask a question in
> the forum or on a support line, or whether a question is the correct
> question to ask, or the question shows the wrong attitude, or whether
> a Lisp vendor should answer technical questions in the forum or only
> on a support line.
In a separate message on this thread, you said that the thread was not
about support, but about a specific question. If so, why did you bring
up the meta-issue? Why didn't you just ask Xanalys the actual question,
as recommended by Will Deakin (twice, at least)? Is it because you have
their free product and are not paying for support? If so, why not try
anyway?
--
Duane Rettig Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/ (www)
1995 University Ave Suite 275 Berkeley, CA 94704
Phone: (510) 548-3600; FAX: (510) 548-8253 ·····@Franz.COM (internet)
Duane Rettig <·····@franz.com> wrote in message news:<·············@beta.franz.com>...
> In a separate message on this thread, you said that the thread was not
> about support, but about a specific question. If so, why did you bring
> up the meta-issue? Why didn't you just ask Xanalys the actual question,
> as recommended by Will Deakin (twice, at least)? Is it because you have
> their free product and are not paying for support? If so, why not try
> anyway?
It's really not an important enough question to me to even ask it more
than once. The only reason I'm still participating in this thread is
that I have some interest in the issue of private support vs forum
support. If they're answering questions free of charge, wouldn't it
be more efficient and effective to answer them in public? By
answering them in public, they would encourage public discussion, from
which they might learn something, and which might take the place of a
lot of their most tedious support work. They can just monitor the
forum and step in whenever there is an unanswered or incorrectly
answered question. That's the main issue at this point. The original
question was very close to just being idle curiosity, and I lost
interest fast when the thread got so far off topic. But the issue of
private vs forum support is far more important, because it can make a
big difference to the future of Lisp. An active forum focused on
technical issues helps people gain confidence that their future
concerns will get attention, and that's the kind of confidence that
helps them take the plunge into getting heavily involved before
learning enough to really understand the extent of their involvement.
We need to do everything we can to encourage more technical discussion
and less personal bickering and off topic stuff. When people know the
forum is monitored by people who know technical answers, they're
encouraged to ask more technical questions, which increases the amount
of technical discussion vs off topic. The more time people spend in
technial discussion, the less time they have for off topic.
From: Duane Rettig
Subject: Meta-Issue about Bickering about Support (was: Re: Lispworks FLI)
Date:
Message-ID: <4elk76ida.fsf_-_@beta.franz.com>
··········@mailandnews.com (Software Scavenger) writes:
> Duane Rettig <·····@franz.com> wrote in message
news:<·············@beta.franz.com>...
>
> > In a separate message on this thread, you said that the thread was not
> > about support, but about a specific question. If so, why did you bring
> > up the meta-issue? Why didn't you just ask Xanalys the actual question,
> > as recommended by Will Deakin (twice, at least)? Is it because you have
> > their free product and are not paying for support? If so, why not try
> > anyway?
>
> It's really not an important enough question to me to even ask it more
> than once. ...
> ... That's the main issue at this point.
I agree completely. This thread should have stopped after the first
three to five sentences, when your question was answered (though
obviously not in the way you liked):
>> Software Scavenger wrote:
>>
>> Will Deakin <···········@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:<················@hotmail.com>...
>> > Software Scavenger wrote:
>> >
>> > > Is it possible to statically link compiled C code into a LWW image
>> > > instead of having it in a DLL?
>> > Not sure. Have you asked xanalys?
>>
>> No, ...
This is where the thread should have stopped, or perhaps you should
have changed the subject line or posted another article with a
new subject.
> The original
> question was very close to just being idle curiosity,
I'll go for that,
> and I lost
> interest fast when the thread got so far off topic.
Hardly. Out of 12 articles in the thread, you posted 5 of them.
Alright, I'll give you the first one, so four articles out of 12.
That is a strange way to demonstrate loss of interest. And as for
the thread getting so far off topic, you did those honors yourself,
in your second article. Remember the article I quoted above, where
the thread should have ended? Well, you didn't end the thread,
but added four paragraphs of mostly off-topic material. Note that
you brought up the subject of bickering yourself, and in the second
article you wrote on the thread! And on both the first and third
paragraph, no less:
... but they're welcome to answer, if they read this forum. If they
>> don't read this forum, I have to wonder why. Has this become just a
>> forum for personal bickering? Has the main Lisp forum moved
>> elsewhere? Or has Lisp become so unpopular now that there is no
>> longer any need for a centralized forum?
This first paragraph sets the tone. The words "personal bickering"
and "unpopular" are loaded words that put readers on the defensive.
What else would you expect?
>> The idea of a forum such as this is that everyone can benefit from the
>> discussions. It's not just for one person to ask private technical
>> questions of another person. Clearly, whatever the answer is to my
>> question, people can benefit from reading it here. They might not
>> even have reached the point of verbalizing the question, but the
>> discussion might give them useful hints for their own problems. And
>> individuals might contribute insight beyond whatever the vendor's
>> answers might be.
Ah, OK, here is some real meat. But if you wanted a discussion about
support and discussions, you should have made it the start of a new
thread, with a new subject line. This has nothing to do with LW FLI
specifically.
>> For those reasons, all technical questions should be asked here first,
>> before even thinking of asking the vendor directly. Besides, we need
>> to do whatever we can to increase the ratio of technical discussion to
>> personal bickering.
Half and half, here. Still on the negative side, but at least some meat
for discussion (I would say that I disagree with that first statement
completely, but that would be off-topic to the new subject line :-)
>> To keep this message on topic, I will add more questions about C code
>> in DLL's: Does anyone know how long the various versions of Microsoft
>> Windows tend to take to dispatch a call to a function in a DLL? Could
>> this be a major factor in the slowness of calling a foreign function?
>> If so, could some kind of static linking help?
Ah, so finally we have an attempt to move things back on topic.
If you had asked me to proofread your article before posting,
I would have advised you to lose most of the first three
paragraphs.
My own take on this whole thread is not that many people are bickering,
but that many people hold a common viewpoint that is different from
your own, and it has surprised and bothered you.
Back to the article to which I'm responding.
> The only reason I'm still participating in this thread is
> that I have some interest in the issue of private support vs forum
> support. If they're answering questions free of charge, wouldn't it
> be more efficient and effective to answer them in public? By
> answering them in public, they would encourage public discussion, from
> which they might learn something, and which might take the place of a
> lot of their most tedious support work. They can just monitor the
> forum and step in whenever there is an unanswered or incorrectly
> answered question. That's the main issue at this point. The original
> question was very close to just being idle curiosity, and I lost
> interest fast when the thread got so far off topic. But the issue of
> private vs forum support is far more important, because it can make a
> big difference to the future of Lisp. An active forum focused on
> technical issues helps people gain confidence that their future
> concerns will get attention, and that's the kind of confidence that
> helps them take the plunge into getting heavily involved before
> learning enough to really understand the extent of their involvement.
OK. This is definitely a worthwhile topic for discussion, and I think
you should reframe it and post it as the start of the thread whose
topic you are _really_ interested in.
> We need to do everything we can to encourage more technical discussion
> and less personal bickering and off topic stuff. When people know the
> forum is monitored by people who know technical answers, they're
> encouraged to ask more technical questions, which increases the amount
> of technical discussion vs off topic. The more time people spend in
> technial discussion, the less time they have for off topic.
The secret weapon against bickering is not to bicker!
--
Duane Rettig Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/ (www)
1995 University Ave Suite 275 Berkeley, CA 94704
Phone: (510) 548-3600; FAX: (510) 548-8253 ·····@Franz.COM (internet)
Duane Rettig <·····@franz.com> wrote in message news:<················@beta.franz.com>...
> OK. This is definitely a worthwhile topic for discussion, and I think
> you should reframe it and post it as the start of the thread whose
> topic you are _really_ interested in.
What I'm really interested in is having technical questions about
various implementations of Lisp answered on comp.lang.lisp. When
someone says "ask the vendor" they imply that the question is not
appropriate here and/or that the vendors don't care enough about
comp.lang.lisp to monitor it for such questions. Why doesn't this
bother everyone? For this forum to be what it should be, people
should be strongly encouraged to ask technical questions here. But
how much encouragement is it when the vendors ignore the questions,
even when nobody else can answer them? And when people post responses
that seem to imply the questions aren't appropriate here?
In article <····························@posting.google.com>,
Software Scavenger wrote:
> Duane Rettig <·····@franz.com> wrote in message news:
> <················@beta.franz.com>...
>
>> OK. This is definitely a worthwhile topic for discussion, and I think
>> you should reframe it and post it as the start of the thread whose
>> topic you are _really_ interested in.
>
> What I'm really interested in is having technical questions about
> various implementations of Lisp answered on comp.lang.lisp. When
> someone says "ask the vendor" they imply that the question is not
> appropriate here and/or that the vendors don't care enough about
No they do not, what they are telling you is go ask the company that
is the keeper of the truth for that product to get some truth. And it
helps the company use help as a tool to drive product/documentation
improvements, fix what causes the most calls/emails. Also there is a
cost issue, the vendors would have to have fairly senior level people
for this task and that costs more money then having it routed to a jr
level person who follows a script to resolve the problem,
open ticket
classify mail
check knoledge base
ask supervisor/lead
then bump to development if you have not found an answer
and get the answer in the knoledge base for next time.
> comp.lang.lisp to monitor it for such questions. Why doesn't this
> bother everyone? For this forum to be what it should be, people
> should be strongly encouraged to ask technical questions here. But
no one is saying do not ask it here, they are saying there is a better
place to ask if you want the best possable answer
> how much encouragement is it when the vendors ignore the questions,
> even when nobody else can answer them? And when people post responses
> that seem to imply the questions aren't appropriate here?
First has the vendor ignored you when you asked them, in the way they
asked you to, for help? And do you have the right to even ask(ie did
you pay for support)? The person at the vendor is doing this as part
of their job, it cost the company money to answer your question. If
you do not have a licence you have not helped pay that persons wages
so do not get pissed that the company will not let them work for you.
marc
From: Will Deakin
Subject: Re: Meta-Issue about Bickering about Support (was: Re: Lispworks FLI)
Date:
Message-ID: <3C5A56F3.5010403@hotmail.com>
Software Scavenger wrote:
> What I'm really interested in is having technical questions about
> various implementations of Lisp answered on comp.lang.lisp.
Agreed.
> When someone says "ask the vendor" they imply that the question is
> not appropriate here and/or that the vendors don't care enough about
> comp.lang.lisp to monitor it for such questions.
No, this is wrong. For the reasons I gave in an earlier post. More
than this, this is *rubbish*.
> Why doesn't this bother everyone?
*If* what you said was true, it would, but since it is *not* true then
what is there to get bothered about?
[...elided some more missing-the-point...]
:|w
··········@mailandnews.com (Software Scavenger) writes:
> Will Deakin <···········@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<················@hotmail.com>...
>
>> But as an example, somebody might suggest that you talk to
>> xanalys support. And if they come back with a good response,
>> maybe you could post that too and *share* this information. This
>> is what *I* would do.
>
> Lisp is more of a meta-language than an ordinary language. It's about
> programs that write programs, etc. Likewise, Lisp programmers are
> more into meta-answers than ordinary answers. If ordinary answers to
> technical questions were provided, we wouldn't have all these
> interesting discussions about whether it's better to ask a question in
> the forum or on a support line, or whether a question is the correct
> question to ask, or the question shows the wrong attitude, or whether
> a Lisp vendor should answer technical questions in the forum or only
> on a support line. Without such meta-discussions, and/or without all
> the usual personal bickering, comp.lang.lisp would not be the same
> forum at all.
>
With all these `meta's I'm surprised that you forgot metaprogramming :)
And I believe that ML and its derivaties O'Caml and SML have already
extensively used a form of the term `meta-language'. :)
> You want me to share concrete technical information and destroy the
> very character of comp.lang.lisp?
--
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