From: Laurent PERON
Subject: Xanalys Lispworks opinions wanted
Date: 
Message-ID: <3D1C2D71.5040508@free.fr>
Hello,

My company wants to buy a commercial C.Lisp system.
I'd be glad to collect some opinions about Lispworks,
which I have never used.

Also, anybody has an idea why it is so much cheaper
than AllegroCL ?

Thank you.

Laurent PERON

From: Greg Menke
Subject: Re: Xanalys Lispworks opinions wanted
Date: 
Message-ID: <m3bs9vbna0.fsf@europa.pienet>
> 
> My company wants to buy a commercial C.Lisp system.
> I'd be glad to collect some opinions about Lispworks,
> which I have never used.

Its a nice environment- though coming from C/C++, it takes a little
getting used to- Allegro probably does as well.  I bought a copy of LW
because the price was right & I was working on a program and wanted
the compiler & to work with graphics programming in Lisp.  Both are
possible with the free Lisps, but being a newbie, getting things like
that rolling was(is) still beyond me.  LW is certainly convienent.  I
wish my job would allow me to use it more frequently (though I've all
but abandoned C/C++ for writing code at home).


> Also, anybody has an idea why it is so much cheaper
> than AllegroCL ?
> 

Franz uses a different pricing arrangement & I suppose LW's base price
lets them penetrate the hobbyist/casual user market.  I'd suggest
downloading the trial versions of both, using them, and then pick one.
If you buy LW with all the options, its price is pretty much in line
with what Allegro's is sometimes asserted to be.

Greg Menke
From: Espen Vestre
Subject: Re: Xanalys Lispworks opinions wanted
Date: 
Message-ID: <kwhejn379x.fsf@merced.netfonds.no>
Greg Menke <············@mindspring.com> writes:

> If you buy LW with all the options, its price is pretty much in line
> with what Allegro's is sometimes asserted to be.

Not when you actually start to _use_ the programs you've developed!
LW runtimes are free (or inexpensive, for some unix versions).
-- 
  (espen)
From: alex
Subject: Re: Xanalys Lispworks opinions wanted
Date: 
Message-ID: <633cd61d.0206281117.454afeac@posting.google.com>
Laurent PERON <·············@free.fr> wrote in message news:<················@free.fr>...
> Hello,
> 
> My company wants to buy a commercial C.Lisp system.
> I'd be glad to collect some opinions about Lispworks,
> which I have never used.
> 
> Also, anybody has an idea why it is so much cheaper
> than AllegroCL ?
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Laurent PERON


Lispworks is decent but not great.  For my purposes, I actually found
that CMU lisp  works better, though it is unix only which may be a
problem.  Lispworks has GUI that is good when it works.  However(on my
unix box), it seems that the GUI's multithreading is funky as it
basically freezes for a while when a long statement starts running and
does not respond until the execution stops.  Sometimes, it is possible
to break the execution (if I want to change something); other times,
it is not and the whole lisp has to be killed.  That's quite annoying,
though happens rarely.

Performance is worse than CMUCL's for what I do -- a bunch of
numerical computations.  My code relies on CONSes and vectors about
equally; it runs about three fold faster on CMUCL.

I haven't tried allegro so I can not comment on it.  Sorry.

Alex
From: Nils Goesche
Subject: Re: Xanalys Lispworks opinions wanted
Date: 
Message-ID: <lkofdvdu8g.fsf@pc022.bln.elmeg.de>
Laurent PERON <·············@free.fr> writes:

> My company wants to buy a commercial C.Lisp system.  I'd be glad to
> collect some opinions about Lispworks, which I have never used.

Get the trial edition and see for yourself.  I am very satisfied with
LispWorks, and at least since version 4.2 it also generates very fast
code.  The support is excellent, and for the few bugs I found they
mailed me a patch within days every time.

> Also, anybody has an idea why it is so much cheaper than AllegroCL ?

I know nothing about ACL, sorry.

Regards,
-- 
Nils Goesche
"Don't ask for whom the <CTRL-G> tolls."

PGP key ID 0x42B32FC9
From: Vijay L
Subject: Re: Xanalys Lispworks opinions wanted
Date: 
Message-ID: <1eaf81aa.0206291013.660dd3@posting.google.com>
Laurent PERON <·············@free.fr> wrote in message 
> I'd be glad to collect some opinions about Lispworks,
> which I have never used.
Lispworks, is great. I, a newbie (I hate using that term; I want to
graduate to atleast half past newbie), have only the trial (or as they
call it the `personal') version. It is great. It has an emacs
interface, and if you want to try out their GUI facilitiesm, they
provide a game of Othello among other graphics applications. I'd
suggest you try it out.

> Also, anybody has an idea why it is so much cheaper
> than AllegroCL ?
Sorry cant say nothing.

Thanks,
Vijay L
If at first you do not succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried
If at first you DO succeed, try not to look suprised
From: Laurent PERON
Subject: Re: Xanalys Lispworks opinions wanted
Date: 
Message-ID: <3D2870E9.9020402@free.fr>
Thanks to all those who answered me, here in this newsgroup,
or privately!

Laurent PERON.