From: Mark Conrad
Subject: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <100120040856597792%NoSpamDammit@invalid.com>
   'scuse me folks for wasting your time with dumb questions -

Does anyone here use CL or Scheme on Apple's newest operating system?
(code-named "Panther", or OS 10.3.2)

If so, any problems?

I have the demo' version of MCL, and have been thinking of buying the
regular version, but am worried that it might not run on Apple's latest
release of their OS - - - Digitool's website has no mention of the OS
requirements for their product.

Thanx much for any info',

Mark-

From: Robert Amble
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <m2sminr06s.fsf@Andromeda.local>
LispWorks 4.3.6 works find under Panther for me.

Regards,
rca
From: Pascal Costanza
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <btpbpk$f3l$1@newsreader2.netcologne.de>
Mark Conrad wrote:

>    'scuse me folks for wasting your time with dumb questions -
> 
> Does anyone here use CL or Scheme on Apple's newest operating system?
> (code-named "Panther", or OS 10.3.2)
> 
> If so, any problems?

You can find a list of Common Lisp implementations at 
http://alu.cliki.net/Implementation

> I have the demo' version of MCL, and have been thinking of buying the
> regular version, but am worried that it might not run on Apple's latest
> release of their OS - - - Digitool's website has no mention of the OS
> requirements for their product.

Macintosh Common Lisp runs fine under Mac OS X.

For Scheme, you can try DrScheme at http://www.drscheme.org/

You might get better answers wrt Scheme from comp.lang.scheme.


Pascal

-- 
Tyler: "How's that working out for you?"
Jack: "Great."
Tyler: "Keep it up, then."
From: Tyro
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <ff11f622.0401102059.382aac51@posting.google.com>
Mark Conrad <············@invalid.com> wrote in message news:<·······························@invalid.com>...
> 'scuse me folks for wasting your time with dumb questions -
> 
> Does anyone here use CL or Scheme on Apple's newest operating system?
> (code-named "Panther", or OS 10.3.2)
> 
> If so, any problems?
> 
> I have the demo' version of MCL, and have been thinking of buying the
> regular version, but am worried that it might not run on Apple's latest
> release of their OS - - - Digitool's website has no mention of the OS
> requirements for their product.
> 
> Thanx much for any info',
> 
> Mark-

I am running MCL5 under Mac OS X 10.3.2 and do not have any problems.
From: Mark Conrad
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <120120040137023761%NoSpamDammit@invalid.com>
In article <····························@posting.google.com>, Tyro
<····@yandex.ru> wrote:

> I am running MCL5 under Mac OS X 10.3.2 and do not have any problems.

Thanks, that is good to hear.

Mark-
From: Raffael Cavallaro
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <raffaelcavallaro-956E18.17423410012004@netnews.comcast.net>
In article <·······························@invalid.com>,
 Mark Conrad <············@invalid.com> wrote:

Just for completeness, lisps known to work under Panther (10.3 - 
10.3.2), in no particular order. I have all of these running on my 
machine, though some (Lispworks and Allegro) are only trial versions:

Lispworks (Xanalys)
MCL (Digitool)
OpenMCL (Gary Byers/Clozure Open Source)
sbcl (Open Source)
clisp (Open Source - GPL)
alisp (Franz Allegro Common Lisp)
From: Mark Conrad
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <110120040000557463%NoSpamDammit@invalid.com>
In article
<······································@netnews.comcast.net>, Raffael
Cavallaro <················@junk.mail.me.not.mac.com> wrote:

> In article <·······························@invalid.com>,
>  Mark Conrad <············@invalid.com> wrote:
> 
> Just for completeness, lisps known to work under Panther (10.3 - 
> 10.3.2), in no particular order. I have all of these running on my 
> machine, though some (Lispworks and Allegro) are only trial versions:
> 
> Lispworks (Xanalys)
> MCL (Digitool)
> OpenMCL (Gary Byers/Clozure Open Source)
> sbcl (Open Source)
> clisp (Open Source - GPL)
> alisp (Franz Allegro Common Lisp)


Thanks everyone, that boosts my confidence.

As a Lisp newbie, I am just in this for old-age recreation, not for any
'practical' reasons.  Anything Lispy that glitters is my motto, like
Paul Graham's fine book about macros for example.

Years ago when I was a wage slave I dabbled with Scheme and CL but
never followed up by doing anything constructive.

(wonder how many thousands of people are in that particular boat)

Forgot every tidbit I learned, now only have vague memories of
Continuation-Passing-Style, toy compiler construction, implementing
"Wind" and "Unwind" escape procedures in Scheme, and macro useage
wherever macros will override the harm they do by making Lisp more
difficult to troubleshoot.

Gotta lot of enjoyment studying books like "Essentials of Programming
Languages", and even reading my old dog-eared "Little Lisper" book,
trying to justify to myself any possible uses for various versions of
the Y operator.<g>

In the distant-distant past I even bought that 12-grand "MacIvory"
board for the Mac computer I had at the time, but never got the time to
wade through all the Texas-Instrument doc's on how to use that
dedicated Lisp chip.  (because I was literally working days, nights,
holidays, etc. at Hughes Aircraft in the days of the Cold War, testing
fire-control radars for the F14, F15, F18 aircraft radars, also did a
lot of work on the old robotic "Surveyor" moon probes)

All my old Lisp knowledge is in the past now, long forgotten.   I will
have to start from scratch to get back on board Lisp.


*********************************************
Rethorical question just in case anyone wants to respond:
   Has Lisp changed in the past 15 years?

I still have all my 15-year old Lisp books.   If no recent changes have
occurred, they should be adequate to get me back on board.

As I recall the Scheme folks were considering whether or not to make
macros an "official" part of Scheme.

About year 1990 the commercial vendors of Scheme implementations more
or less went out of business as far as "developing" improved up-to-date
versions of Scheme was concerned.

Private groups of volunteers took up the slack in developing newer
versions of Scheme.

Common Lisp kept getting slightly more complex with every meeting of
the "design-by-commitee" people who had to bless any changes to the
standardized design of Common Lisp.

At least Digitool is still in business, and I guess Franz still makes a
CL aimed at Wintel hardware. I don't think Franz makes a Mac version,
perhaps that has changed by now.

Being a Lisp newbie I probably have a lot of the above stuff wrong.



Gadd, I sure miss those monthly magazines named "AI Expert" - - I got a
lot of good tips about applying Lisp to real problems from that
magazine, before they went out of business.

Thanks again Raffael (and everyone else), for answering my original
question about whether Lisp would run on modern Mac operating systems
like "Panther".

Lisp certainly is a fun language, IMO.   Wonder if anyone else in this
forum has the prime reason of "fun" as their main motivation for
learning Lisp.    :-)

Mark-
From: Larry Clapp
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <slrnc02lj6.ih8.larry@theclapp.ddts.net>
In article <·······························@invalid.com>, Mark Conrad wrote:
> Lisp certainly is a fun language, IMO.   Wonder if anyone else in
> this forum has the prime reason of "fun" as their main motivation
> for learning Lisp.    :-)

See http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film , and search for "The
Hedonists".  The "Road To Lisp Survey" page looks pretty incomplete
(missing most of the RtL entries), but all the links (that I've tried
so far) in Kenny's 'highlight film' work.

-- Larry
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <AWfMb.69871$cM1.11997089@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Larry Clapp wrote:
> In article <·······························@invalid.com>, Mark Conrad wrote:
> 
>>Lisp certainly is a fun language, IMO.   Wonder if anyone else in
>>this forum has the prime reason of "fun" as their main motivation
>>for learning Lisp.    :-)
> 
> 
> See http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film , and search for "The
> Hedonists".  The "Road To Lisp Survey" page looks pretty incomplete
> (missing most of the RtL entries), but all the links (that I've tried
> so far) in Kenny's 'highlight film' work.

Yeah, I sent off a couple of emails to likely sources of assistance, got 
no replies. I give up! :)

kt

-- 
http://tilton-technology.com

Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film

Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Mark Conrad
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <120120040137144494%NoSpamDammit@invalid.com>
In article <····················@theclapp.ddts.net>, Larry Clapp
<·····@theclapp.org> wrote:

> > Lisp certainly is a fun language, IMO.   Wonder if anyone else in
> > this forum has the prime reason of "fun" as their main motivation
> > for learning Lisp.    :-)
> 
> See http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film , and search for "The
> Hedonists".

That was  _extremely_  interesting during my initial browsing.

I intend to read all of those posts a little later - - - Thanks.

Mark-
From: Pascal Costanza
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <btrp7f$dk7$1@newsreader2.netcologne.de>
Mark Conrad wrote:

> *********************************************
> Rethorical question just in case anyone wants to respond:
>    Has Lisp changed in the past 15 years?

CLtL2 by Guy Steele was published in 1989 and presented the then-current 
state of the ANSI standardization. That's 15 years ago. ANSI Common Lisp 
was officially published as a standard in 1995. There have been several 
minor changes made to Common Lisp in between, but nothing really 
breath-taking IMHO.

> I still have all my 15-year old Lisp books.   If no recent changes have
> occurred, they should be adequate to get me back on board.

I don't know since I haven't used Lisp at that time. However, a good 
source for getting information how things are right now is by checking 
with the ANSI specs. For example, the HyperSpec is a good source.

> As I recall the Scheme folks were considering whether or not to make
> macros an "official" part of Scheme.

They have included a restricted form of macros in the standard. The 
current standard is R5RS.

> At least Digitool is still in business, and I guess Franz still makes a
> CL aimed at Wintel hardware. I don't think Franz makes a Mac version,
> perhaps that has changed by now.

Yes, that has changed. You can download a trial version at their website.


Pascal

-- 
Tyler: "How's that working out for you?"
Jack: "Great."
Tyler: "Keep it up, then."
From: Mark Conrad
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <120120040136352155%NoSpamDammit@invalid.com>
In article <············@newsreader2.netcologne.de>, Pascal Costanza
<········@web.de> wrote:

> > At least Digitool is still in business, and I guess Franz still makes a
> > CL aimed at Wintel hardware. I don't think Franz makes a Mac version,
> > perhaps that has changed by now.
> 
> Yes, that has changed. You can download a trial version at their website.

Thanks for the updated info' about what happed to Lisp and Scheme in
the last 15 years, it will take me a while to get back up to speed.

It should be interesting to observe any differences between the Franz
and Digitool versions on CL.

Mark-
From: Paolo Amoroso
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <87k73woohk.fsf@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it>
Mark Conrad writes:

> dedicated Lisp chip.  (because I was literally working days, nights,
> holidays, etc. at Hughes Aircraft in the days of the Cold War, testing
> fire-control radars for the F14, F15, F18 aircraft radars, also did a
> lot of work on the old robotic "Surveyor" moon probes)

[jumping over my chair, hat's off; my right-stuff-meter is off scale]

Sur-ve-yor?!? _That_ is rocket science :-) I keep telling school kids
about Surveyor 3 in my astronomy lessons.

If you are not already a member, you should probably have a look at
the ProjectApollo mailing list:

  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/projectapollo

A number of knowledgeable people who worked on space projects in the
1960s and 1970s are among the subscribers (plus many clueless space
enthusiasts like me...). Also, be sure to check the Lunar Photo of the
Day:

  http://www.lpod.org


Paolo (impressed)
-- 
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
From: Mark Conrad
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <130120040229385937%NoSpamDammit@invalid.com>
In article <··············@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it>, Paolo Amoroso
<·······@mclink.it> wrote:

> I keep telling school kids about Surveyor 3 
> in my astronomy lessons

Those were exciting days, long before the first humans landed on the
moon.  Very primitive technology by today's standards.

Any present day low-priced Mac powerbook has a lot more computing power
than we ever had for the Surveyor project.

I recall working on "drum" memory devices, long before RAM chips became
readily available.   A few kilobytes of memory was all we had available
in those days.

The first aircraft weapons-fire-control radar I worked on weighed the
better part of 1,000 pounds, used fleming valves instead of
transistors.  It is a wonder that the aircraft could become airborne,
lugging all that weight just for the radar set.

Thanks for the pointer to the "Project Appolo" website, I might run
into some of the old timers I used to work with.

Sure hope the Mars rover finds fossils of carbon-based lifeforms.

Mark-


Mark-
From: mikel evins
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <A0oMb.8771$bn7.7654@newssvr27.news.prodigy.com>
Mark Conrad wrote:
>    'scuse me folks for wasting your time with dumb questions -
> 
> Does anyone here use CL or Scheme on Apple's newest operating system?
> (code-named "Panther", or OS 10.3.2)

I have the follwoign versions of Common Lisp working on my copy of Panther:

- OpenMCL (0.14 from CVS)
- sbcl
- LispWorks (personal edition)
- CLISP
- MCL (demo version)

(sorted more or less by how often I use them; in other words, I use 
OpenMCL the most).

 >
 > If so, any problems?
 >
 > I have the demo' version of MCL, and have been thinking of buying the
 > regular version, but am worried that it might not run on Apple's latest
 > release of their OS - - - Digitool's website has no mention of the OS
 > requirements for their product.
 >
 > Thanx much for any info',


As far as I can tell the demo version of MCL works fine on Panther.
From: Mark Conrad
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <120120040136432613%NoSpamDammit@invalid.com>
In article <···················@newssvr27.news.prodigy.com>, mikel
evins <·····@evins.net> wrote:

> > I have the demo' version of MCL, and have been thinking of buying the
> > regular version...
> 
> As far as I can tell the demo version of MCL works fine on Panther.

That's good to hear, I will install the demo into OS 10.3.2 and use it
while I am waiting for Digitool to ship the latest Mac version of MCL
to me.

It should be interesting to see how Digitool handles the Unix
"permissions" for any files that MCL creates.

Mark-
From: Brian Mastenbrook
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <120120040759101918%NOSPAMbmastenbNOSPAM@cs.indiana.edu>
In article <·······························@invalid.com>, Mark Conrad
<············@invalid.com> wrote:

>    'scuse me folks for wasting your time with dumb questions -
> 
> Does anyone here use CL or Scheme on Apple's newest operating system?
> (code-named "Panther", or OS 10.3.2)
> 
> If so, any problems?
> 
> I have the demo' version of MCL, and have been thinking of buying the
> regular version, but am worried that it might not run on Apple's latest
> release of their OS - - - Digitool's website has no mention of the OS
> requirements for their product.
> 
> Thanx much for any info',
> 
> Mark-

I use two lisp implementations on Panther:

- Steel Bank Common Lisp, for which I make binaries available (there's
a bug which is currently preventing building from source on
uniprocessor machines) at
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~bmastenb/software/SBCL/ 

- and MCL 4.3.5, in Classic mode. I personally don't need the native
support of the full version, and the 4.3.5 version is a lot more
affordable for a poor student like me :-)

Of course, OpenMCL, ECL, GCL, clisp, Armed Bear Lisp, LispWorks, and
Allegro work fine too. In fact I think the only modern CL /not/ on OS X
is Corman, for obvious reasons.

If you want to try out the free software approach before deciding
whether you want MCL, I'd suggest running SLIME -
http://www.cliki.net/SLIME - along with Emacs and either SBCL or
OpenMCL.

-- 
Brian Mastenbrook
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~bmastenb/
From: Mark Conrad
Subject: Re: Newbie question about Lisp on Apple's 'Panther' OS
Date: 
Message-ID: <130120040229476465%NoSpamDammit@invalid.com>
In article <·······································@cs.indiana.edu>,
Brian Mastenbrook <····················@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:

> - and MCL 4.3.5, in Classic mode. I personally don't need the native
> support of the full version...

In my case I am trying to wean myself away from using OS 9.x
altogether, like a bunch of other Mac users have done.

Lot more available horsepower for exciting Lisp projects using OS-X
especially now that Apple is selling computers with 64-bit CPUs.


> ...and the 4.3.5 version is a lot more affordable 
> for a poor student like me :-)

I know what you mean.  I had to restrain myself from buying the
dual-CPU Apple computer, the one using the 64-bit CPUs, even though the
price is not all that high. (for people with normal incomes, that is)

For the present, I struggle along with two older Mac powerbooks, a
Pismo and a Lombard.   99% of my computing is done on the really old
Lombard powerbook, running ancient OS 8.6 and a 6 GB internal drive.

I am trying to get all my utilities etc. moved over to the Pismo which
has 1,024 MBs of RAM, a 40 GB internal drive, and Mac OS 10.3.2

Much more room for bigger Lisp projects on that machine.

Having trouble with the built-in "Disk Utility" that comes with
"Panther", which Apple apparently changed from the more precise older
version that came with "Jaguar".

The reason I am having trouble is because I do some fiddling around
with Lisp's ability to create other Lisp programs 'on-the-fly', so to
speak.

If my Lisp program creates another Lisp program of its own, and part of
the "created" program has instructions to create an exact 12.00 GB
partition on a disk drive, the Panther version comes out 11.88 GBs
instead of the 12.00 GBs that was requested.

As you can imagine, this creates all sorts of difficulties later.

I snapped out some 'workaround' Unix code that corrects this
difficulty, however for the code to work I have to rely on a Panther
native version of Symantecs "Disk Editor", which I have on order.

'nuff of my problems, hope you are having fun with your Lisp.

Mark-