From: David Steuber
Subject: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87u0xaltq5.fsf@david-steuber.com>
This is a rant.  Please move on if you don't like rants.  Move on
especially quickly if you don't like rants that are ill thought out
and clearly the ravings of a lunatic.

I wish I'd never met Lisp.  It has ruined me for all other
programming languages.  C and Java now look really ugly to me.  XML
is clearly someone's really bad joke at the world.  Jelly is a new
player in the Java/XML conspiracy.  I'm not sure how to con someone
into paying me to hack on Lisp.

Since I've gotten my Mac, I've been ruined for all other desktop
systems.  Sadly, there are a limited number of Lisp systems that work
on it well.  The only one I've been able to compile myself is SBCL.
OpenMCL should be better to use because it has a Cocoa bridge and
does threads.  I haven't been able to build it yet though (I have an
"old" binary build from Darwin Ports).  OpenMCL is not really ready
for prime time yet because any Cocoa app built with it apparently
will only work under the exact revision of OS X that it was built
for.

Lispworks costs $999 and MCL runs $750.  I didn't look at Franz.
I've had enough sticker shock for one day.  I'm not buying a
commercial Lisp soon, but I have downloaded the Lispworks Personal
Edition to play with to see how I like that.

Emacs + SLIME looks really primitive next to Xcode.  Xcode has all
sorts of cool features to (once it is finally running).  Xcode will
take care of all the gory details of making NIB files and building a
.app bundle for your application.  The only catch is that you have to
program in Objective-C or Java (preferably the latter).  Did I
mention that Lisp has ruined me for all other programming languages?

Emacs + SLIME + SBCL take up less memory than Xcode.  The startup
time is shorter.  The programming experience is far more
interactive.  Yes, it looks primitive by comparison.  In reality, it
seems a bit more sophisticated.  The problem is, I am just not loving
Emacs so much (mostly due to key chords).  Yes, I use it for mail and
gnews.  That doesn't mean I like it.  There is no Cocoa bridge and no
.app packager.  There is no integration to Xcode and its tools at all.

I think I would like to have that integration.  I would like to
program in Lisp that way.  I just don't have $999 to spend on it.
Besides.  I think that a worthy free Lisp implementation and dev
environment for OS X is very useful for Lisp's future as a perhaps
not so dead language.  Obligatory Miracle Max quote goes here.

So I've got a wish list.  It's not a long list.  Call it a short
list.

* SBCL should support threads on OS X using the same programmer level
  API as on Linux x86.  If someone points me to where to look at
  hacking that in, I'd be happy to help.

* SBCL should have a Cocoa bridge and Carbon wrappers for OS X.
  Again, I'm willing to work on this.

* There should be a nicer IDE for Lisp that fits the OS X Aqua
  interface guidelines.  Fewer key chords than Emacs has would be
  nice.  SLIME like functionality is a must.  The IDE should be part
  of the Lisp image.  All forms of RPC suck.  A threaded Lisp would
  help.

* The Lisp IDE should be able to leverage Xcode for Cocoa, Carbon,
  Quicktime, and other documentation.  App bundles and also
  frameworks should be things that you can make.

It's time to make Lisp mainstream.

-- 
An ideal world is left as an excercise to the reader.
   --- Paul Graham, On Lisp 8.1

From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <Mq9Ac.192361$WA4.15680@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Great news! I found your problem:

David Steuber wrote:

> I wish I'd never met Lisp.  It has ruined me for all other
> programming languages.

...and...

> Lispworks costs $999 and MCL runs $750.

Sit in the lotus position until the light goes on. Hint: I starved for 
months to afford a $1600 Apple frickin II in 1978 so I could do integer 
basic in a whopping 16K of RAM, and I was happy to have it.

If the light does not go on, I suggest you arrange for another 
twenty-thousand man-hours priced at ten cents each so you can get 
CMUCL/SBCL+ILISP/SLIME working nowhere near as well as commercial lisps.

It is /so/ important that our tools be free, no matter what the cost. 
<sigh> C'mon, Lispniks are supposed to be /intelligent/.

Am I being obscure? Try this: if you cannot find $750 for a commercial 
Lisp, you either are not really a programmer or you do not really like 
Lisp. Your choice.

Hope you like rants. :)

kenny


-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Tim Bradshaw
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <fbc0f5d1.0406170246.5fdd0827@posting.google.com>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote in message news:<······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>...
> 
> Am I being obscure? Try this: if you cannot find $750 for a commercial 
> Lisp, you either are not really a programmer or you do not really like 
> Lisp. Your choice.
> 

SHUT UP KENNY!  You must know that you are NOT ALLOWED to be
economically rational in public.  They have *no idea* how much things
cost and it's *critically* important to keep it that way if our
masterplan is to succeed.

For God's sake, man, you'll be telling them where we get the
helicopters next.

--tim
From: Rob Warnock
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <xPqdnVDwr7Kr5kzdRVn-tw@speakeasy.net>
Tim Bradshaw <··········@tfeb.org> wrote:
+---------------
| For God's sake, man, you'll be telling them where we get the
| helicopters next.
+---------------

What, you mean like these?

    <URL:http://www.helispot.com/photos/03269.html>
    <URL:http://www.bellhelicopter.textron.com/en/aircraft/military/
	 bellAH-1Z.cfm>
    <URL:http://www.rotaryaction.com/images/clearapd.jpg>


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock			<····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue			<URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403		(650)572-2607
From: Tim Bradshaw
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <fbc0f5d1.0406171037.7dcff068@posting.google.com>
····@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) wrote in message news:<······················@speakeasy.net>...

> What, you mean like these?
> 
>     <URL:http://www.helispot.com/photos/03269.html>
>     <URL:http://www.bellhelicopter.textron.com/en/aircraft/military/
> 	 bellAH-1Z.cfm>
>     <URL:http://www.rotaryaction.com/images/clearapd.jpg>
> 

Well sort of.  Ours are invisible, of course, and come armed with death rays.
From: André Thieme
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cas76q$sd4$1@ulric.tng.de>
Rob Warnock schrieb:

> Tim Bradshaw <··········@tfeb.org> wrote:
> +---------------
> | For God's sake, man, you'll be telling them where we get the
> | helicopters next.
> +---------------
> 
> What, you mean like these?
> 
>     <URL:http://www.helispot.com/photos/03269.html>
>     <URL:http://www.bellhelicopter.textron.com/en/aircraft/military/
> 	 bellAH-1Z.cfm>
>     <URL:http://www.rotaryaction.com/images/clearapd.jpg>
> 

Cool, I just ordered one! ;-)


Andr�
--
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <kGhAc.81540$mX.27552137@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Tim Bradshaw wrote:

> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote in message news:<······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>...
> 
>>Am I being obscure? Try this: if you cannot find $750 for a commercial 
>>Lisp, you either are not really a programmer or you do not really like 
>>Lisp. Your choice.
>>
> 
> 
> SHUT UP KENNY!  You must know that you are NOT ALLOWED to be
> economically rational in public.  They have *no idea* how much things
> cost and it's *critically* important to keep it that way if our
> masterplan is to succeed.
> 
> For God's sake, man, you'll be telling them where we get the
> helicopters next.

Sorry. I am being selfish. The Yobbos would be helping me with Cello if 
they were not so busy with CMUCL and SBCL and OpenMCL. As it is, Barlow 
said the earliest he could get involved would be this winter. Well, not 
sure on that, i just remember something about "Hell freezing over".

Can't wait!

kenny
From: Edward Jason Riedy
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <caratr$hbt$1@agate.berkeley.edu>
And Kenny Tilton writes:
 - Am I being obscure? Try this: if you cannot find $750 for a commercial 
 - Lisp, you either are not really a programmer or you do not really like 
 - Lisp. Your choice.

Or you develop software that's expected to run on 100-9000
processors and cannot afford to force your clients / users to 
afford $750 per processor.

Particular machine in question: seaborg.nersc.gov .  I wish
they could magically get the _one_ compiled Lisp that runs on
that platform, but it ain't going to happen politically.  And
I need to run on the remaining T3Es and think real hard about
the SV1.  No support there at all.  

"We don't use Lisp" even if it would make life better.  Can't 
beat those politics _and_ cost >>$750 per proc (or node, I 
don't recall).  (And I've never managed to get a free CL-ish 
impl. to work in 64-bit mode in AIX 5.2, including clisp .  Oh 
well.  No CL for me.)

Jason
-- 
From: Brian Downing
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <8TaAc.36754$Hg2.1613@attbi_s04>
In article <············@agate.berkeley.edu>,
Edward Jason Riedy <···@cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Or you develop software that's expected to run on 100-9000
> processors and cannot afford to force your clients / users to 
> afford $750 per processor.
> 
> Particular machine in question: seaborg.nersc.gov .  I wish
> they could magically get the _one_ compiled Lisp that runs on
> that platform, but it ain't going to happen politically.  And
> I need to run on the remaining T3Es and think real hard about
> the SV1.  No support there at all.  
> 
> "We don't use Lisp" even if it would make life better.  Can't 
> beat those politics _and_ cost >>$750 per proc (or node, I 
> don't recall).  (And I've never managed to get a free CL-ish 
> impl. to work in 64-bit mode in AIX 5.2, including clisp .  Oh 
> well.  No CL for me.)

I like free software a lot, and use free Lisps almost exclusively.
Unfortunatly this argument doesn't hold up.  LispWorks will let you
deliver applications with no distribution charge for the runtime.  The
limitations?  As far as I know, it disables COMPILE-FILE.  That's it.

If you're making any money at all off your software (or if it saves you
an appreciable amount of time) that's a amazingly good deal.

-bcd
-- 
*** Brian Downing <bdowning at lavos dot net> 
From: Espen Vestre
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <kwn032sird.fsf@merced.netfonds.no>
Brian Downing <·············@lavos.net> writes:

> Unfortunatly this argument doesn't hold up.  LispWorks will let you
> deliver applications with no distribution charge for the runtime. 

Last time I checked, they still charged for Unix (not linux or OS X)
runtimes (but $750 for e.g. a Solaris run time license is still a
bargain).
-- 
  (espen)
From: Russell McManus
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87fz8uqvxk.fsf@thelonious.dyndns.org>
···@cs.berkeley.edu (Edward Jason Riedy) writes:

> And Kenny Tilton writes:
>  - Am I being obscure? Try this: if you cannot find $750 for a commercial 
>  - Lisp, you either are not really a programmer or you do not really like 
>  - Lisp. Your choice.
>
> Or you develop software that's expected to run on 100-9000
> processors and cannot afford to force your clients / users to afford
> $750 per processor.

Lispworks licensing does not work this way.  Please check your facts
before posting mis-information.

-russ
From: Marco Antoniotti
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <4dhAc.18$2i5.15615@typhoon.nyu.edu>
I am sorry, but your argument does not hold, until the commercial 
vendors will clearly say here on CLL that that is what they will charge you.

I am not saying that it will be cheap.  I am saying that my experience 
with the vendors is that they will work with you on something like this.

Cheers
--
Marco



Edward Jason Riedy wrote:
> And Kenny Tilton writes:
>  - Am I being obscure? Try this: if you cannot find $750 for a commercial 
>  - Lisp, you either are not really a programmer or you do not really like 
>  - Lisp. Your choice.
> 
> Or you develop software that's expected to run on 100-9000
> processors and cannot afford to force your clients / users to 
> afford $750 per processor.
> 
> Particular machine in question: seaborg.nersc.gov .  I wish
> they could magically get the _one_ compiled Lisp that runs on
> that platform, but it ain't going to happen politically.  And
> I need to run on the remaining T3Es and think real hard about
> the SV1.  No support there at all.  
> 
> "We don't use Lisp" even if it would make life better.  Can't 
> beat those politics _and_ cost >>$750 per proc (or node, I 
> don't recall).  (And I've never managed to get a free CL-ish 
> impl. to work in 64-bit mode in AIX 5.2, including clisp .  Oh 
> well.  No CL for me.)
> 
> Jason
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <jChAc.81534$mX.27551756@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Edward Jason Riedy wrote:

> And Kenny Tilton writes:
>  - Am I being obscure? Try this: if you cannot find $750 for a commercial 
>  - Lisp, you either are not really a programmer or you do not really like 
>  - Lisp. Your choice.
> 
> Or you develop software that's expected to run on....

Sorry, my rant was aimed at one ranter's situation, tho I can see how it 
  could be taken as a blanket rant. Lispworks won't work for you?

In general, however, I /do/ get a kick out of the fact that CMUCL et al 
exist, and in part because it can be a fallback for delivery should 
licensing negotiations break down, but no self-respecting developer 
tolerates unnecesary impediments to productivity. Hell, why do Lispniks 
not mind (much) having to roll a set of bindings to get to some C 
library? because Lisp makes them so much more productive the rest of the 
time. Same idea with IDEs. If $1000 sounds like a lot, you just are not 
writing that much code. No matter how much I loathe MS, the only thing 
that matters to me is Lisp, and I have a great Lisp environment 
available only on win32, so win32 it is. Until I snag a G5 just before 
my developer discount expires, then it will be back to MCL (or 
Lispworks) if Franz has not by then ported their IDE to Cello so I can 
use their IDE on OS X.

kenny

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Espen Vestre
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <kw7ju6p8g6.fsf@merced.netfonds.no>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:

> Sorry, my rant was aimed at one ranter's situation, tho I can see how
> it could be taken as a blanket rant. Lispworks won't work for you?

I repeat (and this time I checked!): Runtimes for LW for UNIX are
still charged for! (list price is now USD 900 in the US)
-- 
  (espen)
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <06jAc.122721$Nn4.27214992@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Espen Vestre wrote:
> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>Sorry, my rant was aimed at one ranter's situation, tho I can see how
>>it could be taken as a blanket rant. Lispworks won't work for you?
> 
> 
> I repeat (and this time I checked!): Runtimes for LW for UNIX are
> still charged for! (list price is now USD 900 in the US)

OK, sorry, I missed that. I still would develop with the most productive 
tool and then deliver on something free if negotiations with Xanalys 
were unsatisfactory. Of course I would be using Cello, not CAPI, so I 
would have that option.

:)

kenny

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Gisle Sælensminde
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <slrncd3qcr.51i.gisle@kaktus.ii.uib.no>
In article <·························@twister.nyc.rr.com>, Kenny Tilton wrote:
> 
> 
> Espen Vestre wrote:
>> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
>> 
>> 
>>>Sorry, my rant was aimed at one ranter's situation, tho I can see how
>>>it could be taken as a blanket rant. Lispworks won't work for you?
>> 
>> 
>> I repeat (and this time I checked!): Runtimes for LW for UNIX are
>> still charged for! (list price is now USD 900 in the US)
> 
> OK, sorry, I missed that. I still would develop with the most productive 
> tool and then deliver on something free if negotiations with Xanalys 
> were unsatisfactory. Of course I would be using Cello, not CAPI, so I 
> would have that option.

Actually the price is $5500 for a commecial unix license ($3300 for an 
academic license), according to the PDF on their web page, which is quite 
expensive. The price at least made me think twice before buying.  
Since the solaris servers will be replaced next year, I did not get further 
to get it purchased. The price of $550 for the Linux academic licence would 
not have beens such an issue. Not that I blame them, there is probably not
that many solaris sales.

--
Gisle S�lensminde
Computational biology unit, University of Bergen, Norway
Email: ·····@cbu.uib.no
From: Christian Lynbech
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87brjitfab.fsf@dhcp229.ted.dk.eu.ericsson.se>
>>>>> "Espen" == Espen Vestre <·····@*do-not-spam-me*.vestre.net> writes:

Espen> I repeat (and this time I checked!): Runtimes for LW for UNIX are
Espen> still charged for! (list price is now USD 900 in the US)

Does the "UNIX" part include Linux and/or Mac OSX?


------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Christian Lynbech       | christian ··@ defun #\. dk
------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Hit the philistines three times over the head with the Elisp reference manual.
                                        - ·······@hal.com (Michael A. Petonic)
From: Friedrich Dominicus
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87659qb413.fsf@fbigm.here>
Christian Lynbech <·················@ericsson.com> writes:

>>>>>> "Espen" == Espen Vestre <·····@*do-not-spam-me*.vestre.net> writes:
>
> Espen> I repeat (and this time I checked!): Runtimes for LW for UNIX are
> Espen> still charged for! (list price is now USD 900 in the US)
>
> Does the "UNIX" part include Linux and/or Mac OSX?
No.

Regards
Friedrich

-- 
Please remove just-for-news- to reply via e-mail.
From: Julian Stecklina
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <861xkczrlr.fsf@web.de>
Friedrich Dominicus <···················@q-software-solutions.de> writes:

> Christian Lynbech <·················@ericsson.com> writes:
>
>>>>>>> "Espen" == Espen Vestre <·····@*do-not-spam-me*.vestre.net> writes:
>>
>> Espen> I repeat (and this time I checked!): Runtimes for LW for UNIX are
>> Espen> still charged for! (list price is now USD 900 in the US)
>>
>> Does the "UNIX" part include Linux and/or Mac OSX?
> No.

What about FreeBSD?

Regards,
-- 
Julian Stecklina 

Signed and encrypted mail welcome.
Key-Server: pgp.mit.edu         Key-ID: 0xD65B2AB5
FA38 DCD3 00EC 97B8 6DD8  D7CC 35D8 8D0E D65B 2AB5

Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program
contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden
slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
 - Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming
From: Friedrich Dominicus
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87u0x8nodr.fsf@fbigm.here>
Julian Stecklina <··········@web.de> writes:

>>>
>>> Does the "UNIX" part include Linux and/or Mac OSX?
>> No.
>
> What about FreeBSD?
AFAIK does there exist not "native" LispWorks for FreeBSD. So if one
run LispWorks one will probably run the Linux version.

Regards
Friedrich


-- 
Please remove just-for-news- to reply via e-mail.
From: Espen Vestre
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <kw8yehjnga.fsf@merced.netfonds.no>
Julian Stecklina <··········@web.de> writes:

> What about FreeBSD?

There's no specific FreeBSD version, but I've had positive reports
that the delivered applications I make for LW for linux work with
FreeBSD.  They also work with OpenBSD.
-- 
  (espen)
From: David Magda
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <86oena2s4n.fsf@number6.magda.ca>
Espen Vestre <·····@*do-not-spam-me*.vestre.net> writes:

> There's no specific FreeBSD version, but I've had positive reports
> that the delivered applications I make for LW for linux work with
> FreeBSD.  They also work with OpenBSD.

Both of these have a Linux ABI emulation layer:

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=linux
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=compat_linux

-- 
David Magda <dmagda at ee.ryerson.ca>, http://www.magda.ca/
Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under
the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well 
under the new. -- Niccolo Machiavelli, _The Prince_, Chapter VI
From: Espen Vestre
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <kwvfhh2ywt.fsf@merced.netfonds.no>
David Magda <··················@ee.ryerson.ca> writes:

> Espen Vestre <·····@*do-not-spam-me*.vestre.net> writes:
>
>> There's no specific FreeBSD version, but I've had positive reports
>> that the delivered applications I make for LW for linux work with
>> FreeBSD.  They also work with OpenBSD.
>
> Both of these have a Linux ABI emulation layer:

Yes, I forgot to mention that you need to have that installed.
-- 
  (espen)
From: Wade Humeniuk
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <_cjAc.48512$Ds.37032@clgrps12>
Edward Jason Riedy wrote:
> And Kenny Tilton writes:
>  - Am I being obscure? Try this: if you cannot find $750 for a commercial 
>  - Lisp, you either are not really a programmer or you do not really like 
>  - Lisp. Your choice.
> 
> Or you develop software that's expected to run on 100-9000
> processors and cannot afford to force your clients / users to 
> afford $750 per processor.
> 

Its a big machine.  How many millions did it cost?

http://hpcf.nersc.gov/computers/SP/

Besides that how much does it cost to maintain the sucker?
Power consumption and cooling probably cost a few million
a year.  Then what does it cost for the programmers, sysadmins,
and other management overhead?  Anyone that needs a machine
that expensive has to pay to keep that machine running.  Its
a reality that to use that machine you have to pay.

For a million dollars, maybe even much less you could get a
Lisp running on it.  (Do you need a Lisp that compiles an app
for parallel execution?) Why does the Lisp have to be free?

Wade


> Particular machine in question: seaborg.nersc.gov .  I wish
> they could magically get the _one_ compiled Lisp that runs on
> that platform, but it ain't going to happen politically.  And
> I need to run on the remaining T3Es and think real hard about
> the SV1.  No support there at all.  
> 
> "We don't use Lisp" even if it would make life better.  Can't 
> beat those politics _and_ cost >>$750 per proc (or node, I 
> don't recall).  (And I've never managed to get a free CL-ish 
> impl. to work in 64-bit mode in AIX 5.2, including clisp .  Oh 
> well.  No CL for me.)
From: Peter Herth
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <casokt$856$1@newsreader2.netcologne.de>
Wade Humeniuk wrote:

> Besides that how much does it cost to maintain the sucker?
> Power consumption and cooling probably cost a few million
> a year.  Then what does it cost for the programmers, sysadmins,
> and other management overhead?  Anyone that needs a machine
> that expensive has to pay to keep that machine running.  Its
> a reality that to use that machine you have to pay.
> 
> For a million dollars, maybe even much less you could get a
> Lisp running on it.  (Do you need a Lisp that compiles an app
> for parallel execution?) Why does the Lisp have to be free?

Of course it seems to be ridiculous to complain about the 
costs of Lisp if you look at that machine - however, even
with big budgets for a project, however big they are, if
you cannot convince the one who does the financial decisions
that the money spent for a Lisp is a good idea, you are
out of luck :( We need a lot of Lisp success stories until
we can hope to spend money on Lisp at all. (At least for
certain kinds of projects)

Peter

-- 
Peter Herth
pet project: http://dawn.netcologne.de
homepage:    http://www.peter-herth.de
lisp stuff:  http://www.peter-herth.de/lisp.html
get Ltk here: http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/
From: Lupo LeBoucher
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <ku2dnX8gda_Wr07dRVn-gw@io.com>
In article <····················@clgrps12>,
Wade Humeniuk  <····································@telus.net> wrote:
>Edward Jason Riedy wrote:
>> And Kenny Tilton writes:
>>  - Am I being obscure? Try this: if you cannot find $750 for a commercial 
>>  - Lisp, you either are not really a programmer or you do not really like 
>>  - Lisp. Your choice.
>> 
>> Or you develop software that's expected to run on 100-9000
>> processors and cannot afford to force your clients / users to 
>> afford $750 per processor.
>> 
>
>Its a big machine.  How many millions did it cost?
>
>http://hpcf.nersc.gov/computers/SP/
>
>Besides that how much does it cost to maintain the sucker?
>Power consumption and cooling probably cost a few million
>a year. 

You labor under the delusion that NERSC has money flowing out of its 
bung-hole to spend making a couple of Lisp enthusiasts happy, even if it 
does make their life easier. Grad students don't cost anything, and you 
can get them to write the code in whatever you like.

It's government science, fer chrissakes.

While the military might have such money, they ain't gonna put it on their 
Crays or IBM SP's either, unless you can justify why you're not writing it 
in C++ or Fortran. If you can't do that at whatever YoYo-Dyne company you 
work for, imagine how much harder it is to pimp it to the GI Joes, or 
pointy-headed underfunded numerics guys who, if they know anything about 
Lisp at all, remember their Lisp machines garbage collecting and thrashing 
like a sickly washing machine all day long.

But yeah, it would be nice if you could rent Lisp time on that kind of 
heavy metal; especially if you don't have to use a GPLed 1980s IDE to 
make it do tricks.

-Lupo
"there is often a certain nostalgia among us moderns for the memory of men
and women who could, for a time at least, shoulder fate aside and worship
Thor, because they believed in their own strength" -E.J. Sharpe    <··@io.com>
From: Paolo Amoroso
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87oengd62y.fsf@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it>
··@io.com (Lupo LeBoucher) writes:

> While the military might have such money, they ain't gonna put it on their 
> Crays or IBM SP's either, unless you can justify why you're not writing it 
> in C++ or Fortran. If you can't do that at whatever YoYo-Dyne company you 
> work for, imagine how much harder it is to pimp it to the GI Joes, or 
> pointy-headed underfunded numerics guys who, if they know anything about 
> Lisp at all, remember their Lisp machines garbage collecting and thrashing 
> like a sickly washing machine all day long.

Back in the Desert Storm days, LispMs garbage collecting and trashing
didn't look to the military like a major issue.


Paolo
-- 
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (Google for info on each):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
From: Fernando
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <hkovd0916o1jdsao7kgg3vu0ci8bf8cr1d@4ax.com>
On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 21:22:29 +0200, Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote:

>··@io.com (Lupo LeBoucher) writes:
>
>> While the military might have such money, they ain't gonna put it on their 
>> Crays or IBM SP's either, unless you can justify why you're not writing it 
>> in C++ or Fortran. If you can't do that at whatever YoYo-Dyne company you 
>> work for, imagine how much harder it is to pimp it to the GI Joes, or 
>> pointy-headed underfunded numerics guys who, if they know anything about 
>> Lisp at all, remember their Lisp machines garbage collecting and thrashing 
>> like a sickly washing machine all day long.
>
>Back in the Desert Storm days, LispMs garbage collecting and trashing
>didn't look to the military like a major issue.

What do you mean?
From: Paul F. Dietz
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <NomdnR09JOAUgH3dRVn-ug@dls.net>
Fernando wrote:

>>Back in the Desert Storm days, LispMs garbage collecting and trashing
>>didn't look to the military like a major issue.
> 
> 
> What do you mean?

He's probably refering to the air mission scheduling program used
in Desert Storm, which was written in Lisp.

I read somewhere that that single program paid back all the money
the US government ever invested in AI research.  I don't know if that's
true, but it makes a good sound bite.

	Paul
From: Fernando
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <he80e0tflhjp2crnp4pagggb85eflh41vs@4ax.com>
On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 08:30:48 -0500, "Paul F. Dietz" <·····@dls.net> wrote:

>Fernando wrote:
>
>>>Back in the Desert Storm days, LispMs garbage collecting and trashing
>>>didn't look to the military like a major issue.
>> 
>> 
>> What do you mean?
>
>He's probably refering to the air mission scheduling program used
>in Desert Storm, which was written in Lisp.
>
>I read somewhere that that single program paid back all the money
>the US government ever invested in AI research.  I don't know if that's
>true, but it makes a good sound bite.

Do you know where I can find mor einformation on this?
From: Paul F. Dietz
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <CcSdnX9m6dHJyXzdRVn-hw@dls.net>
Fernando wrote:

>>He's probably refering to the air mission scheduling program used
>>in Desert Storm, which was written in Lisp.
>>
>>I read somewhere that that single program paid back all the money
>>the US government ever invested in AI research.  I don't know if that's
>>true, but it makes a good sound bite.
> 
> 
> Do you know where I can find mor einformation on this?

The tool was called DART.   Google on  DART "desert storm", and also
see this:

http://www.bbn.com/lpds/dart.html  (not very much detail, but that's
apparently the home page)

A lisp logistical scheduling program from Ascent (www.ascent.com)
was also used in Desert Storm (it may be the same thing, commercialized).

	Paul
From: Bill Clementson
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <1b3ac8a3.0406291238.5d2e33b@posting.google.com>
Fernando <···@NOSPAMeasyjob.net> wrote in message news:<··································@4ax.com>...
> On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 08:30:48 -0500, "Paul F. Dietz" <·····@dls.net> wrote:
> 
> >Fernando wrote:
> >
> >>>Back in the Desert Storm days, LispMs garbage collecting and trashing
> >>>didn't look to the military like a major issue.
> >> 
> >> 
> >> What do you mean?
> >
> >He's probably refering to the air mission scheduling program used
> >in Desert Storm, which was written in Lisp.
> >
> >I read somewhere that that single program paid back all the money
> >the US government ever invested in AI research.  I don't know if that's
> >true, but it makes a good sound bite.
> 
> Do you know where I can find mor einformation on this?

The actual quote is:
"The use of automatic scheduling for manufacturing operations is
exploding as manufacturers realize that remaining competitive demands
an ever more efficient use of resources. This AI technology --
supporting rapid rescheduling up and down the "supply chain" to
respond to changing orders, changing markets, and unexpected events --
has shown itself superior to less adaptable systems based on older
technology. This same technology has proven highly effective in other
commercial tasks, including job shop scheduling, and assigning airport
gates and railway crews. It also has proven highly effective in
military settings -- DARPA reported that an AI-based logistics
planning tool, DART, pressed into service for operations Desert Shield
and Desert Storm, completely repaid its three decades of investment in
AI research."
- David L. Waltz, Vice President, Computer Science Research, NEC
Research Institute

If you're after a link to a page that gives the actual quote it's
here:
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lazowska/cra/ai.html

--
Bill Clementson
From: Paolo Amoroso
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <874qovu5rw.fsf@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it>
"Paul F. Dietz" <·····@dls.net> writes:

> He's probably refering to the air mission scheduling program used
> in Desert Storm, which was written in Lisp.

Correct.


Paolo
-- 
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (Google for info on each):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
From: Paolo Amoroso
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87wu1rhkfr.fsf@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it>
Fernando <···@NOSPAMeasyjob.net> writes:

> On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 21:22:29 +0200, Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote:
[...]
>>Back in the Desert Storm days, LispMs garbage collecting and trashing
>>didn't look to the military like a major issue.
>
> What do you mean?

During the Desert Storm campaign in Iraq, the US military logistical
system run on Symbolics Lisp Machines.


Paolo
-- 
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (Google for info on each):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <uy8m7sqjy.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
>>>>> On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 15:38:16 +0200, Paolo Amoroso ("Paolo") writes:

 Paolo> Fernando <···@NOSPAMeasyjob.net> writes:
 >> On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 21:22:29 +0200, Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote:
 Paolo> [...]
 >>> Back in the Desert Storm days, LispMs garbage collecting and trashing
 >>> didn't look to the military like a major issue.
 >> 
 >> What do you mean?

 Paolo> During the Desert Storm campaign in Iraq, the US military
 Paolo> logistical system run on Symbolics Lisp Machines.

Lisp Machines were used by the military quite a bit in that war, 
not just for scheduling the sorties.

I also found it amusing, when watching the war and thinking about
all the Lisp systems involved, that the TV networks were also using
Symbolics machines, to create some of the graphics/logos for the news shows.
From: Edward Jason Riedy
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cb09bu$2buf$1@agate.berkeley.edu>
And Lupo LeBoucher writes:
 - While the military might have such money, they ain't gonna put it on their 
 - Crays or IBM SP's either, unless you can justify why you're not writing it 
 - in C++ or Fortran.

Just as important in my case is justifying why you cannot just 
link the library into existing C++ and Fortran codes without
buying a single, specific CL implementation and restructuring
your code around it.  Allegro has an appropriate C->Lisp 
ability, but it's not portable between CL implementations (I'd 
love to be wrong), and I haven't timed it for working on large 
data sets.  Plus, you have to link the C++/C/Fortran routine 
into the Lisp image, which won't work for users who already 
have execution frameworks.

I'd also have to explain why you should forget about running 
on an SV1 (Cray vector machine) or Altix (SGI IA64 DSM box).  
Scientific HPC isn't a market for companies that want to make
money, so I'm not expecting a commercial Lisp on current or 
future platforms of interest.

(And no amount of Lispworks niceness matters.  Allegro's the
one with the right support for some of the platforms I can use,
and they have a free beta of their next version.  I have until 
Oct. to find a "killer app" use.)

 - [...], or pointy-headed underfunded numerics guys who, if they know 
 - anything about Lisp at all, [...]

Well, some of the numerics folks around here have good enough
knowledge about Lisp.  ;)

Sorry I'm ranging so far afield; just feel the need to semi-rant.

Jason
-- 
From: Rob Warnock
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <xPudnQxAE_bAjEndRVn-gw@speakeasy.net>
Edward Jason Riedy <···@cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
+---------------
| I'd also have to explain why you should forget about running 
| on an SV1 (Cray vector machine) or Altix (SGI IA64 DSM box).  
+---------------

What's wrong with the SGI Altix? It can run in cc/NUMA mode
(completely cache-coherent across all processors & memories)
as well as in partitioned mode (several smaller cc/NUMA images
non-coherently DSM'd together).


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock			<····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue			<URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403		(650)572-2607
From: Edward Jason Riedy
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cb1m80$2ql4$1@agate.berkeley.edu>
And Rob Warnock writes:
 - What's wrong with the SGI Altix?

I wasn't maligning the Altix line; they're damned impressive.  
I was noting that I'm not aware of an optimized, compiled Lisp 
for it.  Am I wrong?  I'd love to be wrong...  (I don't have 
access to an Altix at the moment, but it's a target.)

Jason
-- 
From: Paul F. Dietz
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <qLmdnVSpDbKYVEndRVn-hQ@dls.net>
Edward Jason Riedy wrote:

> I wasn't maligning the Altix line; they're damned impressive.  
> I was noting that I'm not aware of an optimized, compiled Lisp 
> for it.  Am I wrong?  I'd love to be wrong...  (I don't have 
> access to an Altix at the moment, but it's a target.)

Is that one of the debian targets?  gcl is compiled and runs on all
the debian target architectures.

	Paul
From: Rob Warnock
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <65-dnb5zX5u9-kjdRVn-jw@speakeasy.net>
Paul F. Dietz <·····@dls.net> wrote:
+---------------
| Edward Jason Riedy wrote:
| > I wasn't maligning the Altix line; they're damned impressive.  
| > I was noting that I'm not aware of an optimized, compiled Lisp 
| > for it.  Am I wrong?  I'd love to be wrong...  (I don't have 
| > access to an Altix at the moment, but it's a target.)
| 
| Is that one of the debian targets?  gcl is compiled and runs on all
| the debian target architectures.
+---------------

Hmmm... According to <URL:http://www.sgi.com/servers/altix/configs.html>
they only support "SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 8 + Service Pack 3", and
that only with "SGI ProPack" added. Does GCL run on SuSE? In 64-bit mode?

Also, does GCL support multiprocessors?


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock			<····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue			<URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403		(650)572-2607
From: Edward Jason Riedy
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cb4en8$moi$1@agate.berkeley.edu>
And Rob Warnock writes:
 - Does GCL run on SuSE?  In 64-bit mode?

I don't believe it uses anything Debian-specific.  And how
could anything operate in "32-bit mode" on an IA64?  It's
native, not x86.  I don't know if it supports >2GB arrays,
but I can live with that for now.

 - Also, does GCL support multiprocessors?

There's an MPI interface, which suits my needs.  wheee!!!

Now if I can port it to recent AIX with its slightly strange
mix of object formats, well, that's another question.  As far 
as the vector boxes go, at least I can do fun development to 
get the software architecture straight.

Thank you again to the previous poster!

Jason
-- 
From: Camm Maguire
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <54wu20dih4.fsf@intech19.enhanced.com>
Greetings!

····@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) writes:

> Paul F. Dietz <·····@dls.net> wrote:
> +---------------
> | Edward Jason Riedy wrote:
> | > I wasn't maligning the Altix line; they're damned impressive.  
> | > I was noting that I'm not aware of an optimized, compiled Lisp 
> | > for it.  Am I wrong?  I'd love to be wrong...  (I don't have 
> | > access to an Altix at the moment, but it's a target.)
> | 
> | Is that one of the debian targets?  gcl is compiled and runs on all
> | the debian target architectures.
> +---------------
> 
> Hmmm... According to <URL:http://www.sgi.com/servers/altix/configs.html>
> they only support "SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 8 + Service Pack 3", and
> that only with "SGI ProPack" added. Does GCL run on SuSE? In 64-bit mode?
> 

From what I can see, these altix boxes are Itanium 2 Linux machines,
and gcl should compile out of the box on same, regardless of Linux
'flavor'.  On Debian ia64, gcl provides the base for maxima, acl2, and
axiom, each of which pass all their own internal regression tests.
There are users of very large gcl images on multiprocessor Itanium
machines with a lot of memory in which more than 1 billion cons
elements can be allocated -- these users are primarily interested in
acl2 there.  GCL also compiles out of the box on SuSE amd64 with the
same results as above, should you be wondering about SuSE.

You should note that gcl uses dlopen to load compiled object modules
on ia64, and hence should use a slightly different method for building
and saving images on top of it than is customary on i386.  I can
provide details on request.  amd64 on the other hand is just like x86
in this regard.  Both are fully 64bit lisp systems.

> Also, does GCL support multiprocessors?
> 

GCL is not currently multi-threaded, but does have a very good C
interface, making MPI implementations and the like quite easy.  Check
out pargcl, an interface for using external MPI libraries to
communicate between gcl images across cluster nodes via tcp, or
between processors on the same machine using shared memory.  There is
also a pvm interface at ftp://ftp.ma.utexas.edu/gcl.  Lastly, it is
quite simple to write your own function calling 'fork()' and
communicating to the child via pipes via the gcl utility (clines
"...."), which has the same effect between lisp and C as the inlined
assembler directive __asm__ does between C and asm.

Take care,

> 
> -Rob
> 
> -----
> Rob Warnock			<····@rpw3.org>
> 627 26th Avenue			<URL:http://rpw3.org/>
> San Mateo, CA 94403		(650)572-2607
> 

-- 
Camm Maguire			     			····@enhanced.com
==========================================================================
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."  --  Baha'u'llah
From: Luke Gorrie
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <lhacz2py1s.fsf@dodo.bluetail.com>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:

> If the light does not go on, I suggest you arrange for another
> twenty-thousand man-hours priced at ten cents each so you can get
> CMUCL/SBCL+ILISP/SLIME working nowhere near as well as commercial
> lisps.

Apologies if this has been hashed out before, but what are the
features that make the commercial Lisps so much better?

I'm particularly interested in IDE features that are applicable to an
Emacs-like environment. I'm also curious to know what Lisp development
environment the long-time lispers in this group use, and why. For
instance, Joe Marshall, how do you hack your Lisp nowadays?

Cheers,
Luke (not soliciting "rants")
From: Erann Gat
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <gNOSPAMat-C0A7FD.23115816062004@nntp1.jpl.nasa.gov>
In article <··············@dodo.bluetail.com>,
 Luke Gorrie <····@bluetail.com> wrote:

> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> 
> > If the light does not go on, I suggest you arrange for another
> > twenty-thousand man-hours priced at ten cents each so you can get
> > CMUCL/SBCL+ILISP/SLIME working nowhere near as well as commercial
> > lisps.
> 
> Apologies if this has been hashed out before, but what are the
> features that make the commercial Lisps so much better?

FRED.  (That's the editor in MCL.)

It's like EMACS, but it's written in (and more to the point, hackable 
in) Common Lisp.  So I don't have to learn a new dialect of Lisp to 
program my editor.

Fred is the one feature that has kept me a loyal MCL user for nearly 
twenty years.  I started with the first release of Coral Common Lisp and 
I've never looked back.

E.
From: Espen Vestre
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <kwr7sesiv0.fsf@merced.netfonds.no>
Erann Gat <·········@flownet.com> writes:

> Fred is the one feature that has kept me a loyal MCL user for nearly 
> twenty years.  I started with the first release of Coral Common Lisp and 
> I've never looked back.

Yes, FRED is really a wonder! I think it was the tremedously ease
of extending FRED into anything you like that really opened my eyes
to the usefulness of Lisp for general-purpose programming (Hmm! I
didn't think of that when I put down a few lines of "my road to
lisp" recently...).
-- 
  (espen)
From: Gorbag
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <JJmAc.333$d4.113@bos-service2.ext.ray.com>
"Erann Gat" <·········@flownet.com> wrote in message
····································@nntp1.jpl.nasa.gov...
> In article <··············@dodo.bluetail.com>,
>  Luke Gorrie <····@bluetail.com> wrote:
>
> > Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> >
> > > If the light does not go on, I suggest you arrange for another
> > > twenty-thousand man-hours priced at ten cents each so you can get
> > > CMUCL/SBCL+ILISP/SLIME working nowhere near as well as commercial
> > > lisps.
> >
> > Apologies if this has been hashed out before, but what are the
> > features that make the commercial Lisps so much better?
>
> FRED.  (That's the editor in MCL.)

This is a key insight, and one of the reasons I stuck to the LispMs so long
(for ZMACS).

>
> It's like EMACS, but it's written in (and more to the point, hackable
> in) Common Lisp.  So I don't have to learn a new dialect of Lisp to
> program my editor.

Plus, the editor and your app are running IN THE SAME ENVIRONMENT. So they
can influence each other - your editor can know what's in your environment,
directly grok the process list, etc. ILisp, SLIME, etc. all try to do this
through a port but never really get to full integration the way FRED and
ZWEI do.

>
> Fred is the one feature that has kept me a loyal MCL user for nearly
> twenty years.  I started with the first release of Coral Common Lisp and
> I've never looked back.
>
> E.
From: Julian Stecklina
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <86wu24yamw.fsf@web.de>
"Gorbag" <······@invalid.acct> writes:


> Plus, the editor and your app are running IN THE SAME ENVIRONMENT. So they
> can influence each other - your editor can know what's in your environment,
> directly grok the process list, etc. ILisp, SLIME, etc. all try to do this
> through a port but never really get to full integration the way FRED and
> ZWEI do.

Just for the record: ACLs internal editor is crap. ACL+xeli+xemacs
nice for editing, but ACL+SLIME is *very* comfortable. One thing
that's missing is, that you cannot use the ACL GUI to navigate to a
particular source code location.

Regards,
-- 
Julian Stecklina 

Signed and encrypted mail welcome.
Key-Server: pgp.mit.edu         Key-ID: 0xD65B2AB5
FA38 DCD3 00EC 97B8 6DD8  D7CC 35D8 8D0E D65B 2AB5

Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program
contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden
slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
 - Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming
From: Paolo Amoroso
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87k6y4d5oe.fsf@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it>
Julian Stecklina <··········@web.de> writes:

> Just for the record: ACLs internal editor is crap. ACL+xeli+xemacs
> nice for editing, but ACL+SLIME is *very* comfortable. One thing

Which, together with the mention of Franz engineer Charley Cox in
another thread, reminds me of something funny I noticed at a Franz
seminar a few months ago.

Charley did a demo of a web services application based on the
Webaction framework.  The demo involved a few rounds of interactive
changes to the code.

He used a Windows laptop, and started showing the Allegro CL IDE.
Then switched to Emacs for the rest of the demo :)


Paolo
-- 
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (Google for info on each):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <BmZAc.128136$Nn4.27761525@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Paolo Amoroso wrote:
> Julian Stecklina <··········@web.de> writes:
> 
> 
>>Just for the record: ACLs internal editor is crap. ACL+xeli+xemacs
>>nice for editing, but ACL+SLIME is *very* comfortable. One thing
> 
> 
> Which, together with the mention of Franz engineer Charley Cox in
> another thread, reminds me of something funny I noticed at a Franz
> seminar a few months ago.
> 
> Charley did a demo of a web services application based on the
> Webaction framework.  The demo involved a few rounds of interactive
> changes to the code.
> 
> He used a Windows laptop, and started showing the Allegro CL IDE.
> Then switched to Emacs for the rest of the demo :)

If you want to broaden the sample, there may be a videotape of me during 
a demo trying to write and run a five-line function using 
Emacs+ILisp+CMUCL with an audience of cmuclites and emaxen shouting out 
key combos for my consideration. :)

otoh, when I use the Allegro IDE (on win32) in public, people just want 
to drag me outside and burn me at the stake for practicing witchcraft. 
tedious that. all demo long it's show them a feature, fight back the 
mob, show then a feature, fight back the mob...

:)

kenny


-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Espen Vestre
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <kwisdqshbe.fsf@merced.netfonds.no>
Luke Gorrie <····@bluetail.com> writes:

> Apologies if this has been hashed out before, but what are the
> features that make the commercial Lisps so much better?

I do some cross-platform GUI development, and LispWorks's CAPI
saves me a lot of work. I also use the graphical debugging/inspection
tools frequently, especially function call graphs and the generic
function and class browsers.
-- 
  (espen)
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <HnhAc.81517$mX.27547381@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Luke Gorrie wrote:
> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>If the light does not go on, I suggest you arrange for another
>>twenty-thousand man-hours priced at ten cents each so you can get
>>CMUCL/SBCL+ILISP/SLIME working nowhere near as well as commercial
>>lisps.
> 
> 
> Apologies if this has been hashed out before, but what are the
> features that make the commercial Lisps so much better?

In one word: complete integration.

Editor, listener, debugger, inspector, various browsers all offered by 
one process which sees it all. So I can click on a stack frame in which 
function X gets invoked and hit CONTROL-ALT-. (jump to definition in 
source) and be investigating the source in about two seconds. And this 
pattern works no matter where I am and no matter which other 
navigational tool I want to kick off.

One measure of the importance to this is that someday I will finally 
squeeze off an RFE to Franz: "Please, no full stops after identifiers in 
error messages." The problem is AllegroCL error output appearing in the 
listener, say:

     Division by zero in: KT-COMPUTE-AVERAGE.

Normally I could click on the /output text/ and hit ctrl-alt-., but that 
little full stop at the end of the error message, while a great comfort 
i am sure to the former grammar teachers of Franz developers, prevents that.

Another thing is something like apropos being an interactive dialog in 
which one can reshape the query and see diffferent result sets as I 
type, not just the apropos output scrolling by in a listener.

Well, OK: also support. When CMUCL or SBCL stagger to their feets on 
win32 will they come with installers? How about an automatic 
"update-cmucl" function which reaches out to common-lisp.net to download 
patches and apply them automatically? I love the idea of an entire 
company (even if it is just one or two dedicated Lispniks) depending for 
their survival on how slick are their tools.

> 
> I'm particularly interested in IDE features that are applicable to an
> Emacs-like environment. I'm also curious to know what Lisp development
> environment the long-time lispers in this group use, and why.

First MCL, now AllegroCL. Just enough Lispworks and CMUCL to port things.

kenny

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: David Steuber
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <4ddd570c.0406172025.4c11f089@posting.google.com>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote in message news:
> In one word: complete integration.
> 
>      Division by zero in: KT-COMPUTE-AVERAGE.

Well, I think I might be able to help you with your math error.
From: Luke Gorrie
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <lhvfhhfed1.fsf@dodo.bluetail.com>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:

> Luke Gorrie wrote:
>> Apologies if this has been hashed out before, but what are the
>> features that make the commercial Lisps so much better?
>
> In one word: complete integration.
>
> Editor, listener, debugger, inspector, various browsers all offered by
> one process which sees it all. So I can click on a stack frame in
> which function X gets invoked and hit CONTROL-ALT-. (jump to
> definition in source) and be investigating the source in about two
> seconds. And this pattern works no matter where I am and no matter
> which other navigational tool I want to kick off.

And this differs from SLIME how?

> One measure of the importance to this is that someday I will finally
> squeeze off an RFE to Franz: "Please, no full stops after identifiers
> in error messages." The problem is AllegroCL error output appearing in
> the listener, say:
>
>      Division by zero in: KT-COMPUTE-AVERAGE.
>
> Normally I could click on the /output text/ and hit ctrl-alt-., but
> that little full stop at the end of the error message, while a great
> comfort i am sure to the former grammar teachers of Franz developers,
> prevents that.

Truly you are blessed to be able to nag somebody else to fix this for
you for money. We lost souls in the free software world would have to
resort to something drastic, like writing five lines of code to teach
the listener to treat . as punctuation instead of a symbol
constituent:

  (add-hook 'slime-repl-mode-hook 'my-change-listener-symbol-syntax)

  (defun my-change-listener-symbol-syntax ()
    "Modify the syntax table to choice for the listener."
    (set-syntax-table (copy-syntax-table))
    (modify-syntax-entry ?\. "."))

Poor helpless us.

> Another thing is something like apropos being an interactive dialog in
> which one can reshape the query and see diffferent result sets as I
> type, not just the apropos output scrolling by in a listener.

It updates the result set after each keystroke? That sounds nice, we
might have to do that. Meanwhile `C-c C-a foo RET' is okay for
bringing up a nicely formatted and hyperlinked apropos listing in its
own scrollable/dismissable buffer for me.

> Well, OK: also support. When CMUCL or SBCL stagger to their feets on
> win32 will they come with installers? How about an automatic
> "update-cmucl" function which reaches out to common-lisp.net to
> download patches and apply them automatically?

In SLIME we have this command, it's called "cvs update". You can use
tags to choose whether you get the current sources or the latest
stable version. We handle any recompilation needed automatically. If
you put it in a shell script called 'update-slime' it would be
indistinguishable from what you describe as far as I can see.

Kenny, I'm all in favour of over-the-top enthusiastic outbursts, but
for heaven's sake do your homework before piling too much shit on your
fellow hackers. If you dislike the free environments because of
personal tastes then that's all you need to say to make your point.

Cheers,
Luke
From: Luke Gorrie
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <lhvfhhduc5.fsf@dodo.bluetail.com>
Luke Gorrie <····@bluetail.com> writes:

> I'm all in favour of over-the-top enthusiastic outbursts, but for
> heaven's sake do your homework before piling too much shit on your
> fellow hackers.

I should take my own advice. Apologies for raising the temperature in
here.

Happy midsummer,
Luke
From: Raymond Wiker
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <863c4lrvcz.fsf@raw.grenland.fast.no>
Luke Gorrie <····@bluetail.com> writes:

> Luke Gorrie <····@bluetail.com> writes:
>
>> I'm all in favour of over-the-top enthusiastic outbursts, but for
>> heaven's sake do your homework before piling too much shit on your
>> fellow hackers.
>
> I should take my own advice. Apologies for raising the temperature in
> here.
>
> Happy midsummer,
> Luke

        Midsummer here in Norway could do with a bit of
temperature-raising, so I thank you for your efforts :-)
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <nvCCc.233113$WA4.218079@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Luke Gorrie wrote:
> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>Luke Gorrie wrote:
>>
>>>Apologies if this has been hashed out before, but what are the
>>>features that make the commercial Lisps so much better?
>>
>>In one word: complete integration.
>>
>>Editor, listener, debugger, inspector, various browsers all offered by
>>one process which sees it all. So I can click on a stack frame in
>>which function X gets invoked and hit CONTROL-ALT-. (jump to
>>definition in source) and be investigating the source in about two
>>seconds. And this pattern works no matter where I am and no matter
>>which other navigational tool I want to kick off.
> 
> 
> And this differs from SLIME how?

I have heard great things about SLIME, and if/when I make my homecoming 
to Mac OS X I will give it a try on SBCL.

> 
> 
>>One measure of the importance to this is that someday I will finally
>>squeeze off an RFE to Franz: "Please, no full stops after identifiers
>>in error messages." The problem is AllegroCL error output appearing in
>>the listener, say:
>>
>>     Division by zero in: KT-COMPUTE-AVERAGE.
>>
>>Normally I could click on the /output text/ and hit ctrl-alt-., but
>>that little full stop at the end of the error message, while a great
>>comfort i am sure to the former grammar teachers of Franz developers,
>>prevents that.
> 
> 
> Truly you are blessed to be able to nag somebody else to fix this for
> you for money. We lost souls in the free software world would have to
> resort to something drastic, like writing five lines of code to teach
> the listener to treat . as punctuation instead of a symbol
> constituent:
> 
>   (add-hook 'slime-repl-mode-hook 'my-change-listener-symbol-syntax)
> 
>   (defun my-change-listener-symbol-syntax ()
>     "Modify the syntax table to choice for the listener."
>     (set-syntax-table (copy-syntax-table))
>     (modify-syntax-entry ?\. "."))
> 
> Poor helpless us.

Touche! But you digress. We are discussing the I in IDE, not the agreed 
advantages of open source.

> 
> 
>>Another thing is something like apropos being an interactive dialog in
>>which one can reshape the query and see diffferent result sets as I
>>type, not just the apropos output scrolling by in a listener.
> 
> 
> It updates the result set after each keystroke? That sounds nice, we
> might have to do that. Meanwhile `C-c C-a foo RET' is okay for
> bringing up a nicely formatted and hyperlinked apropos listing in its
> own scrollable/dismissable buffer for me.

No, sorry, I misspoke. The dialog waits for you to hit enter. But then 
as I play with filters the result set gets updated automatically.

In case any of these features interest you: one filter is "exported 
symbols only". A radio group offers: all, functions, variables, or 
classes only. a check box selects "all packages", and when off a pop up 
of packages becomes enabled to specify which. The listing shows symbol, 
package, and then flags for whether the symbol is exported, is bound to 
a function, a setf, a variable, or a class (one col each).

Maybe I should just recreate it using Celtic and then you can see what I 
am talking about. :)

> 
>>Well, OK: also support. When CMUCL or SBCL stagger to their feets on
>>win32 will they come with installers? How about an automatic
>>"update-cmucl" function which reaches out to common-lisp.net to
>>download patches and apply them automatically?
> 
> 
> In SLIME we have this command, it's called "cvs update".

You *n*x people really have no idea how much you have learned about how 
many tools. The Cells II release is a zip on ftp simply because i could 
not get WinCVS to do anything. I figured it out once, but now I cannot 
remember what I did. This is a very bad sign for the tool.

What I want is to click on "Install SBCL+Emavs+SLIME" on some web site 
and click ok and next and agreed a dozen times and be presented with, 
well, a text editor? Will it have a Slime menu, at least, so I can see 
what is available in the way of tools?

Remember, I am an application programmer. I can have Lispworks up in 
(well, I do not know, how automated is an LW install on Linux? If it 
sucks, that is just another knock on free software.)


  You can use
> tags to choose whether you get the current sources or the latest
> stable version. We handle any recompilation needed automatically. If
> you put it in a shell script called 'update-slime' it would be
> indistinguishable from what you describe as far as I can see.
> 
> Kenny, I'm all in favour of over-the-top enthusiastic outbursts, but
> for heaven's sake do your homework before piling too much shit on your
> fellow hackers. If you dislike the free environments because of
> personal tastes then that's all you need to say to make your point.

No, I would not have said that if I had not heard from a respected free 
Lisp user and developer that integration in free Lisps is not what it is 
in environments where the editor and compiler and everything are all 
part of the same application.

But that was a year ago and I gather Slime has made great strides since 
then, which nicely brings us back on topic: If Slime really is so great, 
what happened to the newbie (forgotten) to whom I responded with my 
flame on free Lisps? The fellow seems to have done his best to make them 
work for him.

kt

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Matthew Danish
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58-035.0406241322250.6608@unix45.andrew.cmu.edu>
On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, Kenny Tilton wrote:
> You *n*x people really have no idea how much you have learned about how
> many tools. The Cells II release is a zip on ftp simply because i could
> not get WinCVS to do anything. I figured it out once, but now I cannot
> remember what I did. This is a very bad sign for the tool.

I can never get WinCVS to do anything either, and I'm fairly experienced
with CVS.  I advise not using it, and just typing "cvs update" from the
command line in the source directory; it's very simple.  WinCVS seems to
be an excellent example of GUI-gone-wrong.

> What I want is to click on "Install SBCL+Emavs+SLIME" on some web site
> and click ok and next and agreed a dozen times and be presented with,
> well, a text editor? Will it have a Slime menu, at least, so I can see
> what is available in the way of tools?

Does this count: http://www.common-lisp.net/project/lispbox ?

(Sorry for the rather sparse look, I need to restore files from back-up)

> Remember, I am an application programmer. I can have Lispworks up in
> (well, I do not know, how automated is an LW install on Linux? If it
> sucks, that is just another knock on free software.)

It is very simple.  Just a matter of unpacking an archive.
From: William Bland
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <pan.2004.06.24.18.28.22.492642@abstractnonsense.com>
On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 15:33:39 +0000, Kenny Tilton wrote:
> But that was a year ago and I gather Slime has made great strides since 
> then, which nicely brings us back on topic: If Slime really is so great, 
> what happened to the newbie (forgotten) to whom I responded with my 
> flame on free Lisps? The fellow seems to have done his best to make them 
> work for him.

I think I've said this before on this newsgroup, but I'll say it again:
SLIME is *the* reason that I stopped being scared of Common Lisp and made
the leap from Scheme.  It's good.  Try it.

Cheers,
	Bill.
-- 
Dr. William Bland.
It would not be too unfair to any language to refer to Java as a
stripped down Lisp or Smalltalk with a C syntax.   (Ken Anderson).
From: Paolo Amoroso
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <873c4khkcm.fsf@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:

> You *n*x people really have no idea how much you have learned about
> how many tools. The Cells II release is a zip on ftp simply because i
> could not get WinCVS to do anything. I figured it out once, but now I

No big deal, just use Emacs' VC (Version Control) mode :)


Paolo
-- 
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (Google for info on each):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
From: Thomas F. Burdick
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <xcvfz8kzmjt.fsf@famine.OCF.Berkeley.EDU>
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> writes:

> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> 
> > You *n*x people really have no idea how much you have learned about
> > how many tools. The Cells II release is a zip on ftp simply because i
> > could not get WinCVS to do anything. I figured it out once, but now I
> 
> No big deal, just use Emacs' VC (Version Control) mode :)

It only helps some, pcl-cvs makes up most of the difference, but you
still need to consult wizzards for things like imports.
From: Björn Lindberg
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <hcspt7ou6qa.fsf@fnatte.nada.kth.se>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:

> But that was a year ago and I gather Slime has made great strides
> since then, which nicely brings us back on topic: If Slime really is
> so great, what happened to the newbie (forgotten) to whom I responded
> with my flame on free Lisps? The fellow seems to have done his best to
> make them work for him.

If the Allegro IDE is so great, how come several people in this thread
said they can't stand it? Perhaps different tools suits different
people.


Bj�rn
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <KSLCc.133722$Nn4.29073787@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Bj�rn Lindberg wrote:
> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>But that was a year ago and I gather Slime has made great strides
>>since then, which nicely brings us back on topic: If Slime really is
>>so great, what happened to the newbie (forgotten) to whom I responded
>>with my flame on free Lisps? The fellow seems to have done his best to
>>make them work for him.
> 
> 
> If the Allegro IDE is so great, how come several people in this thread
> said they can't stand it?

I heard them saying they did not like the /editor/. Which only makes 
sense, since they were hardcore emacs users and we are all programmed by 
our editors to understand nothing else. But of course a little 
familiarity and they would be as productive as ever.

  Perhaps different tools suits different
> people.

Why you ol' relativist, you! No, the reason I spout the crap I do here 
on c.l.l. is that I always ask /fans/ of XXX before trashing it. ie, 
some tools just plain break our balls. My sample is too small, but then 
this is Usenet, not a frickin refereed journal.

Hey, how about celtk? Then no onewill know how to pronounce it? Almost 
looks like Celtic if you cross your eyes, and then we have a most 
excellent compression of Cells-LTk-Tk. celltk? some camelcase: ceLTk? 
nah. i'll sleep on celtk. cvs release coming soon, thx to thems that 
know better.

kt

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Brian Downing
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <HCNCc.106811$eu.65544@attbi_s02>
In article <·························@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
Kenny Tilton  <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> I heard them saying they did not like the /editor/. Which only makes 
> sense, since they were hardcore emacs users and we are all programmed by 
> our editors to understand nothing else. But of course a little 
> familiarity and they would be as productive as ever.

"I heard them saying they did not like the /language/. Which only makes
sense, since they were hardcore CL users and we are all programmed by
our languages to understand nothing else. But of course a little
familiarity in Java and they would be as productive as ever."

:-), mostly.  It is possible, however, that GNU Emacs is simply a more
powerful/expressive editor than the built-in Allegro CL one.

-bcd
-- 
*** Brian Downing <bdowning at lavos dot net> 
From: Jock Cooper
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <m34qoz9vma.fsf@jcooper02.sagepub.com>
Brian Downing <·············@lavos.net> writes:

> In article <·························@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
> Kenny Tilton  <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> > I heard them saying they did not like the /editor/. Which only makes 
> > sense, since they were hardcore emacs users and we are all programmed by 
> > our editors to understand nothing else. But of course a little 
> > familiarity and they would be as productive as ever.
> 
> "I heard them saying they did not like the /language/. Which only makes
> sense, since they were hardcore CL users and we are all programmed by
> our languages to understand nothing else. But of course a little
> familiarity in Java and they would be as productive as ever."
> 
> :-), mostly.  It is possible, however, that GNU Emacs is simply a more
> powerful/expressive editor than the built-in Allegro CL one.

If someone can show me how to do an electric-buffer-menu,
split/unsplit windows (horizontally and vertically), visit/save/close
multiple files, isearch, named kill buffers, simple macros, operate on
rectangles, seemingly unlimited undos, checkout/in, and so on, all
without my hands leaving the keys, I'll be happy to give ACL's editor
a chance.  In fact I don't want my hands leaving the home row--so no
arrow keys, or pageup/dn etc.

When I get into that editor I feel like I'm in notepad.
From: Björn Lindberg
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <hcslli9t32c.fsf@fnatte.nada.kth.se>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:

> Bj�rn Lindberg wrote:
> > Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> >
> >>But that was a year ago and I gather Slime has made great strides
> >>since then, which nicely brings us back on topic: If Slime really is
> >>so great, what happened to the newbie (forgotten) to whom I responded
> >>with my flame on free Lisps? The fellow seems to have done his best to
> >>make them work for him.
> > If the Allegro IDE is so great, how come several people in this
> > thread
> > said they can't stand it?
> 
> I heard them saying they did not like the /editor/. Which only makes
> sense, since they were hardcore emacs users and we are all programmed
> by our editors to understand nothing else. But of course a little
> familiarity and they would be as productive as ever.

The biggest difference I saw in how they describe their working style
as compared to yours, is that they want to be able to exclusively use
the keyboard, whereas you seem content with using the mouse a lot as
well as the keyboard. Is the Allegro IDE as convenient to use with
only the keyboard as Emacs is? (I have not used the Allegro IDE
myself.)


Bj�rn
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <dCCDc.3832$oW6.644326@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Bj�rn Lindberg wrote:
> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>Bj�rn Lindberg wrote:
>>
>>>Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>>But that was a year ago and I gather Slime has made great strides
>>>>since then, which nicely brings us back on topic: If Slime really is
>>>>so great, what happened to the newbie (forgotten) to whom I responded
>>>>with my flame on free Lisps? The fellow seems to have done his best to
>>>>make them work for him.
>>>
>>>If the Allegro IDE is so great, how come several people in this
>>>thread
>>>said they can't stand it?
>>
>>I heard them saying they did not like the /editor/. Which only makes
>>sense, since they were hardcore emacs users and we are all programmed
>>by our editors to understand nothing else. But of course a little
>>familiarity and they would be as productive as ever.
> 
> 
> The biggest difference I saw in how they describe their working style
> as compared to yours, is that they want to be able to exclusively use
> the keyboard, whereas you seem content with using the mouse a lot as
> well as the keyboard. Is the Allegro IDE as convenient to use with
> only the keyboard as Emacs is? (I have not used the Allegro IDE
> myself.)

Yes, it has key chords defined for everything. It also has a feature I 
prefer to emacs buffers: a tab control which shows one source at a time, 
but with a row of tabs (buttons) across the top showing what else I have 
open. I am so comfortable with the mouse that I just discovered (thx to 
this digression (no one said emacs was not a great editor, nor that 
programmers fall twitching to the ground if exposed for more than three 
minutes to a different editor)) it has key chords for moving left/right 
thru those tabs. It also has chords for returning to prior tab or 
secondmost prior (penultimate?) tab. I listed in an earlier message all 
the chords with their functions, no one attacked that. We did hear about 
split windows -- I can open a second editor-cum-tab-control to see 
source side by side, and I have done that twice in five years.

But again, I am sure I would love editing with emacs, just not enough to 
give up the integration with all the tools, because ACL really does have 
a fine built-in editor. Comparisons to Notepad are, er, um, misleading. 
It just says "this is how I feel using this unfamiliar editor". No 
doubt. I feel paralyzed when using emacs or LW's Hemlock workalike 
(except that as I have said, I use ACL in "emacs mode" so I do OK if I 
stick to the few things I know are emacs-like (from my Fred days).

Maybe Slime changes all this -- maybe at the next lisp-nyc meeting rahul 
  or some other slimeball can give a demo. of course by then he will be 
able to run the Celtic sample code for visual-apropos (except he will 
have to rewrite it without Cells or be kicked permanently from Lisp IRC.)

:)

kt

ps. I am rooting for Slime. If Slime succeeds, I can move back to Mac OS 
X and use emacs+slime+sbcl (or openmcl? other?). I would /love/ to leave 
this XP garbage behind.


-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Rahul Jain
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87vfhckepo.fsf@nyct.net>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:

> It also has a feature I prefer to emacs buffers: a tab control which
> shows one source at a time, but with a row of tabs (buttons) across
> the top showing what else I have open.

Shocking. Emacs NEVER had a feature like that. I'm ALWAYS missing those
tabs at the top of my screen (ok, they're on the right side at work)
when I'm using Emacs. Especially tabs that change to show only the
buffers in the same mode as the one you're looking at now, but with the
option to filter them or not in any way you choose. Yup, the Allegro IDE
really beats Emacs on that one.

> Maybe Slime changes all this -- maybe at the next lisp-nyc meeting rahul
> or some other slimeball can give a demo. of course by then he will be
> able to run the Celtic sample code for visual-apropos (except he will
> have to rewrite it without Cells or be kicked permanently from Lisp IRC.)

Oh, and where did you get the idea that I use SLIME? (It does have a
rather fancy apropos feature, since you mention that... or was that the
McCLIM Listener...)

:)

But seriously, your idiotic flamebaiting of those who don't care for
your reinvention of the 15-sided, concave wheel is starting to lose its
entertainment value.

-- 
Rahul Jain
·····@nyct.net
Professional Software Developer, Amateur Quantum Mechanicist
From: Andrew Cristina
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <pan.2004.06.28.02.12.47.876000@cox.net>
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 19:01:24 +0000, Rahul Jain wrote:

> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> 
>> It also has a feature I prefer to emacs buffers: a tab control which
>> shows one source at a time, but with a row of tabs (buttons) across
>> the top showing what else I have open.
> 
> Shocking. Emacs NEVER had a feature like that. I'm ALWAYS missing those
> tabs at the top of my screen (ok, they're on the right side at work)
> when I'm using Emacs. Especially tabs that change to show only the
> buffers in the same mode as the one you're looking at now, but with the
> option to filter them or not in any way you choose. Yup, the Allegro IDE
> really beats Emacs on that one.

Xemacs does :-)
From: Rahul Jain
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87lli7dwig.fsf@nyct.net>
Andrew Cristina <········@cox.net> writes:

> Xemacs does :-)

Shhh! You'll just make Kenny invent some other non-existent deficiency
in Emacs to use as his excuse for hating the IRC protocol. :)

-- 
Rahul Jain
·····@nyct.net
Professional Software Developer, Amateur Quantum Mechanicist
From: Edi Weitz
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87zn6ozn65.fsf@bird.agharta.de>
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 19:01:24 GMT, Rahul Jain <·····@nyct.net> wrote:

> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
>
>> It also has a feature I prefer to emacs buffers: a tab control
>> which shows one source at a time, but with a row of tabs (buttons)
>> across the top showing what else I have open.
>
> Shocking. Emacs NEVER had a feature like that.

  <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=uj0hllqrtbeo95%40corp.supernews.com&output=gplain>

But it looks like this code has some bugs and isn't maintained. It'd
be cool if some Emacs wizard could improve it. (Or maybe recent
Emacsen already have something like that and I just haven't found it?
I wouldn't be surprised.)

Edi.

-- 

"Lisp doesn't look any deader than usual to me."
(David Thornley, reply to a question older than most languages)

Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
From: Brian Palmer
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <0whisdcld4c.fsf@rescomp.Stanford.EDU>
Edi Weitz <········@agharta.de> writes:
 
> > Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> >
> >> It also has a feature I prefer to emacs buffers: a tab control
> >> which shows one source at a time, but with a row of tabs (buttons)
> >> across the top showing what else I have open.
 
> But it looks like this code has some bugs and isn't maintained. It'd
> be cool if some Emacs wizard could improve it. (Or maybe recent
> Emacsen already have something like that and I just haven't found it?
> I wouldn't be surprised.)

I couldn't say about gnu emacs, but xemacs has this feature
standard. (Behaviour is exactly like rahul described; by default, it
shows only files that are in the same major mode as the current
buffer; so that you can have gnus and code and the Great American
Novels without overflowing your screen with tabs). 

-- 
I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard.
From: Björn Lindberg
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <hcsd63ku0lq.fsf@fnatte.nada.kth.se>
Edi Weitz <········@agharta.de> writes:

> On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 19:01:24 GMT, Rahul Jain <·····@nyct.net> wrote:
> 
> > Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> >
> >> It also has a feature I prefer to emacs buffers: a tab control
> >> which shows one source at a time, but with a row of tabs (buttons)
> >> across the top showing what else I have open.
> >
> > Shocking. Emacs NEVER had a feature like that.
> 
>   <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=uj0hllqrtbeo95%40corp.supernews.com&output=gplain>
> 
> But it looks like this code has some bugs and isn't maintained. It'd
> be cool if some Emacs wizard could improve it. (Or maybe recent
> Emacsen already have something like that and I just haven't found it?
> I wouldn't be surprised.)

From Kenny's description it sounds like the speedbar feature of
standard Emacs is superior to what he is talking about.


Bj�rn
From: Alan Shutko
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87fz8fzlls.fsf@wesley.springies.com>
Rahul Jain <·····@nyct.net> writes:

> Shocking. Emacs NEVER had a feature like that. I'm ALWAYS missing those
> tabs at the top of my screen (ok, they're on the right side at work)
> when I'm using Emacs. 

This has been discussed on emacs-devel, but to date nobody has come
up with a decent enough answer to the question "How should it behave
with lots of buffers?"  RMS doesn't want a Mozilla-style solution
where you see billions of tabs, but don't know which tab goes where
because there's not enough room to display any part of the filename.

Here's the root of the discussion.  If you can come up with a good
way for it to work, it looks like there are several other people who
would be interested in helping.

-- 
Alan Shutko <···@acm.org> - I am the rocks.
Honey, quit playing Mahjongg, I have to work.
From: Lynn Winebarger
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cbpo1m$8o1$1@hood.uits.indiana.edu>
   How about the final tab on the right giving a drop-down menu
of buffers (when there are too many)?  This appears to be a
workable solution for toolbars that get too full.
   Preferably there'd be a way to make frames have their own
list of open buffers based on which ones you've visited
in that frame.

Lynn

Alan Shutko wrote:
> Rahul Jain <·····@nyct.net> writes:
> 
> 
>>Shocking. Emacs NEVER had a feature like that. I'm ALWAYS missing those
>>tabs at the top of my screen (ok, they're on the right side at work)
>>when I'm using Emacs. 
> 
> 
> This has been discussed on emacs-devel, but to date nobody has come
> up with a decent enough answer to the question "How should it behave
> with lots of buffers?"  RMS doesn't want a Mozilla-style solution
> where you see billions of tabs, but don't know which tab goes where
> because there's not enough room to display any part of the filename.
> 
> Here's the root of the discussion.  If you can come up with a good
> way for it to work, it looks like there are several other people who
> would be interested in helping.
> 
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <4h_Dc.4360$oW6.894431@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Alan Shutko wrote:

> Rahul Jain <·····@nyct.net> writes:
> 
> 
>>Shocking. Emacs NEVER had a feature like that. I'm ALWAYS missing those
>>tabs at the top of my screen (ok, they're on the right side at work)
>>when I'm using Emacs. 
> 
> 
> This has been discussed on emacs-devel, but to date nobody has come
> up with a decent enough answer to the question "How should it behave
> with lots of buffers?"  RMS doesn't want a Mozilla-style solution
> where you see billions of tabs, but don't know which tab goes where
> because there's not enough room to display any part of the filename.
> 
> Here's the root of the discussion.  If you can come up with a good
> way for it to work, it looks like there are several other people who
> would be interested in helping.
> 

AllegroCL makes the tabs into a kinda scrollbar. And I just noticed they 
waste a lot of space by including ".lisp" in the tab. I happen to hate 
the scrollbar idea. I also decided the problem is pilot error: I need to 
  close a buffer once in a while. ie, I do not really need all those 
buffers open, they just accumulate over time because I never close 
anything. I think this is a fair rationale for not worrying too much 
about to handle a lot of tabs. perhaps do scroll in preference to 
abbreviating, but don't feel guilty over the awkwardness of the 
scrolling since at bottom it is user choice to have so many buffers 
open--they are creating their own visual pollution. my 2.

kt

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Alan Shutko
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87wu1rxxg4.fsf@wesley.springies.com>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:

> I also decided the problem is pilot error: I need to close a buffer
> once in a while. ie, I do not really need all those buffers open,
> they just accumulate over time because I never close anything. I
> think this is a fair rationale for not worrying too much about to
> handle a lot of tabs.

I disagree.  The rest of Emacs works great when you have lots of
buffers open.  It makes things faster in many cases and lets you use
things like M-x multi-occur.  Why constantly reopen buffers if you
don't have to?  Furthermore, many Emacs lisp tools (like Gnus) leave
around old buffers in case you want them later.  (Like sent
messages.)  These would have to be changed if it's decided "Emacs
really should only have as many buffers/files open as comfortably fit
on a tab across the top of the screen."

I don't think it's right for Emacs to deprecate a working style it
makes very productive just because one feature (tabs) doesn't work well
with it.   

-- 
Alan Shutko <···@acm.org> - I am the rocks.
From: William Bland
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <pan.2004.06.28.20.35.55.612968@abstractnonsense.com>
On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 15:02:51 -0500, Alan Shutko wrote:
> I don't think it's right for Emacs to deprecate a working style it
> makes very productive just because one feature (tabs) doesn't work well
> with it.

Agreed.  I actually go out of my way to have lots of buffers open
so that M-/ (completion based on the contents of other buffers) works
really well.

Cheers,
	Bill.
-- 
Dr. William Bland.
It would not be too unfair to any language to refer to Java as a
stripped down Lisp or Smalltalk with a C syntax.   (Ken Anderson).
From: Rahul Jain
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87hdsvdweg.fsf@nyct.net>
Alan Shutko <···@acm.org> writes:

> These would have to be changed if it's decided "Emacs
> really should only have as many buffers/files open as comfortably fit
> on a tab across the top of the screen."

And some peoples' screen size would have to be changed, too.

-- 
Rahul Jain
·····@nyct.net
Professional Software Developer, Amateur Quantum Mechanicist
From: Pascal Costanza
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cbps52$ko5$1@newsreader2.netcologne.de>
Alan Shutko wrote:
> Rahul Jain <·····@nyct.net> writes:
> 
>>Shocking. Emacs NEVER had a feature like that. I'm ALWAYS missing those
>>tabs at the top of my screen (ok, they're on the right side at work)
>>when I'm using Emacs. 
> 
> This has been discussed on emacs-devel, but to date nobody has come
> up with a decent enough answer to the question "How should it behave
> with lots of buffers?"  RMS doesn't want a Mozilla-style solution
> where you see billions of tabs, but don't know which tab goes where
> because there's not enough room to display any part of the filename.
> 
> Here's the root of the discussion.  If you can come up with a good
> way for it to work, it looks like there are several other people who
> would be interested in helping.

That's easy. Put them on the left or right hand side:

+---------+-------------------------------------+
| bla.txt |                                     |
+---------+                                     |
| blo.txt |                                     |
+---------+           main edit area            |
| blu.txt |                                     |
+---------+                                     |
: : : : : :                                     :
+---------+                                     |
| blz.txt |                                     |
+---------+-------------------------------------+

If you make that column resizable in width, one can always choose how 
much one would like to see. It was possible to configure Opera up until 
version 5 (or 6?) to behave like that, until they went berzerk with 
colorful useless skins. I have never understood why people like tabs, 
the Opera way was much more convenient...


Pascal

-- 
Tyler: "How's that working out for you?"
Jack: "Great."
Tyler: "Keep it up, then."
From: Tayssir John Gabbour
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <866764be.0406281913.2ce44f40@posting.google.com>
Pascal Costanza <········@web.de> wrote in message news:<············@newsreader2.netcologne.de>...
> Alan Shutko wrote:
> > Rahul Jain <·····@nyct.net> writes:
> >>Shocking. Emacs NEVER had a feature like that. I'm ALWAYS missing those
> >>tabs at the top of my screen (ok, they're on the right side at work)
> >>when I'm using Emacs. 
> > 
> > This has been discussed on emacs-devel, but to date nobody has come
> > up with a decent enough answer to the question "How should it behave
> > with lots of buffers?"  RMS doesn't want a Mozilla-style solution
> > where you see billions of tabs, but don't know which tab goes where
> > because there's not enough room to display any part of the filename.
> 
> That's easy. Put them on the left or right hand side:

Works fairly well in mIRC, especially considering that horizontal
space isn't that important for code. It's vertical that's at a
premium.

At least with current anticoder monitors. I've heard that desktop
publishing guys once used funky monitors which were like ours, but on
their sides. Sucks for movies, but I'm sure someone's designed a
monitor which can do either.
From: ······@fisica.unige.it
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87pt7jln4a.fsf@statpro.com>
>>>>> "Rahul" == Rahul Jain <·····@nyct.net> writes:

    Rahul> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
    >> It also has a feature I prefer to emacs buffers: a tab control
    >> which shows one source at a time, but with a row of tabs
    >> (buttons) across the top showing what else I have open.

    Rahul> Shocking. Emacs NEVER had a feature like that. I'm ALWAYS
    Rahul> missing those tabs at the top of my screen (ok, they're on
    Rahul> the right side at work) when I'm using Emacs. Especially
    Rahul> tabs that change to show only the buffers in the same mode
    Rahul> as the one you're looking at now, but with the option to
    Rahul> filter them or not in any way you choose. Yup, the Allegro
    Rahul> IDE really beats Emacs on that one.

I've been programmed by gnu emacs some years ago, anyway the XEmacs
variant of Emacs has the tabs behavior you are looking for. Maybe you
should give XEmacs a try. (Anyway, I use the plain FSF emacs - i'm too
lazy to convert my huge dotemacs)
Bye,
e.
-- 
Enrico Sirola <······@fisica.unige.it>
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <QTXDc.4358$oW6.874448@twister.nyc.rr.com>
······@fisica.unige.it wrote:

> I've been programmed by gnu emacs some years ago, anyway the XEmacs
> variant of Emacs has the tabs behavior you are looking for. Maybe you
> should give XEmacs a try.

I do have XEmacs on my box and use it instead of wordpad for reading 
random text files. And it was the OP, not me, who was dumping Lisp 
because of issues with emacs and lack of XCode integration. But thx for 
thought.

kt

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: David Steuber
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <4ddd570c.0406290100.6f7bb39@posting.google.com>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:

> And it was the OP, not me, who was dumping Lisp 
> because of issues with emacs and lack of XCode integration.

I think you misread my original post.  And I haven't dumped Lisp.
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <iycEc.5079$oW6.1051907@twister.nyc.rr.com>
David Steuber wrote:
> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>And it was the OP, not me, who was dumping Lisp 
>>because of issues with emacs and lack of XCode integration.
> 
> 
> I think you misread my original post.  And I haven't dumped Lisp.

Glad to hear it. Your amusing title (which I knew not to take literally) 
threw me. That and the rest of the message sound like someone blowing 
off Lisp. But the ending where you prayed to the Free Lisp Feature Fairy 
should have tipped me off that you were still in for the long haul.

Well, some of it I got right:

"Emacs + SLIME looks really primitive next to Xcode...

"...The problem is, I am just not loving
Emacs so much (mostly due to key chords).  Yes, I use it for mail and
gnews.  That doesn't mean I like it.  There is no Cocoa bridge and no
.app packager.  There is no integration to Xcode and its tools at all.

"...I think I would like to have that integration.  I would like to
program in Lisp that way.  I just don't have $999 to spend on it."

Are the key chords getting more familiar? That is one thing I do not 
have a problem with (except when I copy from ACL with alt-w and have to 
remeber to paste in Netscape with control-v instead of control-y).

kt

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: David Steuber
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <4ddd570c.0406301219.46e04ed3@posting.google.com>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote in message news:<······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>...

> Well, some of it I got right:
> 
> "Emacs + SLIME looks really primitive next to Xcode...

Well, it does.  Of course looks are deceiving.
 
> "...The problem is, I am just not loving
> Emacs so much (mostly due to key chords).  Yes, I use it for mail and
> gnews.  That doesn't mean I like it.  There is no Cocoa bridge and no
> .app packager.  There is no integration to Xcode and its tools at all.

I should be clearer here.  I'm still not a fan of key chords.  XEmacs
has a modifiers-are-sticky or some such thing that helps eleviate that
to some extent, but it also introduces anoying features (like when you
press the shift key by mistake).  In general, I am bad with keyboards.
 That is why I never got good with the Piano and made a fortune as a
rock star.

The Xcode tool I was thinking of mostly was Interface Builder.  I have
since found that I can use it with OpenMCL because OpenMCL can read
NIB files.  Very nice!  Until the Cocoa support matures to my liking,
it looks like I can do everything I want using the Carbon APIs which
will get me around the versioning problem (which I am sure will be
solved before I ship anything as someone else has pointed out).

Integration with the Mac Help facilities would also be nice. 
Specificly being able to look up Carbon API docs or whatever as easily
as I can look up documentation in the CLHS.  Maybe Clotho will get
that.

> "...I think I would like to have that integration.  I would like to
> program in Lisp that way.  I just don't have $999 to spend on it."
> 
> Are the key chords getting more familiar? That is one thing I do not 
> have a problem with (except when I copy from ACL with alt-w and have to 
> remeber to paste in Netscape with control-v instead of control-y).

I am constantly tripping over things.  And SLIME has recently made a
change in keychords for getting documentation.  I used to look up the
CLHS ref with C-c C-h.  Now it has to be C-c C-d h.  This was actually
a good move though because it means that C-c C-h gets you major mode
help where you can see the key bindings for the buffer.

I thought the subject was quite clever.  I have my frustrations.  Mind
you, I've been frustrated learning computer languages since the
beginning of time.  Don't get me started on commas and semi-colons and
the compiler lieing to me about what was wrong (and not being able to
fix it when it told me I forgot some piece of punctuation that goes
right here).  If I never knew about Lisp, I would be ignorantly
hacking away in Java right now.  Now everytime I look at Java, I ask
myself how anyone could hate programmers so much to invent such a
language and market it so well.  I wonder why people call it a dynamic
language.  I wonder why people think that the compiler catching type
errors is such a big deal when I know for a fact that the Lisp
compiler will also yell at me for doing bad things with types.

In short, I wish Lisp was the mainstream language of choice.  Then
Lisp would have all the fancy libraries already in a mature state for
mass consumption.  Lisp think would probably make the libraries better
code.

Lisp should win.  It gives you Python like brevity with C like
performance.  What the hell is there not to like there?  Java gives
you C like brevity with C like performance.  Where's the win?

At least without Lisp I could be ignorant of all that.
From: Matthew Danish
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58-035.0406301718080.3939@unix45.andrew.cmu.edu>
On Wed, 30 Jun 2004, David Steuber wrote:
> a good move though because it means that C-c C-h gets you major mode
> help where you can see the key bindings for the buffer.

Just so you know, in Emacs, typing C-h b will get you the key bindings for
any buffer.  It is _the_ self-documenting editor, after all ;)
From: Thomas Schilling
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <opsafg67hqtrs3c0@news.CIS.DFN.DE>
David Steuber wrote:

> I should be clearer here.  I'm still not a fan of key chords.  XEmacs
> has a modifiers-are-sticky or some such thing that helps eleviate that
> to some extent, but it also introduces anoying features (like when you
> press the shift key by mistake).

I learned to like emacs. A found it *very* useful to remap caps-lock to 
left control-- this killed two ugly birds with one stone: i got rid off 
that brain-dammaged key I *never* (ok maybe once) used on purpose and it 
brings all keys much closer to the control key (or the other way round). 
Now my pinky can't get off of it. :)

Though, I still sometimes find the modality of the minibuffer quite 
annoying-- I often start typing a command, get distracted by something, 
work on with something, want to type a command, and ... error--minibuffer 
already active.

Or I mistype a key (mostly the first).

There's a quite good solution to this kind of problems: quasi-modes[1] 
+ textual user interface[2] (a UI where you can enter textual commands 
everywhere - which emacs already is via M-x). Quasi-modes are modes only 
active as long as you hold down a key. E.g. holding down the alt key 
brings you in command mode, then type the command, and it get's executed 
when you release the alt key (or some non-popup error message get's 
displayed). I'm working on such thing (from time to time) but it'll take 
some time until it's due (or even ready for testing).

>                                 In general, I am bad with keyboards.
>  That is why I never got good with the Piano and made a fortune as a
> rock star.

It's also a bad prerequisite for becomming a good programmer ;)
OTOH you get better *while* programming ...

> I am constantly tripping over things.  And SLIME has recently made a
> change in keychords for getting documentation.  I used to look up the
> CLHS ref with C-c C-h.  Now it has to be C-c C-d h.  This was actually
> a good move though because it means that C-c C-h gets you major mode
> help where you can see the key bindings for the buffer.

I like it cause I never managed to effectively press C-h (never knew which 
hand to use ;) now I use the left for C-c C-d, the right for h ;)

> [...] If I never knew about Lisp, I would be ignorantly
> hacking away in Java right now.  Now everytime I look at Java, I ask
> myself how anyone could hate programmers so much to invent such a
> language and market it so well.  [...]

Would you mind if I add this to my lisp quotes? :)

> At least without Lisp I could be ignorant of all that.

Sigh, the problem of knowing ...

[1] A term AFAIK introduced by Jef Raskin in his book "The Humane 
Interface"

[2] Jef Raskin is currently implemented this kind of interface, he calls 
it "The Humane Environent" or short: THE. It's implemented in Python and 
(not surprisingly) awfully slow. Furthermore it doesn't do much. So as I 
said I'm on it -- from time to time.
-- 
      ,,
     \../   /  <<< The LISP Effect
    |_\\ _==__
__ | |bb|   | _________________________________________________
From: Thomas F. Burdick
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <xcvacykznr6.fsf@famine.OCF.Berkeley.EDU>
Thomas Schilling <······@yahoo.de> writes:

> There's a quite good solution to this kind of problems: quasi-modes[1] 
> + textual user interface[2] (a UI where you can enter textual commands 
> everywhere - which emacs already is via M-x). Quasi-modes are modes only 
> active as long as you hold down a key. E.g. holding down the alt key 
> brings you in command mode, then type the command, and it get's executed 
> when you release the alt key (or some non-popup error message get's 
> displayed). I'm working on such thing (from time to time) but it'll take 
> some time until it's due (or even ready for testing).

> [1] A term AFAIK introduced by Jef Raskin in his book "The Humane 
> Interface"

That book was an interesting read, but I thought the quasi-mode idea
was *horrible*.  How are you supposed to type while holding down a
key?!?!  Until we get dictation-machine-style foot pedals for
computers, quasi-modes will be a short road to RSI.
From: Thomas Schilling
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <opsafi1703trs3c0@news.CIS.DFN.DE>
Thomas F. Burdick wrote:

> Thomas Schilling <······@yahoo.de> writes:
>
>> There's a quite good solution to this kind of problems: quasi-modes[1]
>> + textual user interface[2] (a UI where you can enter textual commands
>> everywhere - which emacs already is via M-x). Quasi-modes are modes only
>> active as long as you hold down a key. E.g. holding down the alt key
>> brings you in command mode, then type the command, and it get's executed
>> when you release the alt key (or some non-popup error message get's
>> displayed). I'm working on such thing (from time to time) but it'll take
>> some time until it's due (or even ready for testing).
>
>> [1] A term AFAIK introduced by Jef Raskin in his book "The Humane
>> Interface"
>
> That book was an interesting read, but I thought the quasi-mode idea
> was *horrible*.  How are you supposed to type while holding down a
> key?!?!  Until we get dictation-machine-style foot pedals for
> computers, quasi-modes will be a short road to RSI.

By choosing a key that can be pressed with your thumb. You (I) generally 
use your (my) thumb only for the space key-- but there's just /one/ space 
key for /two/ thumbs. Nevertheless a special keyboard would be best 
(command key below space). As I said I'm going to test it with the alt 
keys. Raskins suggested keyboard only put the leap(tm) keys there. (These 
are also a nice concept-- though you *really* have to get used to these.) 
I'll let you know when I have my prototype ready :)


p.s.: You could try Raskins THE 'till then but I think it's not well-done. 
First I had trouble making it run (some change in wxWindows). Then, he 
uses Shift\ Space\/ [1] as the command mode intro (then you type your 
command while holding shift *yuck*. And what really sucks is his hook to 
leap: Shift\ Space\/ k\/ (forward) or j\/ (backward) and then the pattern. 
That's pressing at least 4(!) keys to move the cursor. But it's still 
incredibly fast for larger navigation. And it's more convenient than C-s 
pattern RET I think.

[1] \ means press key,  / means release key

-- 
      ,,
     \../   /  <<< The LISP Effect
    |_\\ _==__
__ | |bb|   | _________________________________________________
From: Thomas F. Burdick
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <xcv7jtnz48m.fsf@famine.OCF.Berkeley.EDU>
Thomas Schilling <······@yahoo.de> writes:

> Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> 
> > Thomas Schilling <······@yahoo.de> writes:
> >
> >> There's a quite good solution to this kind of problems: quasi-modes[1]
> >> + textual user interface[2] (a UI where you can enter textual commands
> >> everywhere - which emacs already is via M-x). Quasi-modes are modes only
> >> active as long as you hold down a key. E.g. holding down the alt key
> >> brings you in command mode, then type the command, and it get's executed
> >> when you release the alt key (or some non-popup error message get's
> >> displayed). I'm working on such thing (from time to time) but it'll take
> >> some time until it's due (or even ready for testing).
> >
> >> [1] A term AFAIK introduced by Jef Raskin in his book "The Humane
> >> Interface"
> >
> > That book was an interesting read, but I thought the quasi-mode idea
> > was *horrible*.  How are you supposed to type while holding down a
> > key?!?!  Until we get dictation-machine-style foot pedals for
> > computers, quasi-modes will be a short road to RSI.
> 
> By choosing a key that can be pressed with your thumb. You (I) generally 
> use your (my) thumb only for the space key-- but there's just /one/ space 
> key for /two/ thumbs. Nevertheless a special keyboard would be best 
> (command key below space). As I said I'm going to test it with the alt 
> keys. Raskins suggested keyboard only put the leap(tm) keys there. (These 
> are also a nice concept-- though you *really* have to get used to these.) 
> I'll let you know when I have my prototype ready :)

Having a quasi-mode key for the left half of the space bar might not
be too terribly aweful, but it would still be quite bad for the hands
and tendons of the typist.  Using the alt keys would involve either
switching constantly from one hand to the other, or curling the thumb
under the palm, and they both sound rather excruciating to me, the
former psychically, and the latter physically.  I wasn't kidding about
the foot pedals, btw -- if I were you, I'd go with that option; a few
generations of typists took dictations while manipulating pedals with
their feet, and suffered far fewer RSI problems than most computer
users today, most of whom seem all too hapy to put their hands in
aweful contortions, while their feet dangle uselessly.
From: Dave Pearson
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <slrnce7oge.dgl.davep.news@hagbard.davep.org>
* Thomas F. Burdick <···@famine.OCF.Berkeley.EDU>:

> [SNIP]   Until we get dictation-machine-style foot pedals for
> computers, quasi-modes will be a short road to RSI.

<URL:http://www.bilbo.com/>. They've been around for quite some time IIRC.

-- 
Dave Pearson
http://www.davep.org/lisp/
From: Thomas F. Burdick
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <xcv4qorz40q.fsf@famine.OCF.Berkeley.EDU>
Dave Pearson <··········@davep.org> writes:

> * Thomas F. Burdick <···@famine.OCF.Berkeley.EDU>:
> 
> > [SNIP]   Until we get dictation-machine-style foot pedals for
> > computers, quasi-modes will be a short road to RSI.
> 
> <URL:http://www.bilbo.com/>. They've been around for quite some time IIRC.

Actually, I admit to having seen an Emacs addict using pedals like
these once.  I should have phrased that as, "until we use ... foot
pedals", but I was being a bit hyperbolic :-)
From: Alan Shutko
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87brj0twky.fsf@wesley.springies.com>
Thomas Schilling <······@yahoo.de> writes:

> Though, I still sometimes find the modality of the minibuffer quite
> annoying--

Check out

enable-recursive-minibuffers's value is t

*Non-nil means to allow minibuffer commands while in the minibuffer.
This variable makes a difference whenever the minibuffer window is active.

-- 
Alan Shutko <···@acm.org> - I am the rocks.
With excitement like this, who needs a laxative?
From: Thomas Schilling
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <opsagtgph4trs3c0@news.CIS.DFN.DE>
Am Wed, 30 Jun 2004 19:11:57 -0500 schrieb Alan Shutko <···@acm.org>:

> Thomas Schilling <······@yahoo.de> writes:
>
>> Though, I still sometimes find the modality of the minibuffer quite
>> annoying--
>
> Check out
>
> enable-recursive-minibuffers's value is t
>
> *Non-nil means to allow minibuffer commands while in the minibuffer.
> This variable makes a difference whenever the minibuffer window is 
> active.

Yes, XEmacs always suggested it but I didn't try it, yet.

So I enabled it. It's better now. (At the end of a session I will now 
probably get quite a bunch of open minibuffers. Let's see.)

-- 
      ,,
     \../   /  <<< The LISP Effect
    |_\\ _==__
__ | |bb|   | _________________________________________________
From: Raistlin Magere
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cc1894$32v$1@news.ox.ac.uk>
Thomas Schilling wrote:
>
> I learned to like emacs. A found it *very* useful to remap caps-lock
> to left control-- this killed two ugly birds with one stone: i got
> rid off that brain-dammaged key I *never* (ok maybe once) used on
> purpose and it brings all keys much closer to the control key (or the
> other way round). Now my pinky can't get off of it. :)
>

How do you do that?
I suspect I need to put something along the following line in the .emacs
file
(global-unset-key *capslock*)
(global-set-key *capslock* *ctrl*)
however I do not know how is *capslock* and *ctrl* represented.
That would go a long way to help making emacs more useful as the keychords
using ctrl are quite a pain otherwise (meta is fine as I can use my thumb).
From: Tim Bradshaw
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <fbc0f5d1.0407010958.71f41271@posting.google.com>
"Raistlin Magere" <·······@*the-mail-that-burns*.com> wrote in message news:<············@news.ox.ac.uk>...

> 
> How do you do that?
> I suspect I need to put something along the following line in the .emacs
> file
> (global-unset-key *capslock*)
> (global-set-key *capslock* *ctrl*)
> however I do not know how is *capslock* and *ctrl* represented.
> That would go a long way to help making emacs more useful as the keychords
> using ctrl are quite a pain otherwise (meta is fine as I can use my thumb).

Re map it in X, or underneath X, don't fool around with Emacs.

If you're using XFree86 then you can tell the server to remap the keys
with a line in (something like) /etc/X11/XF86Config like:

        Option      "XkbOptions" "ctrl:nocaps"

You can also remap it using xmodmap - Jamie Zawinski's xkeycaps
program will generate xmodmaprcs for you.

On (at least some) Linux boxes you can also remap things at the OS
level, although you need to to this in addition to doing it at the X
level - it just means that if the X server is not running the control
key is in the right place.

You can also buy keyboards (the happy hacker keyboard notably) which
have the keys in the right place.

--tim
From: Björn Lindberg
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <hcsy8m37ouf.fsf@knatte.nada.kth.se>
"Raistlin Magere" <·······@*the-mail-that-burns*.com> writes:

> Thomas Schilling wrote:
> >
> > I learned to like emacs. A found it *very* useful to remap caps-lock
> > to left control-- this killed two ugly birds with one stone: i got
> > rid off that brain-dammaged key I *never* (ok maybe once) used on
> > purpose and it brings all keys much closer to the control key (or the
> > other way round). Now my pinky can't get off of it. :)
> >
> 
> How do you do that?
> I suspect I need to put something along the following line in the .emacs
> file
> (global-unset-key *capslock*)
> (global-set-key *capslock* *ctrl*)
> however I do not know how is *capslock* and *ctrl* represented.
> That would go a long way to help making emacs more useful as the keychords
> using ctrl are quite a pain otherwise (meta is fine as I can use my thumb).

Are you running X? Then the following, from
<···············@fnatte.nada.kth.se> is what you need:

. If you are running X, put the following in your ~/.Xmodmap:
. 
.   ! Make Caps Lock be Ctrl instead
.   remove Lock      = Caps_Lock
.   keysym Caps_Lock = Control_L
.   add    Control   = Control_L
. 
.   ! This will make Ctrl-Alt-Backspace not kill the X server, so you can
.   ! use backward-kill-sexp in Emacs.
.   keycode 22       = BackSpace


Bj�rn
From: Thomas Schilling
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <opsagsys02trs3c0@news.CIS.DFN.DE>
Bj�rn Lindberg wrote:

> "Raistlin Magere" <·······@*the-mail-that-burns*.com> writes:
>
>> Thomas Schilling wrote:
>> >
>> > I learned to like emacs. A found it *very* useful to remap caps-lock
>> > to left control-- this killed two ugly birds with one stone: i got
>> > rid off that brain-dammaged key I *never* (ok maybe once) used on
>> > purpose and it brings all keys much closer to the control key (or the
>> > other way round). Now my pinky can't get off of it. :)
>> >
>>
>> How do you do that?
[...]
>
> Are you running X? Then the following, from
> <···············@fnatte.nada.kth.se> is what you need:
>
> . If you are running X, put the following in your ~/.Xmodmap:
> .
> .   ! Make Caps Lock be Ctrl instead
> .   remove Lock      = Caps_Lock
> .   keysym Caps_Lock = Control_L
> .   add    Control   = Control_L
> .
> .   ! This will make Ctrl-Alt-Backspace not kill the X server, so you can
> .   ! use backward-kill-sexp in Emacs.
> .   keycode 22       = BackSpace
>
>
And for windows you have to put some special entry in the registry. See:

   http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/faq3.html#capscontrol

The only problem is that you can't do it on a per-user basis, though.
-- 
      ,,
     \../   /  <<< The LISP Effect
    |_\\ _==__
__ | |bb|   | _________________________________________________
From: Raistlin Magere
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cc1du0$7s4$1@news.ox.ac.uk>
Thomas Schilling wrote:
> And for windows you have to put some special entry in the registry.
> See:
>
>    http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/faq3.html#capscontrol
>
> The only problem is that you can't do it on a per-user basis, though.

Thanks for the link (as I am indeed running windows), I kind of had hoped
that it could have been possible to enable the change only within emacs. Oh
well, I guess I'll need to ponder a bit more on the consequences of such
decision.
From: Thomas Schilling
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <opsag0vvdytrs3c0@news.CIS.DFN.DE>
Raistlin Magere wrote:

> Thomas Schilling wrote:
>> And for windows you have to put some special entry in the registry.
>> See:
>>
>>    http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/faq3.html#capscontrol
>>
>> The only problem is that you can't do it on a per-user basis, though.
>
> Thanks for the link (as I am indeed running windows), I kind of had hoped
> that it could have been possible to enable the change only within emacs. 
> Oh
> well, I guess I'll need to ponder a bit more on the consequences of such
> decision.

(Despite it being quite off-topic I'll continue posting publicly.)

Well, I also didn't try it immediately. But I didn't regret it. One reason 
is that it now can't happen to inadvertendly press the caps-lock key (did 
you ever use the caps-lock key?). I also tend to use the key only for 
emacs, but this is changing. The only real problem I see is that you might 
need to do it everywhere where you work (at least where you work with 
emacs) because you get so much used to it, that it's really annoying to 
insert "XF" into your file when you originally wanted to open a file. 
(Another problem will come up when for some unexpected reason the caps 
lock mode is enabled-- you then can't switch it off. OTOH it's not 
supposed to happen and never happened to me. :)

-- 
      ,,
     \../   /  <<< The LISP Effect
    |_\\ _==__
__ | |bb|   | _________________________________________________
From: David Steuber
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <4ddd570c.0407020606.6265a748@posting.google.com>
Thomas Schilling <······@yahoo.de> wrote in message news:<················@news.CIS.DFN.DE>...
> David Steuber wrote:
> > [...] If I never knew about Lisp, I would be ignorantly
> > hacking away in Java right now.  Now everytime I look at Java, I ask
> > myself how anyone could hate programmers so much to invent such a
> > language and market it so well.  [...]
> 
> Would you mind if I add this to my lisp quotes? :)

Hmmm.  It might annoy Gossling.


Go for it.
From: Raymond Wiker
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <86u0wsqlrx.fsf@raw.grenland.fast.no>
·····@david-steuber.com (David Steuber) writes:

> Lisp should win.  It gives you Python like brevity with C like
> performance.  What the hell is there not to like there?  Java gives
> you C like brevity with C like performance.  Where's the win?

        I'd say that Java gives COBOL like brevity... I cannot think
of any other "modern" programming language that is so verbose; it's
even worse than C++. Time to introduce "Java fingers" as a modern-day
version of "COBOL fingers", I think.
From: Pascal Bourguignon
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87y8m42i41.fsf@thalassa.informatimago.com>
Raymond Wiker <·············@fast.no> writes:

> ·····@david-steuber.com (David Steuber) writes:
> 
> > Lisp should win.  It gives you Python like brevity with C like
> > performance.  What the hell is there not to like there?  Java gives
> > you C like brevity with C like performance.  Where's the win?
> 
>         I'd say that Java gives COBOL like brevity... I cannot think
> of any other "modern" programming language that is so verbose; it's
> even worse than C++. Time to introduce "Java fingers" as a modern-day
> version of "COBOL fingers", I think.

No, but you don't understand: it does not matter since there are IDEs
to expand java code for you. You just click on a pair of buttons, and
everything's done automatically.


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not
want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert Heinlein
From: Takehiko Abe
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <me-2806041351350001@solg4.keke.org>
In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
Kenny Tilton wrote:

> ps. I am rooting for Slime. If Slime succeeds, I can move back to Mac OS 
> X and use emacs+slime+sbcl (or openmcl? other?). 

Why don't you come back to MCL?
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <kuUDc.4348$oW6.842259@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Takehiko Abe wrote:
> In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
> Kenny Tilton wrote:
> 
> 
>>ps. I am rooting for Slime. If Slime succeeds, I can move back to Mac OS 
>>X and use emacs+slime+sbcl (or openmcl? other?). 
> 
> 
> Why don't you come back to MCL?

good point, maybe I have unconsciously decided against that. i just 
heard SBCL might be getting some nice integration with the Quartz 
(Cocoa? Something useful, anyway.) and I never liked the way MCL always 
opens a new search window for each query instead of re-using one. but 
anyway, i also just remembered I have a developer hardware discount 
expiring in november and I think they tend to come out with new stuff at 
summer shows, so I am kinda waiting as long as possible before grabbing 
a G5.

kt

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Erann Gat
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <gNOSPAMat-E3D52E.08432028062004@nntp1.jpl.nasa.gov>
In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
 Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:

> and I never liked the way MCL always 
> opens a new search window for each query instead of re-using one.

You're confused.  MCL doesn't do that.  In fact, if you use cmd-S you 
get an incremental-search mini-buffer right in the window you're 
searching just like you do with Emacs.  If you use cmd-F you get one 
(and only one) Mac-style search-and-replace window.

E.
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <ynXDc.4354$oW6.868966@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Erann Gat wrote:
> In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
>  Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>and I never liked the way MCL always 
>>opens a new search window for each query instead of re-using one.
> 
> 
> You're confused.  MCL doesn't do that.  

I was talking about find callers and its ilk.

kt

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Erann Gat
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <gNOSPAMat-DC952A.10154328062004@nntp1.jpl.nasa.gov>
In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
 Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:

> Erann Gat wrote:
> > In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
> >  Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>and I never liked the way MCL always 
> >>opens a new search window for each query instead of re-using one.
> > 
> > 
> > You're confused.  MCL doesn't do that.  
> 
> I was talking about find callers and its ilk.

You're still confused.  MCL doesn't open multiple windows for 
find-callers either.

MCL does open multiple inspector windows if you're inspecting multiple 
objects.  Perhaps that's what you're referring to?  That is generally 
considered a feature.

E.
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <3b0Ec.4363$oW6.914450@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Erann Gat wrote:
> In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
>  Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Erann Gat wrote:
>>
>>>In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
>>> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>and I never liked the way MCL always 
>>>>opens a new search window for each query instead of re-using one.
>>>
>>>
>>>You're confused.  MCL doesn't do that.  
>>
>>I was talking about find callers and its ilk.
> 
> 
> You're still confused.  MCL doesn't open multiple windows for 
> find-callers either.

The last upgrade I got was MCL 4.3 (circa OS9), and I have two "callers 
of.." and two "definitions of.." windows open as we speak. what version 
are you on?

on top of the fact that MCL dedicates a separate window for each file I 
want to edit, things get ugly in a hurry.

kt


-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Erann Gat
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <gNOSPAMat-612B92.17055528062004@nntp1.jpl.nasa.gov>
In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
 Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:

> Erann Gat wrote:
> > In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
> >  Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>Erann Gat wrote:
> >>
> >>>In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
> >>> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>and I never liked the way MCL always 
> >>>>opens a new search window for each query instead of re-using one.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>You're confused.  MCL doesn't do that.  
> >>
> >>I was talking about find callers and its ilk.
> > 
> > 
> > You're still confused.  MCL doesn't open multiple windows for 
> > find-callers either.
> 
> The last upgrade I got was MCL 4.3 (circa OS9), and I have two "callers 
> of.." and two "definitions of.." windows open as we speak. what version 
> are you on?

5.0, the latest one.  OS9 is ancient history.

> on top of the fact that MCL dedicates a separate window for each file I 
> want to edit, things get ugly in a hurry.

That's standard for the Mac user interface.  If you stack the windows on 
top of each other (which you can configure MCL to do automatically) you 
can keep the fact that there are many windows there well hidden.

E.
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <G25Ec.4466$oW6.1003469@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Erann Gat wrote:

> In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
>  Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Erann Gat wrote:
>>
>>>In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
>>> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Erann Gat wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
>>>>>Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>and I never liked the way MCL always 
>>>>>>opens a new search window for each query instead of re-using one.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>You're confused.  MCL doesn't do that.  
>>>>
>>>>I was talking about find callers and its ilk.
>>>
>>>
>>>You're still confused.  MCL doesn't open multiple windows for 
>>>find-callers either.
>>
>>The last upgrade I got was MCL 4.3 (circa OS9), and I have two "callers 
>>of.." and two "definitions of.." windows open as we speak. what version 
>>are you on?
> 
> 
> 5.0, the latest one.  OS9 is ancient history.

Is that why the MCL5 demo self-extracting archive is a Classic (OS9) 
application? Anyway, I have two MCL5 "definitions" windows open as we 
speak. I did not bother checking "edit callers" so as not to waste any 
more time on this. The only improvement I see is not opening a second 
window on "foo" if one is already open. You are using m-. to edit 
definitions and c-c to edit callers, aren't you?

kt

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Erann Gat
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <gNOSPAMat-33FC70.21543328062004@nntp1.jpl.nasa.gov>
In article <······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
 Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:

> Erann Gat wrote:
> 
> > In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
> >  Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>Erann Gat wrote:
> >>
> >>>In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
> >>> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>Erann Gat wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
> >>>>>Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>and I never liked the way MCL always 
> >>>>>>opens a new search window for each query instead of re-using one.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>You're confused.  MCL doesn't do that.  
> >>>>
> >>>>I was talking about find callers and its ilk.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>You're still confused.  MCL doesn't open multiple windows for 
> >>>find-callers either.
> >>
> >>The last upgrade I got was MCL 4.3 (circa OS9), and I have two "callers 
> >>of.." and two "definitions of.." windows open as we speak. what version 
> >>are you on?
> > 
> > 
> > 5.0, the latest one.  OS9 is ancient history.
> 
> Is that why the MCL5 demo self-extracting archive is a Classic (OS9) 
> application?

No, that's because Digitool has not entirely gotten the word about OS9 
being ancient history ;-)

> Anyway, I have two MCL5 "definitions" windows open as we 
> speak.

Yes, those would be windows containing source code files.  You get one 
window per file, and have ever since there have been Macintoshes.  This 
behavior is not unique to MCL.

> I did not bother checking "edit callers" so as not to waste any 
> more time on this.

So you didn't bother checking the one thing you were initially 
complaining about.

> The only improvement I see is not opening a second 
> window on "foo" if one is already open. You are using m-. to edit 
> definitions

Yes.

> and c-c to edit callers, aren't you?

No.  I very rarely edit callers.

E.
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <ht7Ec.4752$oW6.1034381@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Erann Gat wrote:

> In article <······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
>  Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Erann Gat wrote:
>>
>>
>>>In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
>>> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Erann Gat wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
>>>>>Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>Erann Gat wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>In article <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
>>>>>>>Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>and I never liked the way MCL always 
>>>>>>>>opens a new search window for each query instead of re-using one.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>You're confused.  MCL doesn't do that.  
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I was talking about find callers and its ilk.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>You're still confused.  MCL doesn't open multiple windows for 
>>>>>find-callers either.
>>>>
>>>>The last upgrade I got was MCL 4.3 (circa OS9), and I have two "callers 
>>>>of.." and two "definitions of.." windows open as we speak. what version 
>>>>are you on?
>>>
>>>
>>>5.0, the latest one.  OS9 is ancient history.
>>
>>Is that why the MCL5 demo self-extracting archive is a Classic (OS9) 
>>application?
> 
> 
> No, that's because Digitool has not entirely gotten the word about OS9 
> being ancient history ;-)

Would that be because Apple shipped OS9 on every Mac that went out today?

> 
> 
>>Anyway, I have two MCL5 "definitions" windows open as we 
>>speak.
> 
> 
> Yes, those would be windows containing source code files.

No, those would be little "definitions of foo" windows which open when 
the target is a gf with more than one method defined, so MCL does not 
know to which source to go. Instead it lists all known definitions in a 
small modeless dialog. When I choose one and hit "edit", it leaves the 
dialog open. by way of contrast, AllegroCL pops up a menu in the fashion 
of a context-sensitive menu, and of course that evaporates when I make 
my choice.

>>I did not bother checking "edit callers" so as not to waste any 
>>more time on this.
> 
> 
> So you didn't bother checking the one thing you were initially 
> complaining about.

(a) Your credibility was shot at that point.
(b) One thing? I do not think the word "one" means what you think it 
means. I complained originally and vaguely about lotsa search windows. 
When you thought I meant text search, I clarified with "find callers and 
its ilk".
(c) I now have two "callers of foo" windows open. I could open a few 
more. Where exactly does your "one" max out?

kt

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Erann Gat
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <gNOSPAMat-318787.09032429062004@nntp1.jpl.nasa.gov>
In article <······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
 Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:

> Would that be because Apple shipped OS9 on every Mac that went out today?

I wouldn't know, you'd have to ask them.  You can still get a DOS prompt 
in Windows too.  Do you think DOS is still on the cutting edge of 
technology?

> >>Anyway, I have two MCL5 "definitions" windows open as we 
> >>speak.
> > 
> > 
> > Yes, those would be windows containing source code files.
> 
> No, those would be little "definitions of foo" windows which open when 
> the target is a gf with more than one method defined, so MCL does not 
> know to which source to go. Instead it lists all known definitions in a 
> small modeless dialog. When I choose one and hit "edit", it leaves the 
> dialog open. by way of contrast, AllegroCL pops up a menu in the fashion 
> of a context-sensitive menu, and of course that evaporates when I make 
> my choice.

Oh, you poor dear.  So hold down the "option" key when you make your 
selection.  Or if that's too much work, edit the definition of 
ccl::edit-definition (it's included) so it does what you want by default.

> >>I did not bother checking "edit callers" so as not to waste any 
> >>more time on this.
> > 
> > 
> > So you didn't bother checking the one thing you were initially 
> > complaining about.
> 
> (a) Your credibility was shot at that point.
> (b) One thing? I do not think the word "one" means what you think it 
> means. I complained originally and vaguely about lotsa search windows. 
> When you thought I meant text search, I clarified with "find callers and 
> its ilk".
> (c) I now have two "callers of foo" windows open. I could open a few 
> more. Where exactly does your "one" max out?

"Find callers" and "callers of" are not the same thing.  You were not 
complaining about what you thought you were complaining about.  Please 
pardon me for entertaining the notion that you might have actually meant 
what you said.

E.
From: Raffael Cavallaro
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <raffaelcavallaro-5F2BD1.18501329062004@netnews.comcast.net>
In article <······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
 Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:

> Would that be because Apple shipped OS9 on every Mac that went out today?

No, in fact they did not, and have not for quite some time.

1. Mac OS 9 doesn't ship with G5 macs. If you want to run Classic on a 
G5, you must purchase Mac OS 9 separately, or otherwise have it 
available.

2. G5s cannot boot into Mac OS 9, they can only run OS 9 as the Classic 
environment.

3. If you want a Mac from Apple with Mac OS 9, you have to special order 
an old machine, the last of the Macs that could boot into OS 9. The 
fastest such machine is a dual 1.25 GHz G4 with a 2GB RAM capacity. 
Compare that to the fastest G5, a dual 2.5 GHz machine with a 8GB RAM 
capacity.

I'm writing this reply on a machine that I bought new 8 months ago, and 
it has no OS 9 on it all all. It doesn't run Classic or Classic 
programs, because there is no version of OS 9 for Classic to launch. 
This has never proven a problem. I own Mac OS 9, but I haven't bothered 
to install it on this G5. I never used Classic on my previous G4, and I 
don't need or want it now either.

Ralph
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <6ZrEc.5699$oW6.1188559@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Raffael Cavallaro wrote:

> In article <······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
>  Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Would that be because Apple shipped OS9 on every Mac that went out today?
> 
> 
> No, in fact they did not, and have not for quite some time.

Thx for the info. Fortunately Mr. Gat was ignorant of that, or that 
idiotic thread would still be going on.

But I installed Panther pretty recently and it happily kicks off OS 9. I 
take your word for it, but...? Mebbe the Panther install leaves the OS9 
there if it finds it? ie, They have not gone incompatible with OS9, they 
just do not ship it by default? That would make sense.

I also wonder if the MCL5 demo .sea works on an OS9-free Mac.

kt

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Erann Gat
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <gNOSPAMat-B009D2.23364129062004@nntp1.jpl.nasa.gov>
In article <······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
 Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:

> Raffael Cavallaro wrote:
> 
> > In article <······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
> >  Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>Would that be because Apple shipped OS9 on every Mac that went out today?
> > 
> > 
> > No, in fact they did not, and have not for quite some time.
> 
> Thx for the info. Fortunately Mr. Gat was ignorant of that, or that 
> idiotic thread would still be going on.

If what Rafael claims is true then someone needs to inform Apple.  
According to http://www.apple.com/macosx/techspecs/, Classic is still 
part of OS X Panther.  (Not that this is in any way relevant to the 
matter at hand.)

Now, which idiotic thread were you referring to?  Oh, right, it was the 
one where your complaints about MCL demonstrated how you hadn't bothered 
to do your homework.  Yes, that thread does indeed seem to have come to 
a blessed end, though not, I think, for the reason you cite.

I can't help but wonder what you hope to accomplish by taking these 
little pot shots at me.  Perhaps you think it will cover up the fact 
that you have made a complete ass of yourself?

E.
From: Raffael Cavallaro
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <raffaelcavallaro-4EE747.01401801072004@netnews.comcast.net>
In article <·······························@nntp1.jpl.nasa.gov>,
 Erann Gat <·········@flownet.com> wrote:

> If what Rafael claims is true then someone needs to inform Apple.  
> According to http://www.apple.com/macosx/techspecs/, Classic is still 
> part of OS X Panther.  (Not that this is in any way relevant to the 
> matter at hand.)

Classic, the environment that allows Mac OS 9 to run under Mac OS X, is 
still part of Mac OS X Panther, but it does *nothing* on a shipping G5 
machine. In order to function, Classic requires a version of Mac OS 9.1 
or later. G5 machines do *not* ship with *any* version of Mac OS 9. If 
the buyer of a G5 wants Classic to actually do anything, that buyer must 
separately acquire Mac OS 9.1 or later, and install it. Then, and only 
then, will Classic actually do anything.

If I open the Classic Preference Pane on this G5, it briefly searches 
(in vain) for a suitable System Folder to use with Classic, and then 
drops down the following Error Sheet:


No Classic System Folder

You do not have a version of Mac OS 9 installed that supports Classic. 
Install Mac OS 9.1 or later.


Just to be clear, this is not merely a version error - I have *no 
version of Mac OS 9 at all* installed on this G5, because that is how it 
shipped, and I have never felt the need for Classic.

Apple have provided a means (Classic) for backwards compatibility for 
those who really want it, but they do *not* ship G5 machines with Mac OS 
9 which is needed to use Classic. The user must supply Mac OS 9. This is 
another means that Apple uses to dissuade casual use of Classic, and to 
encourage users to live and work in Mac OS X exclusively. I'm sure they 
planned all this in careful stages:
1. Dual booting (Mac OS X/ Mac OS 9) machines that booted Mac OS 9 by 
default.
2. Machines that booted Mac OS X by default (but could still boot OS 9).
3. Machines that can't boot OS 9 (current G5s), and require the user to 
install OS 9 separately for Classic to function at all.
4. (Next step, still to come) - machines that require separate, optional 
installation of Classic.
5. (still later) - machines that don't run Classic at all. Who knows, 
they may skip 4 and move directly to 5.

A newish user would never have occasion to know that Classic exits on a 
G5 as shipped, because Classic doesn't do anything on a G5 as shipped.
This seemingly odd situation exists because Apple would like nothing 
better than for Mac OS 9 to die and go away *completely*, as soon as 
possible. I can't say that I blame them much for this desire.

To know what the future holds for the Mac platform, one has only to look 
at at such trends (such as Apple's desire to see all users and 
developers follow the Classic => Mac OS X-Carbon => Mac OS X-Cocoa 
migration path). Another recently emerging trend is Apple's gradual 
redefinition of itself as a portable consumer electronics device 
company. I think Steve Jobs sees the large trends in the tech world 
pretty well. This era's winners are the next era's dinosaurs -
 IBM => DEC => Microsoft/Dell => 
Portable-Consumer-Electronics-Device-Company-Hopefully-Apple.
 Jobs is trying to position Apple ahead of that curve - don't try to win 
last decade's battle, that's already history. Instead, identify the next 
stage, and focus on winning that battle instead.

In light of the fact that G5s require the user to install OS 9 
separately for Classic to even function, I'd say that any effort devoted 
to OS 9 and/or Classic is very poorly spent. Just in case I'm not 
completely clear here, I'm not referring to you, Erann, but to other MCL 
users who have been consistent Classic/OS 9 boosters.
From: Takehiko Abe
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <me-0107042231160001@solg4.keke.org>
In article <······································@netnews.comcast.net>,
Raffael Cavallaro wrote:

> at at such trends (such as Apple's desire to see all users and 
> developers follow the Classic => Mac OS X-Carbon => Mac OS X-Cocoa 
> migration path).

I don't see no such path from carbon to cocoa, nor "desire".
Carbon is being very actively developed.

> I'm not referring to you, Erann, but to other MCL 
> users who have been consistent Classic/OS 9 boosters.

such users exit only in your imagination.
From: Raffael Cavallaro
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <raffaelcavallaro-A42A8B.16025801072004@netnews.comcast.net>
In article <···················@solg4.keke.org>,
 ··@privacy.net (Takehiko Abe) wrote:

> such users exit only in your imagination.
             ^^^^
A very telling freudian typo, methinks.
From: Takehiko Abe
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <me-0207041726430001@solg4.keke.org>
In article <······································@netnews.comcast.net>, 
Raffael Cavallaro wrote:

> > such users exit only in your imagination.
>              ^^^^
> A very telling freudian typo, methinks.

My silly typo is all you got, Rafael. Keep dreaming.
From: Takehiko Abe
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <me-3006042240370001@solg4.keke.org>
Kenny Tilton wrote:

<·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>:
> > Why don't you come back to MCL?
>
> good point, maybe I have unconsciously decided against that.

maybe MCL is not for you then. 

<······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>:
> Is that why the MCL5 demo self-extracting archive is a Classic (OS9) 
> application? 

Try command-i "Get Info" in Finder and uncheck "Open in the Classic
Environment" option.


<······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>:
> No, those would be little "definitions of foo" windows which open when 
> the target is a gf with more than one method defined, so MCL does not 
> know to which source to go. Instead it lists all known definitions in a 
> small modeless dialog. When I choose one and hit "edit", it leaves the 
> dialog open. 

You can customize the behavior so that it closes the window for you.
Remember, MCL comes with lots of source files.

Perhaps,

(edit-definition 'edit-definition)

and change

(if (option-key-p) (window-close w))

to

(window-close w)

might achieve your goal.

Or you can hit command-` to bring back the edit-definition window
and command-w to close.

<·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>:
> on top of the fact that MCL dedicates a separate window for each file I 
> want to edit, things get ugly in a hurry.
> 

I prefer window per file mode and I like to have lots of windows
open--the good old Macintosh way. I agree with you that it gets
unwieldy fairly quickly. But I have a few fred commands to manage
windows, so it is not a problem for me.

It's easy to customize Fred and other parts of MCL. However, it
requires a bit more commitment on your part than evaluating the
demo. This is a problem.


<······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>:
> I also wonder if the MCL5 demo .sea works on an OS9-free Mac.
> 

It should work fine.
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <4hAEc.13776$4h7.1299697@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Takehiko Abe wrote:
> Kenny Tilton wrote:
> 
> <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>:
> 
>>>Why don't you come back to MCL?
>>
>>good point, maybe I have unconsciously decided against that.
> 
> 
> maybe MCL is not for you then. 

The tips below sound promising. I /would/ like to support Digitool, if 
only for nostalgic reasons. Does WOOD still work/ship with MCL5? That 
rocked. I seem to recall storing closures.

> 
> <······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>:
> 
>>Is that why the MCL5 demo self-extracting archive is a Classic (OS9) 
>>application? 
> 
> 
> Try command-i "Get Info" in Finder and uncheck "Open in the Classic
> Environment" option.

Ah, thx. I thought mebbe I had the file type associated with an OS9 
Unstuffit or something.

> 
> 
> <······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>:
> 
>>No, those would be little "definitions of foo" windows which open when 
>>the target is a gf with more than one method defined, so MCL does not 
>>know to which source to go. Instead it lists all known definitions in a 
>>small modeless dialog. When I choose one and hit "edit", it leaves the 
>>dialog open. 
> 
> 
> You can customize the behavior so that it closes the window for you.
> Remember, MCL comes with lots of source files.
> 
> Perhaps,
> 
> (edit-definition 'edit-definition)
> 
> and change
> 
> (if (option-key-p) (window-close w))

whoa, I did not know that was an, um, option. I think I would change the 
IF to UNLESS based on how I work.

> 
> to
> 
> (window-close w)
> 
> might achieve your goal.
> 
> Or you can hit command-` to bring back the edit-definition window
> and command-w to close.
> 
> <·····················@twister.nyc.rr.com>:
> 
>>on top of the fact that MCL dedicates a separate window for each file I 
>>want to edit, things get ugly in a hurry.
>>
> 
> 
> I prefer window per file mode and I like to have lots of windows
> open--the good old Macintosh way. I agree with you that it gets
> unwieldy fairly quickly. But I have a few fred commands to manage
> windows, so it is not a problem for me.

And of course the 6800 graphics card will support not one but two of the 
new thirty-inch flatpanels.

> 
> It's easy to customize Fred and other parts of MCL. However, it
> requires a bit more commitment on your part than evaluating the
> demo. This is a problem.

Not at all. I and a couple of developers used MCL4.x for quite a while, 
and a positive to me for both Fred and emacs is that they can be hacked. 
I just grabbed the demo to see if things had improved in MCL5, as 
someone claimed. Your info has been much more useful -- even under 4.3 I 
could have tweaked the IDE to get the behavior I wanted.

kt

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Pascal Bourguignon
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87lli7hwsg.fsf@thalassa.informatimago.com>
Erann Gat <·········@flownet.com> writes:
> > on top of the fact that MCL dedicates a separate window for each file I 
> > want to edit, things get ugly in a hurry.
> 
> That's standard for the Mac user interface.  If you stack the windows on 
> top of each other (which you can configure MCL to do automatically) you 
> can keep the fact that there are many windows there well hidden.

Not anymore, since ProjectBuilder and now with Xcode...
Actually, it's a user configurable option.

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not
want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert Heinlein
From: ·········@random-state.net
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cbp7hc$113vg$1@midnight.cs.hut.fi>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:

>> Why don't you come back to MCL?

> good point, maybe I have unconsciously decided against that. i just 
> heard SBCL might be getting some nice integration with the Quartz 
> (Cocoa? Something useful, anyway.) and I never liked the way MCL always 

I may just have missed the news, but I think this integration nicety
refers to current incarnations OpenMCL, not any near-future SBCL.

Cheers,

 -- Nikodemus                   "Not as clumsy or random as a C++ or Java. 
                             An elegant weapon for a more civilized time."
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <6DXDc.4357$oW6.872244@twister.nyc.rr.com>
·········@random-state.net wrote:

> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>>Why don't you come back to MCL?
> 
> 
>>good point, maybe I have unconsciously decided against that. i just 
>>heard SBCL might be getting some nice integration with the Quartz 
>>(Cocoa? Something useful, anyway.) and I never liked the way MCL always 
> 
> 
> I may just have missed the news, but I think this integration nicety
> refers to current incarnations OpenMCL, not any near-future SBCL.

It's not news you missed, it's just some SBCL work I heard had been 
undertaken by a coupla folks (hence "might be").

kt

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: André Thieme
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cbmsfu$ll0$1@ulric.tng.de>
Bj�rn Lindberg schrieb:
> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>Bj�rn Lindberg wrote:
>>
>>>Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>>But that was a year ago and I gather Slime has made great strides
>>>>since then, which nicely brings us back on topic: If Slime really is
>>>>so great, what happened to the newbie (forgotten) to whom I responded
>>>>with my flame on free Lisps? The fellow seems to have done his best to
>>>>make them work for him.
>>>
>>>If the Allegro IDE is so great, how come several people in this
>>>thread
>>>said they can't stand it?
>>
>>I heard them saying they did not like the /editor/. Which only makes
>>sense, since they were hardcore emacs users and we are all programmed
>>by our editors to understand nothing else. But of course a little
>>familiarity and they would be as productive as ever.
> 
> 
> The biggest difference I saw in how they describe their working style
> as compared to yours, is that they want to be able to exclusively use
> the keyboard, whereas you seem content with using the mouse a lot as
> well as the keyboard. Is the Allegro IDE as convenient to use with
> only the keyboard as Emacs is? (I have not used the Allegro IDE
> myself.)

Btw, switching between mouse and keyboard can also be very easy:
http://www.fingerworks.com/

No time loss with the TouchStream LP.


Andr�
--
From: ······@fisica.unige.it
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87acysm4f4.fsf@statpro.com>
Hi Kenny,

>>>>> "Kenny" == Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:

    Kenny> You *n*x people really have no idea how much you have
    Kenny> learned about how many tools. The Cells II release is a zip
    Kenny> on ftp simply because i could not get WinCVS to do
    Kenny> anything. I figured it out once, but now I cannot remember
    Kenny> what I did. This is a very bad sign for the tool.

If you don't like WinCVS, you should probably try TortoiseCVS. It's
completely integrated into the windows explorer. Very nice. Anyway, i
don't think CVS alone would be a good installing tool for win32. It
isn't very good neither for unixes: as far as I know, none of the unix
flavours use cvs as an installing tool. With some BSD you can use it
for upgrading the ports tree (i.e. the tree of makefiles used to install
SW), but further tools are used in order to install the software (the
most basic being make).
Bye,
e.

-- 
Enrico Sirola <······@fisica.unige.it>
From: Espen Vestre
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <kwoen8yquj.fsf@merced.netfonds.no>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:

> You *n*x people really have no idea how much you have learned about
> how many tools. 

This is a point frequently forgotten by unix geeks. You have to
eat, breathe and drink unix to really appreciate it, if you use
it too infrequently, it will always seem almost inprenetable
(however, nowadays you can profit from unix without really under-
standing it, with os x or linux gui environment).

> (well, I do not know, how automated is an LW install on Linux? If it
> sucks, that is just another knock on free software.)

The install itself is very simple, even if you use the tar'ed version
and not the redhat-rpm. The only potential problem is getting the
right motif version (I wish Xanalys could move to a more modern gui
toolkit!)

> No, I would not have said that if I had not heard from a respected
> free Lisp user and developer that integration in free Lisps is not
> what it is in environments where the editor and compiler and
> everything are all part of the same application.

I agree that the Emacs-and-lisp-as-separate-worlds solution isn't
ideal, I love the way FRED is integrated into MCL, and I prefer
to use the integrated editor when using LispWorks (although it's
a bit more opaque than FRED, not quites as easy to program).

However, my colleagues both where I work now and at my previous
company are divided in how they prefer to use LispWorks: Some think
that integration with The Real Thing (Emacs) is more important than
closeness to the lisp enviroment, others (such as I) think the
opposite. All in all, YMMV, and there are good reasons for choosing
either solution.
-- 
  (espen)
From: David Steuber
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <4ddd570c.0406260029.633e0bc7@posting.google.com>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote in message news:<·······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>...

> But that was a year ago and I gather Slime has made great strides since 
> then, which nicely brings us back on topic: If Slime really is so great, 
> what happened to the newbie (forgotten) to whom I responded with my 
> flame on free Lisps? The fellow seems to have done his best to make them 
> work for him.

I've got Lispworks Personal edition sitting on my dock and have yet to
fire it up.

I find it interesting that there are people using non-free (as in not
open source) Lisps with SLIME.  LW and ACL being notable in that
respect.  Considering that IDEs are available for at least those two
Lisps, one has to wonder why people would use SLIME in preference to
the bundled IDE.  The only reason that I can think of is that perhaps
they prefere the one over the other even though SLIME has to use IPC
and some very clever Lisp hackery to provide a common look and feel
(as far as is possible) among different Lisps on different platforms.

I'm very glad for SLIME.  Without it I probably would not have gotten
as far as I have.

The commercial Lisps may be technically better (or not).  I still
think that it is important to have a few good free Lisp
implementations to choose from and experiment with.  Not everyone is
willing to pay for a Lisp just to learn it (although LW and ACL do
have trial versions which I think is a very good thing).  Languages
like Python and Java give people certain expectations of features in a
language (reasonable or not).  I believe that Lisp (meaning Common
Lisp) is the superior language.  I think that "missing" features
reduce the chances of Lisp capturing back mind share.  This has the
further result of reducing the developer base.  This also impacts
commercial Lisps.

If I never met Lisp, I would not realize that languages such as Java
are a technological culdesac.  I would probably be a happier person
for it.

Lisp has also challenged my conceptions of what programming is all
about.
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <uzn6qyaqg.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
>>>>> On 26 Jun 2004 01:29:43 -0700, David Steuber ("David") writes:

 David> I find it interesting that there are people using non-free (as in not
 David> open source) Lisps with SLIME.  LW and ACL being notable in that respect.  
 David>  [...] The only reason that I can think of is that perhaps [...] 
 David> to provide a common look and feel (as far as is possible) 
 David> among different Lisps on different platforms.

The main reason I can think of is that the editors in the commercial
IDEs are slightly different (in some non-customizable way) from GNU Emacs, 
or are missing some features that they like and that it's too much
trouble to add and maintain those features.

That's what Jock Cooper's message seems to be, too.
From: Peter Herth
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cbjd2f$qsv$1@newsreader2.netcologne.de>
David Steuber wrote:

> I find it interesting that there are people using non-free (as in not
> open source) Lisps with SLIME.  LW and ACL being notable in that
> respect.  Considering that IDEs are available for at least those two
> Lisps, one has to wonder why people would use SLIME in preference to
> the bundled IDE.  The only reason that I can think of is that perhaps
> they prefere the one over the other even though SLIME has to use IPC
> and some very clever Lisp hackery to provide a common look and feel
> (as far as is possible) among different Lisps on different platforms.

There are several reasons to prefer emacs over an IDE of whatever
making and especially using SLIME. These are not religious :) but 
at least for me very practical ones. For one, SLIME has some nice
features, they lack (or perhaps I just have not found in my trials
with the LW personal edition). But there is one fundamental 
reason why emacs is "better" than any IDE, and that is support for
more than one programming language. If you do only Lisp or only
Java, any of the IDEs may be very good, though the emacs editing
modes are quite sophisticated too. But during a normal day I edit
code in Lisp, Java, Python, Scheme and LaTeX. So even if some
flashy features are missing in the correspondant emacs mode, I
do not only have not to open a custom editing application for
each file, also it is a huge advantage to have a very consistant
editing interface across several languages. So in my eyes, for
all those who work with several programming languages, emacs
is more practical than custom IDEs.

Peter

-- 
pet project: http://dawn.netcologne.de
homepage:    http://www.peter-herth.de
lisp stuff:  http://www.peter-herth.de/lisp.html
get Ltk here: http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/
From: Alain Picard
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87pt7luxph.fsf@memetrics.com>
·····@david-steuber.com (David Steuber) writes:

> I find it interesting that there are people using non-free (as in not
> open source) Lisps with SLIME.  LW and ACL being notable in that
> respect.  Considering that IDEs are available for at least those two
> Lisps, one has to wonder why people would use SLIME in preference to
> the bundled IDE.  

It's really very simple.  There exists a category of users (I'm one
of them) for which getting out of emacs is almost physically painful.

It's hard to explain, but, in emacs, I just *think* what I want to
happen, and it happens.  In every other software I've ever used,
it's click here, point there, read this manual, blah blah blah, and
by the time one figures it out, you've forgotten what you were actually
trying to do.  So, Mail, News, CVS, dired, shell, (and yes, lisp) all
work better within emacs: to-ge-ther.

For those who think Notepad is a good enough editor, this is a difficult
concept to understand.
From: Raistlin Magere
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cbn9ce$iie$1@news.ox.ac.uk>
"Alain Picard" <············@memetrics.com> wrote in message
···················@memetrics.com...
> ·····@david-steuber.com (David Steuber) writes:
>
> It's hard to explain, but, in emacs, I just *think* what I want to
> happen, and it happens.  In every other software I've ever used,
> it's click here, point there, read this manual, blah blah blah, and
> by the time one figures it out, you've forgotten what you were actually
> trying to do.  So, Mail, News, CVS, dired, shell, (and yes, lisp) all
> work better within emacs: to-ge-ther.
>
> For those who think Notepad is a good enough editor, this is a difficult
> concept to understand.

Ok, what is the best way to get started to emacs (or should I try xemacs?).
I am aware that emacs comes with a manual but at this moment of time I don't
quite have the time (sorry for the word repetion) to read a manual in detail
so I would like to know if there's a quick and dirty "emacs for dummies"
guide somewhere.
My needs are simple as I only program in Lisp (Matlab now and again) and
write in LaTeX, so far I have been using the ACL5.01 editor and WinEdt for
my needs and I must say that I have found them v.good (I also discovered acl
keychords only recently - i.e. in the past 5,6 months and they have greatly
improved my life) furthermore as I have never really figured out how to use
the gui creator of acl I will not really miss that part of integration.
I am actually quite happy with the tools I am using at the moment but I am
happy to learn to use a more powerful tool.

Thanks for your help,
 raistlin
From: Cesar Rabak
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <40DF2DD5.2040702@acm.org>
Raistlin Magere escreveu:
> "Alain Picard" <············@memetrics.com> wrote in message
> ···················@memetrics.com...
> 
>>·····@david-steuber.com (David Steuber) writes:
>>
>>It's hard to explain, but, in emacs, I just *think* what I want to
>>happen, and it happens.  In every other software I've ever used,
>>it's click here, point there, read this manual, blah blah blah, and
>>by the time one figures it out, you've forgotten what you were actually
>>trying to do.  So, Mail, News, CVS, dired, shell, (and yes, lisp) all
>>work better within emacs: to-ge-ther.
>>
>>For those who think Notepad is a good enough editor, this is a difficult
>>concept to understand.
> 
> 
> Ok, what is the best way to get started to emacs (or should I try xemacs?).
> I am aware that emacs comes with a manual but at this moment of time I don't
> quite have the time (sorry for the word repetion) to read a manual in detail
> so I would like to know if there's a quick and dirty "emacs for dummies"
> guide somewhere.

Open your emacs in your platform and type "Ctrl-h" and afterwards "t". 
In a canonical installation this will put you in the 'tutorial' mode.

Expend with (YMMV of course) about 30 to 60 minutes. That should put you 
comfortable with the basics of the editor and let you explore the more 
advanced features of Emacs.

HTH

--
Cesar Rabak
From: William Bland
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <pan.2004.06.27.21.46.04.580249@abstractnonsense.com>
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 20:57:43 +0100, Raistlin Magere wrote:
> Ok, what is the best way to get started to emacs (or should I try xemacs?).

This might just be me, but I don't see anything in XEmacs that would make
me want it.  I find the stable releases of Emacs (currently 21.3, March
24, 2003) lag considerably so I actually use the cvs HEAD, which I build
with GTK support (very easy to do).  It's a lot slicker than the Emacs
that gets packaged with any of the Linux distributions I've seen so far.

Cheers,
	Bill.
-- 
Dr. William Bland.
It would not be too unfair to any language to refer to Java as a
stripped down Lisp or Smalltalk with a C syntax.   (Ken Anderson).
From: David Golden
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <ZBHDc.3317$Z14.4429@news.indigo.ie>
William Bland wrote:

> so I actually use the cvs HEAD, which I build 
> with GTK support (very easy to do).  It's a lot slicker than the Emacs
> that gets packaged with any of the Linux distributions I've seen so far.
> 

Assuming you're using emacs-with-gtk on X:

Does that mean the emacs gets built with now-pretty-standard antialiased and
more importantly subpixel-rendered font support?  The version I'm using is
still using the old X Window font mechanism instead of Xft.  Vaguely annoys
me in this day and age, especially since I got an LCD flat panel and thus
benefit a lot from subpixel rendering.
From: William Bland
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <pan.2004.06.28.03.22.56.573346@abstractnonsense.com>
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 23:11:07 +0100, David Golden wrote:

> William Bland wrote:
> 
>> so I actually use the cvs HEAD, which I build 
>> with GTK support (very easy to do).  It's a lot slicker than the Emacs
>> that gets packaged with any of the Linux distributions I've seen so far.
>> 
> 
> Assuming you're using emacs-with-gtk on X:
> 
> Does that mean the emacs gets built with now-pretty-standard antialiased and
> more importantly subpixel-rendered font support?  The version I'm using is
> still using the old X Window font mechanism instead of Xft.  Vaguely annoys
> me in this day and age, especially since I got an LCD flat panel and thus
> benefit a lot from subpixel rendering.

I couldn't say for sure, not knowing much about about these things, but
ldd says that my Emacs is linked against libXft, libfreetype and
libpangoxft - all of which I'm taking as good signs... and it does look
nice, to me at least :-)

Cheers,
	Bill.
-- 
Dr. William Bland.
It would not be too unfair to any language to refer to Java as a
stripped down Lisp or Smalltalk with a C syntax.   (Ken Anderson).
From: David Golden
Subject: GNU Emacs fonts [was Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp]
Date: 
Message-ID: <JS1Ec.3413$Z14.4472@news.indigo.ie>
William Bland wrote:


> I couldn't say for sure, not knowing much about about these things, but
> ldd says that my Emacs is linked against libXft, libfreetype and
> libpangoxft - all of which I'm taking as good signs... and it does look
> nice, to me at least :-)
>


Hmmm... just checked out from cvs. When compiled with gtk+, it seems to use
gtk's xft font rendering for the menus, but _not_ for the buffers. Oh well.

Though it looks like it would be a fairly big job to get the buffers using 
xft, it is on the emacs etc/TODO list...



 
From: Joe Marshall
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <smcfery8.fsf@ccs.neu.edu>
William Bland <·······@abstractnonsense.com> writes:

> On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 20:57:43 +0100, Raistlin Magere wrote:
>> Ok, what is the best way to get started to emacs (or should I try xemacs?).
>
> This might just be me, but I don't see anything in XEmacs that would make
> me want it.  

I prefer XEmacs, myself.  De gustibus semper est disputandum.
From: Rahul Jain
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87d63jdw7o.fsf@nyct.net>
William Bland <·······@abstractnonsense.com> writes:

> I actually use the cvs HEAD, which I build with GTK support (very easy
> to do)

Does it support having frames on multiple X displays? XEmacs-GTK does
not, and I don't know that it's possible because of how GTK takes over
your process. Gotta love those "singleton patterns".

-- 
Rahul Jain
·····@nyct.net
Professional Software Developer, Amateur Quantum Mechanicist
From: Rob Warnock
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <V-mdnUAEn9RLonzdRVn-jA@speakeasy.net>
Rahul Jain <·····@nyct.net> wrote:
+---------------
| William Bland <·······@abstractnonsense.com> writes:
| > I actually use the cvs HEAD, which I build with GTK support
| > (very easy to do)
| 
| Does it support having frames on multiple X displays? XEmacs-GTK does
| not, and I don't know that it's possible because of how GTK takes over
| your process. Gotta love those "singleton patterns".
+---------------

Which is why it would be nice to get rid of all the globals in Ltk,
push them down into some object (which could then put back into a
dynamically bound global *TK*, of course), so you could have multiple
Wish's active at once at the same time, possibly to different displays.
Any of the CLs that Ltk runs on that have threads should be able to
do that...


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock			<····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue			<URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403		(650)572-2607
From: Peter Herth
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cbrfp3$mup$1@newsreader2.netcologne.de>
Rob Warnock wrote:

> Which is why it would be nice to get rid of all the globals in Ltk,
> push them down into some object (which could then put back into a
> dynamically bound global *TK*, of course), so you could have multiple
> Wish's active at once at the same time, possibly to different displays.
> Any of the CLs that Ltk runs on that have threads should be able to
> do that...

Ltk v 0.8.5 rebinds all "globals" for every wish instance run so 
you can have as many running in parallel as you want. :) 
I will release 0.8.5 soon, I am in the stages of final cleanup
and making sure that I have not added new bugs...

Peter

-- 
pet project: http://dawn.netcologne.de
homepage:    http://www.peter-herth.de
lisp stuff:  http://www.peter-herth.de/lisp.html
get Ltk here: http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/
From: Rob Warnock
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <V-mdnUMEn9Qh33zdRVn-jA@speakeasy.net>
Peter Herth  <·····@netcologne.de> wrote:
+---------------
| Rob Warnock wrote:
| > Which is why it would be nice to get rid of all the globals in Ltk,
| > push them down into some object (which could then put back into a
| > dynamically bound global *TK*, of course), so you could have multiple
| > Wish's active at once at the same time, possibly to different displays.
| 
| Ltk v 0.8.5 rebinds all "globals" for every wish instance run so 
| you can have as many running in parallel as you want. :) 
| I will release 0.8.5 soon...
+---------------

Neat!! Thanks!!


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock			<····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue			<URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403		(650)572-2607
From: Thomas A. Russ
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <ymid63jr89p.fsf@sevak.isi.edu>
"Raistlin Magere" <·······@*the-mail-that-burns*.com> writes:
> 
> Ok, what is the best way to get started to emacs (or should I try xemacs?).
> I am aware that emacs comes with a manual but at this moment of time I don't
> quite have the time (sorry for the word repetion) to read a manual in detail
> so I would like to know if there's a quick and dirty "emacs for dummies"
> guide somewhere.

Well, you could always start with the Emacs command

   M-x help-with-tutorial

You get that by typing the Meta-X key.  The Meta key is variously the
meta, alt or option key on the keyboard (assuming a reasonable keyboard
mapping for Emacs).  At the worst, you can get the same result by typing
<escape>-X.  Then you type "help-with-tutorial" and a return.

-- 
Thomas A. Russ,  USC/Information Sciences Institute
From: Alain Picard
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87lli8v9l0.fsf@memetrics.com>
"Raistlin Magere" <·······@*the-mail-that-burns*.com> writes:

> I am aware that emacs comes with a manual but at this moment of time I don't
> quite have the time (sorry for the word repetion) to read a manual in detail
> so I would like to know if there's a quick and dirty "emacs for dummies"
> guide somewhere.

I'm afraid you're missing the point.  The sort of productivity I'm
talking about is related to muscle memory, what pianists get after
practicing 5hr/day for 10 years.  Watch a concert pianist play: they
don't think about the mechanics at all; their entire concentration is
focused on expression and musicality.

If you think "I'll read this quick book/tutorial/whatever and in a
week or 2 I'll be doing great", well, no.  In fact, you may find that
in a week or 2 you're going SLOWER, and feel frustrated that you have
to stop and look up every command.  This is normal.

You'll have to accept that it will take a while to regain your current
mastery.  The difference between emacs and whatever you're using now
is that there will always be more to learn, there will always be a better
way to do something, and so you will keep getting better for a very very
long time.  You will not find yourself limited by the tool.

> My needs are simple as I only program in Lisp (Matlab now and again) and
> write in LaTeX, 

Great examples.  For LaTeX, there is a package called AUCTeX which has
totally sold emacs to several die-hards of my acquaintance; there is an
an integrated mode for Matlab as well but I don't know how good it is.
For lisp, of course, I think SLIME is getting along nicely.

> Thanks for your help,

No problems, just don't get your hopes up too high too quickly.  It's
not just the tool; it's the tool that lets the _person_ accomplish the
tasks without getting in the way.  In the end, it's still the person
doing the work.
From: Tayssir John Gabbour
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <866764be.0406280830.40f46b8@posting.google.com>
Alain Picard <············@memetrics.com> wrote in message news:<··············@memetrics.com>...
> "Raistlin Magere" <·······@*the-mail-that-burns*.com> writes:
> 
> > I am aware that emacs comes with a manual but at this moment of time I don't
> > quite have the time (sorry for the word repetion) to read a manual in detail
> > so I would like to know if there's a quick and dirty "emacs for dummies"
> > guide somewhere.
> 
> I'm afraid you're missing the point.  The sort of productivity I'm
> talking about is related to muscle memory, what pianists get after
> practicing 5hr/day for 10 years.  Watch a concert pianist play: they
> don't think about the mechanics at all; their entire concentration is
> focused on expression and musicality.

There's one thing that got me really used to emacs. It was making my
own keybindings. For some reason, when I made them, I was able to pick
up the emacs keybindings so easily.

Before, I hated the gratuitousness of them, but when I was empowered
to make my own, they really stuck. It is like being empowered as a
programmer; then understanding the decisions behind programs is often
much simpler than a normal user would.

Of course, now my f1-f12 is filled up by shortcuts depending on the
mode...

It also helped to print out one of those little emacs cheatsheets, and
have keybindings as a comment on top of my .emacs file, which was my
startup page.

Also, Chassell had a great emacs-lisp tutorial in Peter Salus's
Handbook of Computer Languages series, the book is extremely cheap
used, worth picking up for a newbie.
From: Raistlin Magere
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cbook3$422$1@news.ox.ac.uk>
Thanks all for the replies, especially Alain for the honest reply

Alain Picard wrote:
> If you think "I'll read this quick book/tutorial/whatever and in a
> week or 2 I'll be doing great", well, no.  In fact, you may find that
> in a week or 2 you're going SLOWER, and feel frustrated that you have
> to stop and look up every command.  This is normal.
>
> No problems, just don't get your hopes up too high too quickly.  It's
> not just the tool; it's the tool that lets the _person_ accomplish the
> tasks without getting in the way.  In the end, it's still the person
> doing the work.

That's exactly what has happened to me in my past approaches to emacs, i.e.
I try it for a half an hour and think `yep you have got potential, but I
don't feel I quite have the time for you yet'. The fact that I am a windows
person and not a linux one has also not helped. I guess I'll have again
another look at it (mainly I am curious about auctex) and if again it
doesn't quite work out I'll leave it until when I decide to really spend
more of my time programming.

Thanks again.
From: Lupo LeBoucher
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <9dqdnVTAxrp5MXnd4p2dnA@io.com>
In article <····························@posting.google.com>,
David Steuber <·····@david-steuber.com> wrote:
>Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote in message
>news:<·······················@twister.nyc.rr.com>...
>
>> But that was a year ago and I gather Slime has made great strides since 
>> then, which nicely brings us back on topic: If Slime really is so great, 
>> what happened to the newbie (forgotten) to whom I responded with my 
>> flame on free Lisps? The fellow seems to have done his best to make them 
>> work for him.
>
>I've got Lispworks Personal edition sitting on my dock and have yet to
>fire it up.
>
>I find it interesting that there are people using non-free (as in not
>open source) Lisps with SLIME.  LW and ACL being notable in that
>respect. 

As I recall, if you use ACL on a Linux box, you get emacs + ELI, rather 
than the Windows IDE thingee. 
emacs + ELI is very very good (I like ELI better than SLIME), but if you 
use other Lisps with emacs, you might as well stick with SLIME.

-Lupo
"If there's one word that sums up everything that's gone wrong since the 
War, it's workshop."-Kingsley Amis                             <··@io.com>
From: Carl Shapiro
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <ouysmcbchz3.fsf@panix3.panix.com>
··@io.com (Lupo LeBoucher) writes:

> emacs + ELI is very very good (I like ELI better than SLIME), but if you 
> use other Lisps with emacs, you might as well stick with SLIME.

The last time I used SLIME on ACL (1.5 months ago) it did not
understand ACL's notion of "zooming" with respect to an given thread.
Debugging multithreaded code is counterintuitive without this
behavior.  Perhaps SLIME has improved recently, but since ELI gets
this right out-of-the-box, I would strongly suggest against using
SLIME on ACL, at least until SLIME becomes thread savvy.
From: Marco Baringer
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <m24qoqk952.fsf@convey.it>
Carl Shapiro <·············@panix.com> writes:

> The last time I used SLIME on ACL (1.5 months ago) it did not
> understand ACL's notion of "zooming" with respect to an given thread.

what's "zooming"?

-- 
-Marco
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
     -Leonard Cohen
From: Luke Gorrie
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <lhwu1ked65.fsf@dodo.bluetail.com>
Carl Shapiro <·············@panix.com> writes:

> ··@io.com (Lupo LeBoucher) writes:
>
>> emacs + ELI is very very good (I like ELI better than SLIME), but if you 
>> use other Lisps with emacs, you might as well stick with SLIME.
>
> The last time I used SLIME on ACL (1.5 months ago) it did not
> understand ACL's notion of "zooming" with respect to an given thread.

I second Marco, it'd be great if you can say a few words about this.

> Debugging multithreaded code is counterintuitive without this
> behavior.

Just to be explicit, here's how it's /supposed/ to work in SLIME
currently:

When any thread hits the debugger we create an *SLDB...* buffer
displaying the error and backtrace. From this buffer you can inspect
stack frames, eval-in-frame, invoke a restart, etc. If several threads
hit the debugger they each get a separate buffer and you can work on
them individually.

We'd welcome feedback on how this works out in practice. Few of us
SLIME guys do much multithreaded programming so the interface has been
mostly user-suggestion-driven.

But, probably more to the point, it wasn't working this way with the
Allegro backend. That's due to a bug that Peter Seibel recently found,
and it's been fixed in CVS today.

Historically our ACL backend has been pretty immature due to lack of
use. However, Edi Weitz and Peter Seibel have recently been hammering
on it and reporting the problems they find, and I think it's starting
to become respectable. (Thanks guys!)

P.S., by default it's only threads spawned via Emacs and their
children that will do their debugging in Emacs. If you want every
thread to use Emacs no matter how it was created, you can put this
line in ~/.swank.lisp:

  (setq *debugger-hook* #'swank:swank-debugger-hook)

-Luke
From: Matthew Danish
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58-035.0407040311150.4954@unix45.andrew.cmu.edu>
On Sun, 4 Jul 2004, Luke Gorrie wrote:
> P.S., by default it's only threads spawned via Emacs and their
> children that will do their debugging in Emacs. If you want every
> thread to use Emacs no matter how it was created, you can put this
> line in ~/.swank.lisp:
>
>   (setq *debugger-hook* #'swank:swank-debugger-hook)

Actually, the line you want to put in is

  (tpl:setq-default *debugger-hook* #'swank:swank-debugger-hook)

Certain special variables are treated differently by Allegro, and for
every thread they are bound to some "default" value.   See section 7.0 and
7.1 of the Allegro multiprocessing doc.
From: Thomas Schilling
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <opsahjd80xtrs3c0@news.CIS.DFN.DE>
Lupo LeBoucher wrote:

>> I find it interesting that there are people using non-free (as in not
>> open source) Lisps with SLIME.  LW and ACL being notable in that
>> respect.

It's really really useful. There're only some problems with integration 
(e.g. jumping to source from visual debugger puts you in ACL editor, etc.)

> As I recall, if you use ACL on a Linux box, you get emacs + ELI, rather
> than the Windows IDE thingee.
> emacs + ELI is very very good (I like ELI better than SLIME), but if you
> use other Lisps with emacs, you might as well stick with SLIME.

If this (ELI) is the same that is used to integrate Emacs with ACL on 
windows than I cannot second this. I think what I liked most after 
switching to SLIME was: autocompletion(!), a working repl, hyperspec 
lookup (?), and now the chance to quite easily remove methods from gfs 
(using the inspector).

So originally it where some technical problems (e.g. repl freezing every 
hour and the like). Maybe because we're using XEmacs. But I never looked 
back.
-- 
      ,,
     \../   /  <<< The LISP Effect
    |_\\ _==__
__ | |bb|   | _________________________________________________
From: Rahul Jain
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87d63mm06q.fsf@nyct.net>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:

> You *n*x people really have no idea how much you have learned about how
> many tools. The Cells II release is a zip on ftp simply because i could
> not get WinCVS to do anything. I figured it out once, but now I cannot
> remember what I did. This is a very bad sign for the tool.

So use a client app that works. Like the normal CVS tool.

> What I want is to click on "Install SBCL+Emavs+SLIME" on some web site
> and click ok and next and agreed a dozen times and be presented with,
> well, a text editor? Will it have a Slime menu, at least, so I can see
> what is available in the way of tools?

Too bad everyone who uses windows (or anything but debian for that
matter) doesn't want to create a tool that lets you do this. Why do you
people keep bringing up this topic when you're violently against doing
anything about it?

> Remember, I am an application programmer. I can have Lispworks up in
> (well, I do not know, how automated is an LW install on Linux? If it
> sucks, that is just another knock on free software.)

Why would the fact that installing LW, ACL, etc is more difficult than
installing cmucl, sbcl, etc be a knock on free software?

> But that was a year ago and I gather Slime has made great strides since
> then, which nicely brings us back on topic: If Slime really is so great,
> what happened to the newbie (forgotten) to whom I responded with my
> flame on free Lisps? The fellow seems to have done his best to make them
> work for him.

Or maybe he's against using the only system where making these things
work is easy. It irritates me to have to reiterate this, but sadly, no
one is FOR making these things work easily on other systems. Oh, and
don't pretend that this is a free lisp vs. commercial lisp thing. 
Installing LW on windows isn't as easy as installing cmucl on debian.

In any case, I _do_ agree (it's the end of the world! ;) with your
sentiment about IDEs being integrated into the app. Luke and friends
have done quite a bit of work in trying to get the emacs<->CL
communication to work well, and it seems to be rather different for
different CLs.

-- 
Rahul Jain
·····@nyct.net
Professional Software Developer, Amateur Quantum Mechanicist
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: TortoiseCVS Rocks [was Rahul ragging on Kenny]
Date: 
Message-ID: <_roDc.3728$oW6.456265@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Rahul Jain wrote:

> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>You *n*x people really have no idea how much you have learned about how
>>many tools. The Cells II release is a zip on ftp simply because i could
>>not get WinCVS to do anything. I figured it out once, but now I cannot
>>remember what I did. This is a very bad sign for the tool.
> 
> 
> So use a client app that works.  Like the normal CVS tool.

Raw CVS? That's a good one.

Fortunately a better-informed respondent (thanks) recommended 
TortoiseCVS and I have now moved Cells II, Cello, Celtic, Cloucell, and 
a nascent Visual Apropos into cvs, along with cl-opengl, cl-openal, 
cl-magick, and cl-ftgl. Formal announcement after Mr. Burdick patches 
Cells II for cmucl compatibility.

kt

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: Jan Rychter
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <m2y8m4sv8q.fsf@tnuctip.rychter.com>
>>>>> "Kenny" == Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
 Kenny> Luke Gorrie wrote:
 >> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
 >>
 > If the light does not go on, I suggest you arrange for another
 > twenty-thousand man-hours priced at ten cents each so you can get
 > CMUCL/SBCL+ILISP/SLIME working nowhere near as well as commercial
 > lisps.
 >> Apologies if this has been hashed out before, but what are the
 >> features that make the commercial Lisps so much better?

[...]

 Kenny> One measure of the importance to this is that someday I will
 Kenny> finally squeeze off an RFE to Franz: "Please, no full stops
 Kenny> after identifiers in error messages." The problem is AllegroCL
 Kenny> error output appearing in the listener, say:

 Kenny> Division by zero in: KT-COMPUTE-AVERAGE.

 Kenny> Normally I could click on the /output text/ and hit ctrl-alt-.,
 Kenny> but that little full stop at the end of the error message, while
 Kenny> a great comfort i am sure to the former grammar teachers of
 Kenny> Franz developers, prevents that.
[...]

In the context of this discussion, I find the above quote extremely
amusing.

On the serious side, though, I feel there is a lack of understanding on
both "sides". People that work with commercial Lisp implementations are
unaware of how much free software has progressed, and people used to
open-source implementations do not see what makes the commercial ones
better.

I have to say I'm much closer to the second camp. The trial versions of
commercial Lisp implementations failed to impress me. Also, CMUCL is
still the fastest one to run my simulations. But I realize that I
probably know very little about what the commercial Lisp's have to
offer, so I refrain from harsh statements.

--J.
From: Luke Gorrie
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <lhbrj1c9rq.fsf@dodo.bluetail.com>
Jan Rychter <···@rychter.com> writes:

> On the serious side, though, I feel there is a lack of understanding on
> both "sides". People that work with commercial Lisp implementations are
> unaware of how much free software has progressed, and people used to
> open-source implementations do not see what makes the commercial ones
> better.

I found the responses in this thread helpful. Joe Marshall, Alain
Picard, and Erann Gat all gave good reasons why they like their
commercial Lisp(s) of choice. They were all specific things that they
personally consider important and aren't universally available.

> I have to say I'm much closer to the second camp. The trial versions of
> commercial Lisp implementations failed to impress me. Also, CMUCL is
> still the fastest one to run my simulations.

I like CMUCL the best for my humble purposes, too.

Cheers,
Luke
From: Joe Marshall
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <u0xajlzo.fsf@comcast.net>
Luke Gorrie <····@bluetail.com> writes:

> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
>
>> If the light does not go on, I suggest you arrange for another
>> twenty-thousand man-hours priced at ten cents each so you can get
>> CMUCL/SBCL+ILISP/SLIME working nowhere near as well as commercial
>> lisps.
>
> Apologies if this has been hashed out before, but what are the
> features that make the commercial Lisps so much better?

The biggest feature is stability.  Lispworks and Allegro each are
platforms that work fairly uniformly across their various ports.  At
Content Integrity we did the bulk of our development on Windows, but
deployed the product on HP-UX (what the customer wanted).  There were
some portability issues, but they were reasonably minor and isolated
to the low-level pathname hacking and database API.

The second is support.  When you are running a company, you have to
make tradeoffs between doing things yourself or getting someone else
to do it.  With a commercial lisp, the only barrier is money.  With
sufficient cash, you can get almost the entire Franz corporation
working on solving your problem.  And they are all a phone call away.

The third is expertise.  The people who work for these companies don't
need a day-job to pay the bills, so they can spend 40+ hours a week on
their product.  There simply aren't as many available man-hours to put
in to a non-commercial lisp.

> I'm particularly interested in IDE features that are applicable to an
> Emacs-like environment. I'm also curious to know what Lisp development
> environment the long-time lispers in this group use, and why. For
> instance, Joe Marshall, how do you hack your Lisp nowadays?

XEmacs 21.4.13 on Windows 2K at home, on WinXP at Northeastern.

The reason is that XEmacs not only does lisp, but it does every other
language I have the misfortune to use (C, C++, C#, assembly, Java,
HTML, XML, etc.) *and* handles my mail and news *and* acts as terminal
for the shell *and* has TAGS and grep *and* is customizable.

The graph tools in Lispworks can be quite useful for inspecting
objects and classes, so I'll occasionally run them, but I rarely edit
code in anything but XEmacs.

-- 
~jrm
From: André Thieme
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cas8j8$tjq$1@ulric.tng.de>
Luke Gorrie schrieb:

> 
> Apologies if this has been hashed out before, but what are the
> features that make the commercial Lisps so much better?

Support is a key. If someone develops nice libs it is highly probable 
that they will make them work in LispWorks and Allegro.
I personally have not seen a lib that works on clisp and cmucl and 
explicitely /not/ on the commercial ones.
If you want some modern feature it /could/ be in a free version while it 
probably /is/ in the commercial versions.

One thing which someone else could confirm: the commercial versions 
usually produce faster/smaller code.


Andr�
--
From: Alain Picard
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87fz8uy1ew.fsf@memetrics.com>
Luke Gorrie <····@bluetail.com> writes:

> Apologies if this has been hashed out before, but what are the
> features that make the commercial Lisps so much better?

I guess the integrated GUI builders would have to be the
killer feature.  After that, things like the inspector,
graphical debugger and class browsers are gravy.  Then
come the nice but not strictly required things like profilers
and defsystem browsers.

Well, that's what I think is way superior about, say, LispWorks
than CMUCL.  Also, LW comes with CommonSQL (which is now probably
mostly replacable with UncommonSQL, but that wasn't true a couple
of years ago) and CORBA orb, still absent from the open source world.

Of course, CMUCL kick's LW's butt in any sort of numerical computation,
and it doesn't have the ridiculously low value of ARRAY-DIMENSION-LIMIT. :-(

Finally, another incredibly powerful feature is: support.
From: Dave Fayram
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <38ff3d6c.0406170726.6bfeeeb3@posting.google.com>
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote in message news:> David Steuber wrote:
> 
> > I wish I'd never met Lisp.  It has ruined me for all other
> > programming languages.
> 
> ...and...
> 
> > Lispworks costs $999 and MCL runs $750.
> 
> Sit in the lotus position until the light goes on. Hint: I starved for 
> months to afford a $1600 Apple frickin II in 1978 so I could do integer 
> basic in a whopping 16K of RAM, and I was happy to have it.
>
> If the light does not go on, I suggest you arrange for another 
> twenty-thousand man-hours priced at ten cents each so you can get 
> CMUCL/SBCL+ILISP/SLIME working nowhere near as well as commercial lisps.
> 
> It is /so/ important that our tools be free, no matter what the cost. 
> <sigh> C'mon, Lispniks are supposed to be /intelligent/.
> 
> Am I being obscure? Try this: if you cannot find $750 for a commercial 
> Lisp, you either are not really a programmer or you do not really like 
> Lisp. Your choice.

Kenny, I very much like Lisp, and I am very much a programmer.
However, unlike most folks here who have that exalted "senior" status,
I am fresh out of college. I sat around for 9 months begging for a
job, moving from couch to couch, accumulating debt and literally doing
website design and maintenance so that I could pay for gas to get to
my next crappy job interview.

Finally Lockheed Martin comes along and says, "Well hire you at 15%
less than the market rate, but we promise you two raises per year for
the first two years, and a big bonus at the end of the first year." I
frantically grabbed on because I LIKE EATING AND OWNING A RESIDENCE.

I am still trying to climb out of the hole I sunk into. Now, if you're
like me, you always have tons of good ideas, possibly even
money-making ones. When I found Lisp, I thought, "Gee, this would be
perfect for (idea here)." Too bad the commercial lisps (which would
bring platform mobility, a key feature for many of my ideas) are so
far out of my pathetic price range that I can't even dream of them.

Maybe I could have used the bonus or raise money? Bzzt, LMCO effect, I
don't get them now due to "Policy Changes". Apparently my contract has
a nice clause allowing that. Too bad I was too delirious from lack of
food to really understand it when I signed it.

Yes, Kenny, I'm sure David recognizes the economic value of the
commercial lisps. I do too. I am still totally unable to purchase
them. I'm already living on rice to make ends meet. There is no more
fat to trim.

I too, am sorry I met lisp, because it may be years before I can
really get into it, and right now it's all I want to do. I still enjoy
it, but lately it seems like the better parts of lisp are a world only
rich people or companies can enjoy.

- dlf
From: Wade Humeniuk
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <MkjAc.48514$Ds.7524@clgrps12>
Dave Fayram wrote:


> 
> 
> Kenny, I very much like Lisp, and I am very much a programmer.
> However, unlike most folks here who have that exalted "senior" status,
> I am fresh out of college. I sat around for 9 months begging for a
> job, moving from couch to couch, accumulating debt and literally doing
> website design and maintenance so that I could pay for gas to get to
> my next crappy job interview.
> 

Are you too poor to own a computer, or have an internet connection?
Did you pay for it?  It is no different.  At least you can get the
LispWorks Personal Edition for free and do useful work.  Harlequin
has been very generous.  Or get one of the free Lisps, there is
no need to play the victim.

Wade
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <5ljAc.122722$Nn4.27217679@twister.nyc.rr.com>
Dave Fayram wrote:

> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote in message news:> David Steuber wrote:
> 
>>>I wish I'd never met Lisp.  It has ruined me for all other
>>>programming languages.
>>
>>...and...
>>
>>
>>>Lispworks costs $999 and MCL runs $750.
>>
>>Sit in the lotus position until the light goes on. Hint: I starved for 
>>months to afford a $1600 Apple frickin II in 1978 so I could do integer 
>>basic in a whopping 16K of RAM, and I was happy to have it.
>>
>>If the light does not go on, I suggest you arrange for another 
>>twenty-thousand man-hours priced at ten cents each so you can get 
>>CMUCL/SBCL+ILISP/SLIME working nowhere near as well as commercial lisps.
>>
>>It is /so/ important that our tools be free, no matter what the cost. 
>><sigh> C'mon, Lispniks are supposed to be /intelligent/.
>>
>>Am I being obscure? Try this: if you cannot find $750 for a commercial 
>>Lisp, you either are not really a programmer or you do not really like 
>>Lisp. Your choice.
> 
> 
> Kenny, I very much like Lisp, and I am very much a programmer.
> However, unlike most folks here who have that exalted "senior" status,
> I am fresh out of college. I sat around for 9 months begging for a
> job, moving from couch to couch, accumulating debt and literally doing
> website design and maintenance so that I could pay for gas to get to
> my next crappy job interview.
> 
> Finally Lockheed Martin comes along and says, "Well hire you at 15%

Congratulations!

I do not think we disagree at all. If while at Lockheed you come up with 
a great idea for a home hobby project, you will probably use Lisp. If it 
is going to mean thousands of hours of work, and if you have played with 
trial versions of commercial tools, when you start using free toys you 
will probably decide they are not so free. Unless you are a Linux fan, 
in which case you likely no longer realize how much time you $pend on 
free (as in "my time is worthle$$") software. But if you like using an 
installer for three minutes instead of GCC for three days, you will 
likely find a way to come up with the bucks.

But right now you do not have any Lisp code to write, and that is my 
point. Now $1000 or so looks crazy[1]. Fortunately you have trial 
versions which cost nothing, are barely crippled, and come with installers!

Good luck with the gig.

kenny

[1] Unless you realize that Lisp jobs are probably just a year away and 
you want to have more than c.l.lisp on your resume when the hiring 
starts. :)

-- 
Home? http://tilton-technology.com
Cells? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Cello? http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cello/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Your Project Here! http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application
From: André Thieme
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <caskn5$67d$1@ulric.tng.de>
Dave Fayram schrieb:

> Kenny, I very much like Lisp, and I am very much a programmer.
> However, unlike most folks here who have that exalted "senior" status,
> I am fresh out of college. I sat around for 9 months begging for a
> job, moving from couch to couch, accumulating debt and literally doing
> website design and maintenance so that I could pay for gas to get to
> my next crappy job interview.
> 
> Finally Lockheed Martin comes along and says, "Well hire you at 15%
> less than the market rate, but we promise you two raises per year for
> the first two years, and a big bonus at the end of the first year." I
> frantically grabbed on because I LIKE EATING AND OWNING A RESIDENCE.
> 
> I am still trying to climb out of the hole I sunk into. Now, if you're
> like me, you always have tons of good ideas, possibly even
> money-making ones. When I found Lisp, I thought, "Gee, this would be
> perfect for (idea here)." Too bad the commercial lisps (which would
> bring platform mobility, a key feature for many of my ideas) are so
> far out of my pathetic price range that I can't even dream of them.
> 
> Maybe I could have used the bonus or raise money? Bzzt, LMCO effect, I
> don't get them now due to "Policy Changes". Apparently my contract has
> a nice clause allowing that. Too bad I was too delirious from lack of
> food to really understand it when I signed it.
> 
> Yes, Kenny, I'm sure David recognizes the economic value of the
> commercial lisps. I do too. I am still totally unable to purchase
> them. I'm already living on rice to make ends meet. There is no more
> fat to trim.
> 
> I too, am sorry I met lisp, because it may be years before I can
> really get into it, and right now it's all I want to do. I still enjoy
> it, but lately it seems like the better parts of lisp are a world only
> rich people or companies can enjoy.


Sometimes I ask myself: "How it comes that at the end of money still so 
much month is left?"


Andr�
--
From: Paolo Amoroso
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87659qt4lq.fsf@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it>
·········@lensmen.net (Dave Fayram) writes:

> I am still trying to climb out of the hole I sunk into. Now, if you're
> like me, you always have tons of good ideas, possibly even
> money-making ones. When I found Lisp, I thought, "Gee, this would be
> perfect for (idea here)." Too bad the commercial lisps (which would
> bring platform mobility, a key feature for many of my ideas) are so
> far out of my pathetic price range that I can't even dream of them.

For the record, Paul Graham based a business worth over 50 M$ on CLISP
and other free tools (e.g. Perl, if I recall correctly).  Graham chose
CLISP over Allegro CL because, at the time, the performance of CLISP
was better than Allegro CL's for the kind of application Graham was
interested in.

By the way, this motivated Franz to improve their product.  The simple
streams feature was designed to address the problem.


Paolo
-- 
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (Google for info on each):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
From: ··········@YahooGroups.Com
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <REM-2004jun30-001@Yahoo.Com>
> From: Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com>
> if you cannot find $750 for a commercial Lisp, you either are not
> really a programmer or you do not really like Lisp.

That's a fucking demeaning remark against all the people less fortunate
than you are. I am a human being who is very good at writing computer
software, but nobody is hiring so I'm on the verge of being homeless. I
am deep in debt and haven't been able to afford a version of MACL that
would run on my Macintosh Performa 600 (System 7.5.5) after my Mac Plus
died (MACL 1.2.2 ran fine on it but doesn't run on the Performa). I
hope you lose whatever stupid job you have and can't ever find another
and go broke and become homeless, so that you would eventually realize
not everyone is as fortunate as you are to have so much money you think
nothing of spending $750 for a commercial Lisp. Until then, please keep
your demeaning remarks to yourself.

That's all I have to say to you. To everyone else in this newsgroup,
please somebody hire me before it's too late.
http://voyager.deanza.fhda.edu/~rm034596/Robert_Elton_Maas.doc
From: mikel
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <Wz9Ac.825$SS4.58@newssvr25.news.prodigy.com>
David Steuber wrote:
> This is a rant.  Please move on if you don't like rants.  Move on
> especially quickly if you don't like rants that are ill thought out
> and clearly the ravings of a lunatic.
> 
> I wish I'd never met Lisp.  It has ruined me for all other
> programming languages.  C and Java now look really ugly to me.  XML
> is clearly someone's really bad joke at the world.  Jelly is a new
> player in the Java/XML conspiracy.  I'm not sure how to con someone
> into paying me to hack on Lisp.
> 
> Since I've gotten my Mac, I've been ruined for all other desktop
> systems.  Sadly, there are a limited number of Lisp systems that work
> on it well.  The only one I've been able to compile myself is SBCL.
> OpenMCL should be better to use because it has a Cocoa bridge and
> does threads.  I haven't been able to build it yet though (I have an
> "old" binary build from Darwin Ports).  OpenMCL is not really ready
> for prime time yet because any Cocoa app built with it apparently
> will only work under the exact revision of OS X that it was built
> for.
> 
> Lispworks costs $999 and MCL runs $750.  I didn't look at Franz.
> I've had enough sticker shock for one day.  I'm not buying a
> commercial Lisp soon, but I have downloaded the Lispworks Personal
> Edition to play with to see how I like that.
> 
> Emacs + SLIME looks really primitive next to Xcode.  Xcode has all
> sorts of cool features to (once it is finally running).  Xcode will
> take care of all the gory details of making NIB files and building a
> .app bundle for your application.  The only catch is that you have to
> program in Objective-C or Java (preferably the latter).  Did I
> mention that Lisp has ruined me for all other programming languages?
> 
> Emacs + SLIME + SBCL take up less memory than Xcode.  The startup
> time is shorter.  The programming experience is far more
> interactive.  Yes, it looks primitive by comparison.  In reality, it
> seems a bit more sophisticated.  The problem is, I am just not loving
> Emacs so much (mostly due to key chords).  Yes, I use it for mail and
> gnews.  That doesn't mean I like it.  There is no Cocoa bridge and no
> .app packager.  There is no integration to Xcode and its tools at all.
> 
> I think I would like to have that integration.  I would like to
> program in Lisp that way.  I just don't have $999 to spend on it.
> Besides.  I think that a worthy free Lisp implementation and dev
> environment for OS X is very useful for Lisp's future as a perhaps
> not so dead language.  Obligatory Miracle Max quote goes here.
> 
> So I've got a wish list.  It's not a long list.  Call it a short
> list.
> 
> * SBCL should support threads on OS X using the same programmer level
>   API as on Linux x86.  If someone points me to where to look at
>   hacking that in, I'd be happy to help.
> 
> * SBCL should have a Cocoa bridge and Carbon wrappers for OS X.
>   Again, I'm willing to work on this.
> 
> * There should be a nicer IDE for Lisp that fits the OS X Aqua
>   interface guidelines.  Fewer key chords than Emacs has would be
>   nice.  SLIME like functionality is a must.  The IDE should be part
>   of the Lisp image.  All forms of RPC suck.  A threaded Lisp would
>   help.
> 
> * The Lisp IDE should be able to leverage Xcode for Cocoa, Carbon,
>   Quicktime, and other documentation.  App bundles and also
>   frameworks should be things that you can make.
> 
> It's time to make Lisp mainstream.

If you like. I'll help you get OpenMCL built from the latest sources on 
your system.

It's true that Cocoa apps built with OpenMCL 0.14.x run only on pretty 
much exactly the version of OSX that built them. However:

1. Gary and Randall are working on improvements to the Cocoa bridge to 
fix that problem.

2. Carbon apps built with OpenMCL have no such problem.

3. Bosco 0.6 (see http://www.common-lisp.net/project/clotho/) builds 
both Cocoa and Carbon apps. Bosco 0.6 apps have SLIME built into them so 
you can connect to the running app from Emacs.

4. I'm working on a short tutorial with example code that shows 
step-by-step how to build both Carbon and Cocoa apps on Bosco.

In addition, the Clotho project is intended to produce an IDE for 
OpenMCL on OSX. Clotho 0.2 suffers from the OS-version problem, but it 
has a built-in GUI listener and inspector, and an extensible editor 
written in Common Lisp. Clotho 0.3 will be built on Bosco 0.6, and will 
be Carbon-based, and so not tied to a specific OSX version. Paul Lathrop 
has contributed code to autobuild an application bundle in Clotho 0.3, 
and I've added features to the Bosco 0.6 build system to build 
applications into the right part of the bundle. It should not be hard to 
add features that do the right things with Info.plist and other resource 
files, and Lisp code can use nibfiles produced by Interface Builder just 
fine. The tutorial will cover that topic as well.

One way to address the problems you've noted is to join the Clotho 
project and contribute some code.

I'd be happy to make these same things happen for SBCL, but not until 
the OpenMCL work is a good deal farther along.
From: Wade Humeniuk
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <gB9Ac.48470$Ds.7712@clgrps12>
David Steuber wrote:

> 
> Since I've gotten my Mac, I've been ruined for all other desktop
> systems.  

How much did you pay for your Mac?

Wade
From: David Steuber
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <4ddd570c.0406171935.2c0f50ee@posting.google.com>
Wade Humeniuk <········@telus.delete.net> wrote in message news:<···················@clgrps12>...
> David Steuber wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Since I've gotten my Mac, I've been ruined for all other desktop
> > systems.  
> 
> How much did you pay for your Mac?

Enough for two LispWorks professionl licenses ;-)

It probably wan't exactly a wise expense either.

If I was confident that I had a good idea for a commercial app, I
would spring for LispWorks or MCL in a second.  Well, if I had the
cash on hand I would.  I spent it all on the Mac a bit over a year ago
now.

I'm not so much ranting against Lisp as ranting against Lisp not being
the mainstream language of choice for everyone.  If Lisp was
mainstream, Xcode would do it.  I expect Dev Studio would do it also. 
Somewhere, something went terribly wrong.  I still think that if a
good, free Lisp... scratch that... a better free Lisp was available
Lisp would be a healthier language.  I can certainly work through
examples in OnLisp, ACL, PAIP, and a few others using the free Lisps. 
Also, SLIME does help a fair bit.  SBCL, OpenMCL, CLisp, SLIME, et al
are moving along.  They aren't standing still.  They are useful.  But
they do have limits.

Anyway, I didn't intend to start a Free vs Commercial debate. 
Commercial companies do what they do to make money and that is as it
should be.  To be fair, I have not accumulated loads of experience
using GCC to compile C code written using Emacs or Vim.  Free C is no
better off other than people are inexplicably using C for applications
programs.  Well, that's not quite true.  There are free IDEs for
C/C++.

If that isn't bad enough, my local news feed has been screwy today and
I am relying on Google to see followups to my post.
From: Joe Marshall
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <3c4t3qjd.fsf@ccs.neu.edu>
·····@david-steuber.com (David Steuber) writes:

> I'm not so much ranting against Lisp as ranting against Lisp not being
> the mainstream language of choice for everyone.  If Lisp was
> mainstream, Xcode would do it.  I expect Dev Studio would do it also. 

It's only waiting for someone to make the appropriate COM interfaces.
From: Kaz Kylheku
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cf333042.0406170701.4a993a1f@posting.google.com>
David Steuber <·····@david-steuber.com> wrote in message news:<··············@david-steuber.com>...
> I'm not sure how to con someone into paying me to hack on Lisp.

CONS omeone? Hmm... ;)
From: Christian Lynbech
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87isdqtyq2.fsf@dhcp229.ted.dk.eu.ericsson.se>
>>>>> "David" == David Steuber <·····@david-steuber.com> writes:

David> I'm not sure how to con someone into paying me to hack on Lisp.

I am working for Ericsson which, as any big corporation, is rather
un-excited about lisp.

But I am constantly thinking/planning/dreaming/working on slipping
lisp in somewhere. Even if that has little chance of actually
succeeding, the activity itself helps keeping my sanity up in this mad
corporate world.

As somebody famous once said: "We may be lying in the gutter, but we
are looking at the stars."


------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Christian Lynbech       | christian ··@ defun #\. dk
------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Hit the philistines three times over the head with the Elisp reference manual.
                                        - ·······@hal.com (Michael A. Petonic)
From: Andreas Krey
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <slrncd2k5g.1f9.a.krey@inner.h.uberluser.org>
* Christian Lynbech (·················@ericsson.com)
...
> I am working for Ericsson which, as any big corporation, is rather
> un-excited about lisp.
> 
'course. AFAIK they're even scrapping Erlang in favor of Java.

> But I am constantly thinking/planning/dreaming/working on slipping
> lisp in somewhere.

Did so by writing an interpreter used in some small tools. :-)

> Even if that has little chance of actually
> succeeding, the activity itself helps keeping my sanity up in this mad
> corporate world.

Doesn't work for me. I would need some un-scheme with some features
(re builtin types) and would like to implement it but can't rip
off the time anywhere. :-(

Andreas

-- 
np: 4'33
From: Joe Marshall
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <y8mmjn4t.fsf@comcast.net>
David Steuber <·····@david-steuber.com> writes:

> This is a rant.  Please move on if you don't like rants.  Move on
> especially quickly if you don't like rants that are ill thought out
> and clearly the ravings of a lunatic.

I'd better move on, because....
Hey, wait a minute, if I didn't like the insane ravings of lunatics,
why am I subscribed to comp.lang.lisp?

> I wish I'd never met Lisp.  It has ruined me for all other
> programming languages.  C and Java now look really ugly to me.  XML
> is clearly someone's really bad joke at the world.  Jelly is a new
> player in the Java/XML conspiracy.  

Join the club.  I find non-lisp systems nauseating.

> I'm not sure how to con someone into paying me to hack on Lisp.

It can be done.  The past few years have been very nasty to all
programmers, but things are looking much better now.  People who want
to hire Lisp hackers exist, but they often don't advertise (what's the
point?).  When my company was hiring (back in 2000, before the bubble
burst) we *couldn't* find enough lisp hackers.

> Since I've gotten my Mac, I've been ruined for all other desktop
> systems.  Sadly, there are a limited number of Lisp systems that work
> on it well.

At least they still make Macs.  I miss my LispM.

> Lispworks costs $999 and MCL runs $750.  I didn't look at Franz.
> I've had enough sticker shock for one day.  I'm not buying a
> commercial Lisp soon, but I have downloaded the Lispworks Personal
> Edition to play with to see how I like that.

Franz is expensive, no question.  But neither Franz nor Xanalys are
trying to gouge money out of hobbyists.  The Franz and Xanalys `trial
editions' are pretty good and both Franz and Xanalys *encourage*
hobbyists to actively use them. 

> Emacs + SLIME + SBCL take up less memory than Xcode.  The startup
> time is shorter.  The programming experience is far more
> interactive.  Yes, it looks primitive by comparison.  In reality, it
> seems a bit more sophisticated.  

Yeah, looks are deceptive.

> The problem is, I am just not loving Emacs so much (mostly due to
> key chords).  Yes, I use it for mail and gnews.  That doesn't mean I
> like it.

Fix the chords.

> There is no Cocoa bridge and no .app packager.  There is no
> integration to Xcode and its tools at all.
>
> I think I would like to have that integration.  I would like to
> program in Lisp that way.  I just don't have $999 to spend on it.
> Besides.  I think that a worthy free Lisp implementation and dev
> environment for OS X is very useful for Lisp's future as a perhaps
> not so dead language.  Obligatory Miracle Max quote goes here.

Hmmm, you want to hack lisp, you want to inteface Emacs + CommonLisp
to XCode.  Did I mention that Emacs is written in Lisp?  It isn't
Common Lisp, but it'll do in a pinch.  I have an idea.

> So I've got a wish list.  It's not a long list.  Call it a short
> list.
>
> * SBCL should support threads on OS X using the same programmer level
>   API as on Linux x86.  If someone points me to where to look at
>   hacking that in, I'd be happy to help.
>
> * SBCL should have a Cocoa bridge and Carbon wrappers for OS X.
>   Again, I'm willing to work on this.
>
> * There should be a nicer IDE for Lisp that fits the OS X Aqua
>   interface guidelines.  Fewer key chords than Emacs has would be
>   nice.  SLIME like functionality is a must.  The IDE should be part
>   of the Lisp image.  All forms of RPC suck.  A threaded Lisp would
>   help.
>
> * The Lisp IDE should be able to leverage Xcode for Cocoa, Carbon,
>   Quicktime, and other documentation.  App bundles and also
>   frameworks should be things that you can make.

I have done no work whatsoever with SBCL, OS X, Cocoa, Carbon, Aqua,
SLIME, Xcode, or App bundles, so I cannot give you any help but
encouragement.  

Dive in.

Just start.

Anywhere.

-- 
~jrm
From: ··········@YahooGroups.Com
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <REM-2004jul01-001@Yahoo.Com>
> From: Joe Marshall <·············@comcast.net>
> When my company was hiring (back in 2000, before the bubble burst) we
> *couldn't* find enough lisp hackers.

Apparently that was because you didn't bother looking, or you would
have found my LISP resume sitting there all the time waiting for you to
find it:
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=rtit0cju1iv47%40corp.supernews.com
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=76llmr%241d7%241%40remarQ.com
Not a single person ever inquired after seeing my resume, so I came to
the belief that nobody was interested in hiring anyone to program using
LISP. Since that resume was posted, on my own without any money I
worked on a major project involving defending my e-mail account against
spam, which added one year LISP programming to my resume:
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=REM-2003aug07-004%40Yahoo.Com
By the way, lately most of the spam I've been getting has been from two
sources: Italy, and ComCast. I wish everyone at ComCast would be sent
to prison. (And I wish even worse for ISPs in Italy!!)
From: Joe Marshall
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <8ye3n91b.fsf@ccs.neu.edu>
··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:

>> From: Joe Marshall <·············@comcast.net>
>> When my company was hiring (back in 2000, before the bubble burst) we
>> *couldn't* find enough lisp hackers.
>
> Apparently that was because you didn't bother looking, or you would
> have found my LISP resume sitting there all the time waiting for you to
> find it:
> http://www.google.com/groups?selm=rtit0cju1iv47%40corp.supernews.com
> http://www.google.com/groups?selm=76llmr%241d7%241%40remarQ.com
> Not a single person ever inquired after seeing my resume, so I came to
> the belief that nobody was interested in hiring anyone to program using
> LISP. 

It is likely that your resume was filtered out because it indicates
that you were interested in part time employment in the Bay area.  We
were looking for full-time people on-site in Boston.
 
From: Paolo Amoroso
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <87y8mmnzzq.fsf@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it>
David Steuber <·····@david-steuber.com> writes:

> player in the Java/XML conspiracy.  I'm not sure how to con someone
> into paying me to hack on Lisp.

You may start asking around among your friends, relatives and
colleagues who are not computer savvy.  Some of them probably need a
small application or tool.  And, provided it works, they probably
don't care which language it's written in.

In short, start with grocery store size businesses.  You may not
become rich quick, but this may bootstrap a for pay Lisp coding
activity.


Paolo
-- 
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (Google for info on each):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
From: Jock Cooper
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <m3brjiyunz.fsf@jcooper02.sagepub.com>
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> writes:

> David Steuber <·····@david-steuber.com> writes:
> 
> > player in the Java/XML conspiracy.  I'm not sure how to con someone
> > into paying me to hack on Lisp.
> 
> You may start asking around among your friends, relatives and
> colleagues who are not computer savvy.  Some of them probably need a
> small application or tool.  And, provided it works, they probably
> don't care which language it's written in.
> 
> In short, start with grocery store size businesses.  You may not
> become rich quick, but this may bootstrap a for pay Lisp coding
> activity.
> 

All the C.L.L. denizens who are wishing for CL jobs should get
together and start a company (think: telecommute).  What would happen
if all this productivity was focused... 
From: André Thieme
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <caskoe$67d$2@ulric.tng.de>
Jock Cooper schrieb:

> Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> writes:
> 
> 
>>David Steuber <·····@david-steuber.com> writes:
>>
>>
>>>player in the Java/XML conspiracy.  I'm not sure how to con someone
>>>into paying me to hack on Lisp.
>>
>>You may start asking around among your friends, relatives and
>>colleagues who are not computer savvy.  Some of them probably need a
>>small application or tool.  And, provided it works, they probably
>>don't care which language it's written in.
>>
>>In short, start with grocery store size businesses.  You may not
>>become rich quick, but this may bootstrap a for pay Lisp coding
>>activity.
>>
> 
> 
> All the C.L.L. denizens who are wishing for CL jobs should get
> together and start a company (think: telecommute).  What would happen
> if all this productivity was focused... 

Okay, I am the boss!


Andr�
--
From: André Thieme
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cas811$t7j$1@ulric.tng.de>
David Steuber schrieb:

> I wish I'd never met Lisp.  It has ruined me for all other
> programming languages.  C and Java now look really ugly to me.  XML
> is clearly someone's really bad joke at the world.  Jelly is a new
> player in the Java/XML conspiracy.  I'm not sure how to con someone
> into paying me to hack on Lisp.

Yes, it can be problematic to continue with something else.
For me personally the idea is to replace at least /some/ Java or C 
coding with tools which translate from Lisp to human readable code in 
Java or C. Perhaps I will try to do such a translator one day for PHP.

Then, another way could be to simply solve some tasks in Lisp. I have 
some freedom, so if I do a solution for a tool in Lisp and make it 
running and all this happens fast it would take some time until someone 
finds out. And if someone found it out, he/she will probably not care 
too much about it, as long it is doing a good job :)



> Lispworks costs $999 and MCL runs $750.  I didn't look at Franz.
> I've had enough sticker shock for one day.  I'm not buying a
> commercial Lisp soon, but I have downloaded the Lispworks Personal
> Edition to play with to see how I like that.
>
 >
> I think I would like to have that integration.  I would like to
> program in Lisp that way.  I just don't have $999 to spend on it.


You can use the personal edition of LW for a lot of things. When you 
feel ready you can buy the Pro version.
Someone (I think someone from one of the vendors) once said, that if 
coding is your hobby you could buy a license. Some people whose hobby is 
photography pay 5k for their equipment. Why not buying a commercial Lisp?
Maybe the same person criticised that too few people are willing to pay 
for software more money than for the hardware, where the software will 
run on.

Don't want to start a flame war.. but Kent Pitman seems to be right when 
he is sceptical about free software (meaning the free beer part).
People get used to cheap or free software. This is not very good for our 
buisiness. The sources can in many cases be open and in some fewer cases 
the customer can also get a license which allows him to do his own 
modifications. But anyway, the software should cost some money...
In LispWorks Pro for example we get the source code for the editor with 
the right to do our modifications on it.

When I learned enough Lisp (in my subjective opinion) I will buy the Pro 
version and sell some software. This should work for you too. If you 
like Lisp and like to program it must be possible for you to spend some 
time on projects which you sell, to get your 1k $.


Andr�
--
From: David Steuber
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <4ddd570c.0406172049.1fce4f6d@posting.google.com>
Andr� Thieme <······························@justmail.de> wrote in message news:
> You can use the personal edition of LW for a lot of things. When you 
> feel ready you can buy the Pro version.
> Someone (I think someone from one of the vendors) once said, that if 
> coding is your hobby you could buy a license. Some people whose hobby is 
> photography pay 5k for their equipment. Why not buying a commercial Lisp?
> Maybe the same person criticised that too few people are willing to pay 
> for software more money than for the hardware, where the software will 
> run on.

I've already downloaded the LW personal edition.  If it impresses me
enough, I'll start puting change in a jar to buy the pro version.  I'm
not against paying for software (otherwise I wouldn't have a Mac). 
Even as a hobby, software can be worth paying money for.  I just don't
have it right now.

I might well be able to enjoy programming Lisp as a hobby without any
of the commercial ware.  The advantage I see in the commercial ware is
that it makes it easier to share (or sell) my gems.

> Don't want to start a flame war.. but Kent Pitman seems to be right when 
> he is sceptical about free software (meaning the free beer part).
> People get used to cheap or free software. This is not very good for our 
> buisiness. The sources can in many cases be open and in some fewer cases 
> the customer can also get a license which allows him to do his own 
> modifications. But anyway, the software should cost some money...
> In LispWorks Pro for example we get the source code for the editor with 
> the right to do our modifications on it.

I expect market forces will take care of all that.  It has been
pointed out many times that free software carries a heavy time cost. 
However, as good as Lisp is it still has to compete against other
languages.  There seems to be no shortage of people who are satisfied
with lower quality products.

> When I learned enough Lisp (in my subjective opinion) I will buy the Pro 
> version and sell some software. This should work for you too. If you 
> like Lisp and like to program it must be possible for you to spend some 
> time on projects which you sell, to get your 1k $.

Well, never say never.  I'm sure I would be very happy if I could get
$1k in revenue from selling software of my own.  I would be happier
still if I could live off the proceedes.

Whether my tools are free or I pay a license fee is not really the
point for me when it comes to distributing code.  I can distribute raw
source with the "you build it if you can" attitude.  If I am going to
distribute binaries I expect them to work on systems other than the
machine I compiled on.

Whatever the economics work out to be in the long run, I expect that
keeping down the barriers to entry can only help the Lisp community as
a whole.  Presumably people who have a positive experience with the
language will want to use it.
From: Xavier Maillard
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <plop87hdt9nu8c.fsf@gnu-rox.org>
On 17 jun 2004, Andr� Thieme wrote:

 [ ... ]

> Don't want to start a flame war.. but Kent Pitman seems to be
> right when he is sceptical about free software (meaning the
> free beer part). People get used to cheap or free software.
> This is not very good for our buisiness. The sources can in
> many cases be open and in some fewer cases the customer can
> also get a license which allows him to do his own
> modifications. But anyway, the software should cost some
                                          ^^^^^^

I totally don't agree with that. A software _could_ cost but
this is non sense to argue all software should cost something.
On the other hand I totally agree with you wehn you say people
are getting used not to pay for software in our Free Software
world. But as Stallman and other say, Free Software doesn't mean
it should be free (no charge). It is common that Free Software
doesn't cost anything but it is much a matter of choice than
anything else.

As a Hacker (in the good sense of the term), hacking free
software is much more a hobby than something else. I love
developping and sharing with other and nevermind to be paid for
that hobby.

Here in France, we have several company doing Free Software and
the majority of them do it for free. What they make thei
customers pay for is the service: support, installation,
maitainance, ...

Regards,

P.S: sorry for the bad english expression ;)
-- 
      Xavier Maillard| "Stand Back! I'm a programmer!"
.0.             ·····@gnu-rox.orgz|
..0             (+33) 326 770 221 |   Webmaster, emacsfr.org
000              PGP : 0x1E028EA5 |    Membre de l' APRIL
From: Tyler Eaves
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <pan.2004.06.18.21.03.25.775164@gmail.com>
On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 00:00:02 -0400, David Steuber wrote:

I agree with much of that. One suggestion, grab a free app called
uControl, which allows you to remap the keyboard. The particular
trick you want is to remap your caps lock key to be a Control key.
This makes Emacs far more pleasant to use, as you now have a control 
key practically under your left pinky, as all good keyboards should.
From: David Steuber
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <4ddd570c.0406182042.11d963c9@posting.google.com>
Tyler Eaves <······@gmail.com> wrote in message news:<······························@gmail.com>...
> On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 00:00:02 -0400, David Steuber wrote:
> 
> I agree with much of that. One suggestion, grab a free app called
> uControl, which allows you to remap the keyboard. The particular
> trick you want is to remap your caps lock key to be a Control key.
> This makes Emacs far more pleasant to use, as you now have a control 
> key practically under your left pinky, as all good keyboards should.

I've got it (1.4.4).  It does improve things tremendously.  Using the
touchpad as a scroll wheel is also useful from time to time.  I did
have a minor hitch when I forgot to remove 1.4.3 before upgrading from
10.3.3 to 10.3.4.  Things seem to be working fine now after a wee bit
of fiddling around.

I've got LW personal edition installed, but I haven't tried it out
yet.  Been busy today.  I'm also waiting on e-mail from Franz to grab
Allegro 6.2 Trial Edition.

It's too bad the caps lock light isn't affected by uControl.  I hate
seeing it on.  I guess even a kernel module doesn't have access to
that though.

I still haven't tackled CLOS yet, but I will be very interested to see
how one goes about subclassing Objective-C classes.  More interesting
would be multiple inheritance.  One thing I haven't quite grokked yet
with Objective-C, or at least with Cocoa, is when you are supposed to
release an object so that it will get deallocated properly.  I'm not
quite clear on the protocol.  I should probably do some Objective-C
programming just to get sorted out on that point, but like I said with
the first post, Common Lisp has ruined me.  Objective-C isn't any
prettier than C.  It has even more nasty syntax stuff.  Bleh!

Actually, a pet peeve I have about Java is the fact that you call new
to create an object but there is no delete to balance it like with
C++.  If you have automatic memory management, why do you need new? 
It should be implicit.  I suppose one might have the same complaint
about make-array or make-hash-table, but somehow I don't see anything
wrong with those functions.

Common Lisp seems to have anticipated most needs.  Those libraries
people complain about not being present (myself included) for
threading, sockets, guis, etc, are missing from the free Lisps.  Well,
only if you ask for all the features at once.  SBCL has sb-bsd-socket.
 sb-thread only works on x86 Linux at the moment, but OpenMCL has
posix threading on OS X.  There is a project called McCLIM for GUI. 
Obviously it is tricky to do a cross platform GUI.  One could argue
that Java's attempt was not wholy successful.  Also, last I looked,
there was a bit of a schism between Swing and AWT.

The GUI doesn't matter so much if you are doing web services.  If you
have decided that OS X rocks and you don't even want to look at
Windows again (and maybe not even X11), then the GUI doesn't need to
be portable.  It's probably easier to use the MVC pattern and keep the
GUI as seperate as possible anyway if you want to port to something
using a slightly different event model.

If I never met Lisp, I would probably be cursing Objective-C and Java
as I coded in them with no hope of something better.
From: Brian Downing
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <IbQAc.136574$Ly.93997@attbi_s01>
In article <····························@posting.google.com>,
David Steuber <·····@david-steuber.com> wrote:
> I've got it (1.4.4).  It does improve things tremendously.  Using the
> touchpad as a scroll wheel is also useful from time to time.  I did
> have a minor hitch when I forgot to remove 1.4.3 before upgrading from
> 10.3.3 to 10.3.4.  Things seem to be working fine now after a wee bit
> of fiddling around.

For a scroll wheel a far more elegent solution (instead of the uControl
scroll wheel emulation) is to get SideTrack
(http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/sidetrack/), which is a new driver
that enables some of the advanced features of the trackpad hardware that
Apple uses.  This includes horizontal and vertical scroll areas (on any
side), and other buttons and functions tied to corner taps.

I have mine set up to generate scroll wheel events if I track along the
right side of the pad, and have mouse2, mouse3, Expose all windows, and
Expose desktop set up on taps to the four corners.

Unfortunatly, the current version (0.8 beta) expires in 11 days, and
there's been no new release!  Hopefully one gets made before it expires,
because I'd hate to go back to the Apple trackpad driver.

-bcd
-- 
*** Brian Downing <bdowning at lavos dot net> 
From: Peter Herth
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cb0rm2$3qf$1@newsreader2.netcologne.de>
David Steuber wrote:

> Actually, a pet peeve I have about Java is the fact that you call new
> to create an object but there is no delete to balance it like with
> C++.  If you have automatic memory management, why do you need new?
> It should be implicit.  I suppose one might have the same complaint
> about make-array or make-hash-table, but somehow I don't see anything
> wrong with those functions.

Well, with an implicit new, any List structure would be in infinite
size if you have:

class Cons
{
 Object car;
 Cons cdr; // <= if this allocated a Cons object by default, this would mean
trouble :)
}


> Common Lisp seems to have anticipated most needs.  Those libraries
> people complain about not being present (myself included) for
> threading, sockets, guis, etc, are missing from the free Lisps.  Well,
> only if you ask for all the features at once.  SBCL has sb-bsd-socket.
>  sb-thread only works on x86 Linux at the moment, but OpenMCL has
> posix threading on OS X.  There is a project called McCLIM for GUI.
> Obviously it is tricky to do a cross platform GUI.  One could argue
> that Java's attempt was not wholy successful.  Also, last I looked,
> there was a bit of a schism between Swing and AWT.

It may be tricky do to a cross platform GUI, but is has been done!  :)
Look at Ltk: http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/ As of Version 0.8.3 
openMCL is amongst the supported Lisps and it runs nicely under
a lot of other Lisps and operating systems. A peek how it looks
under OS X: http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/ltk-osx.png

Peter

-- 
Peter Herth
pet project: http://dawn.netcologne.de
homepage:    http://www.peter-herth.de
lisp stuff:  http://www.peter-herth.de/lisp.html
get Ltk here: http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/
From: Hannah Schroeter
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cbjeg8$dn$4@c3po.use.schlund.de>
Hello!

Peter Herth  <·····@netcologne.de> wrote:

>> Actually, a pet peeve I have about Java is the fact that you call new
>> to create an object but there is no delete to balance it like with
>> C++.  If you have automatic memory management, why do you need new?
>> It should be implicit.  I suppose one might have the same complaint
>> about make-array or make-hash-table, but somehow I don't see anything
>> wrong with those functions.

>Well, with an implicit new, any List structure would be in infinite
>size if you have:

>class Cons
>{
> Object car;
> Cons cdr; // <= if this allocated a Cons object by default, this would mean
>trouble :)
>}

Yep.

But why do you have to write Cons foo = new Cons instead of
just Cons foo = Cons() or so? Or with type inference (or dynamic
typing): foo = Cons(), or even foo = Cons(a, b), then it suddenly
begins to look like that beautiful
  (let ((foo (cons a b)))
    ...)
thing.

You see, no "new" in there. No (new 'cons a b).

But then, you could of course, in Java, put a class just above
Object, having a
	static Cons cons(Object a, Cons b)
	{
		Cons c = new Cons();
		c.car = a;
		c.cdr = b;
		return (c);
	}
in there. Inherit that class either directly or indirectly for
every other class you define.

>[...]

Kind regards,

Hannah.
From: Peter Herth
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cbjg65$37g$1@newsreader2.netcologne.de>
Hannah Schroeter wrote:


> But why do you have to write Cons foo = new Cons instead of
> just Cons foo = Cons() or so? Or with type inference (or dynamic
> typing): foo = Cons(), or even foo = Cons(a, b), then it suddenly
> begins to look like that beautiful
>   (let ((foo (cons a b)))
>     ...)
> thing.
> 
> You see, no "new" in there. No (new 'cons a b).

Yes of course you can make it more beautiful than Java chose to 
do but Cons() is still an explicit call and I understood the
original poster in the way that no explicit call ist needed and
that creates some problems with list-like structures.

Peter

-- 
pet project: http://dawn.netcologne.de
homepage:    http://www.peter-herth.de
lisp stuff:  http://www.peter-herth.de/lisp.html
get Ltk here: http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/
From: Peter Herth
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cb0tbk$6ip$1@newsreader2.netcologne.de>
David Steuber wrote:
 
> Actually, a pet peeve I have about Java is the fact that you call new
> to create an object but there is no delete to balance it like with
> C++.  If you have automatic memory management, why do you need new?
> It should be implicit.  I suppose one might have the same complaint
> about make-array or make-hash-table, but somehow I don't see anything
> wrong with those functions.

Well, with an implicit new, any List structure would be in infinite
size if you have:

class Cons
{
�Object�car;
�Cons�cdr;�//�<=�if�this�allocated�a�Cons�object�by�default,�this�would�mean
trouble :)
}

Or did I misunderstood you ?

> Common Lisp seems to have anticipated most needs.  Those libraries
> people complain about not being present (myself included) for
> threading, sockets, guis, etc, are missing from the free Lisps.  Well,
> only if you ask for all the features at once.  SBCL has sb-bsd-socket.
>  sb-thread only works on x86 Linux at the moment, but OpenMCL has
> posix threading on OS X.  There is a project called McCLIM for GUI.
> Obviously it is tricky to do a cross platform GUI.  One could argue
> that Java's attempt was not wholy successful.  Also, last I looked,
> there was a bit of a schism between Swing and AWT.

It may be tricky do to a cross platform GUI, but is has been done!��:)
Look at Ltk: http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/ As of Version 0.8.3 
openMCL is amongst the supported Lisps and it runs nicely under
a lot of other Lisps and operating systems. A peek how it looks
under OS X: http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/ltk-osx.png

Peter

-- 
pet project: http://dawn.netcologne.de
homepage:    http://www.peter-herth.de
lisp stuff:  http://www.peter-herth.de/lisp.html
get Ltk here: http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/
From: David Steuber
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <4ddd570c.0406201903.2b44a56d@posting.google.com>
Peter Herth <·····@netcologne.de> wrote in message news:<············@newsreader2.netcologne.de>...
> David Steuber wrote:
>  
> > Actually, a pet peeve I have about Java is the fact that you call new
> > to create an object but there is no delete to balance it like with
> > C++.  If you have automatic memory management, why do you need new?
> > It should be implicit.  I suppose one might have the same complaint
> > about make-array or make-hash-table, but somehow I don't see anything
> > wrong with those functions.
> 
> Well, with an implicit new, any List structure would be in infinite
> size if you have:
> 
> class Cons
> {
> �Object�car;
> �Cons�cdr;�//�<=�if�this�allocated�a�Cons�object�by�default,�this�would�mean
> trouble :)
> }
> 
> Or did I misunderstood you ?

Not entirely.  The example above may or may not lead to trouble.  The
cdr field could have allocation for it delayed until something is
actually assigned to it.  That's an implementation issue that may or
may not be solvable in the general case.  But I suppose if you can
solve it for some trivial case that all other cases build upon, then
you wouldn't need new.

> > Common Lisp seems to have anticipated most needs.  Those libraries
> > people complain about not being present (myself included) for
> > threading, sockets, guis, etc, are missing from the free Lisps.  Well,
> > only if you ask for all the features at once.  SBCL has sb-bsd-socket.
> >  sb-thread only works on x86 Linux at the moment, but OpenMCL has
> > posix threading on OS X.  There is a project called McCLIM for GUI.
> > Obviously it is tricky to do a cross platform GUI.  One could argue
> > that Java's attempt was not wholy successful.  Also, last I looked,
> > there was a bit of a schism between Swing and AWT.
> 
> It may be tricky do to a cross platform GUI, but is has been done!��:)
> Look at Ltk: http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/ As of Version 0.8.3 
> openMCL is amongst the supported Lisps and it runs nicely under
> a lot of other Lisps and operating systems. A peek how it looks
> under OS X: http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/ltk-osx.png

I'll have a look at it.  I'm sure Ltk is great for X11 apps where
there is no notion of a CUA.  On OS X though, does Tk handle the Aqua
guidlines appropriately?  And is X11 required?  That is really an
optional install on OS X and has only been bundled in since 10.3.

I didn't start using OS X until 10.2 and I had to manually fetch a
beta version of X11.app.  I was happy to see it included with Panther
(even as an optional install).  However, all X11 apps look like a
single instance of X11 to an OS X user.

These things won't stop me from playing with Ltk.  But if I were to
write an OS X application that I intended for distribution to the
general population, I would want to use Aqua either via Carbon or
Cocoa.
From: Peter Herth
Subject: Re: I wish I'd never met Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <cb625c$1o1$1@newsreader2.netcologne.de>
David Steuber wrote:


> I'll have a look at it.  I'm sure Ltk is great for X11 apps where
> there is no notion of a CUA.  On OS X though, does Tk handle the Aqua
> guidlines appropriately?  And is X11 required?  That is really an
> optional install on OS X and has only been bundled in since 10.3.

There is aqua-tk for OS X (which I used to make a screenshot). It
binds, as the name tells, directly to aqua, no X11 needed. So it
should be quite compliant (for example the menu bars automatically
are put in the top of the screen bar and not into the windows). It
uses native Aqua widgets, so I expect not too many problems with
the Aqua guidelines. (If you as the application author obey them :)

But I am not very experienced with Aqua, so if you notice something
that can be fixed from the Ltk side, please tell me.

Peter

-- 
pet project: http://dawn.netcologne.de
homepage:    http://www.peter-herth.de
lisp stuff:  http://www.peter-herth.de/lisp.html
get Ltk here: http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/