From: Peter Seibel
Subject: Did the FORMAT in ZetaLisp come from elsewhere?
Date:
Message-ID: <m3653rghoe.fsf@javamonkey.com>
In my attempts to grok the ~A, ~S, and ~< FORMAT directives I turned
to my 'chinenual and see that ZetaLisp had the same directives with
the same prefix parameters. Was FORMAT a Symbolic's invention or did
they get it from some previous Lisp? If it's a Symbolic invention, do
any of the resident Lisp Machine hackers know who invented it and how
I might get in touch with them?
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@javamonkey.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
From: Peter Seibel
Subject: Re: Did the FORMAT in ZetaLisp come from elsewhere?
Date:
Message-ID: <m31xefgh5o.fsf@javamonkey.com>
Peter Seibel <·····@javamonkey.com> writes:
> In my attempts to grok the ~A, ~S, and ~< FORMAT directives I turned
> to my 'chinenual and see that ZetaLisp had the same directives with
> the same prefix parameters. Was FORMAT a Symbolic's invention or did
> they get it from some previous Lisp? If it's a Symbolic invention, do
> any of the resident Lisp Machine hackers know who invented it and how
> I might get in touch with them?
Okay, to answer my own question--it seems that Maclisp had FORMAT. (Is
there any way to get one's hands on a Maclisp manual for love or money
other than being at a university that happens to have a copy in the
library?) So now my question is, did the Maclisp folks invent the
FORMAT directives in question?
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@javamonkey.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Peter Seibel <·····@javamonkey.com> writes:
> Peter Seibel <·····@javamonkey.com> writes:
>
> > In my attempts to grok the ~A, ~S, and ~< FORMAT directives I turned
> > to my 'chinenual and see that ZetaLisp had the same directives with
> > the same prefix parameters. Was FORMAT a Symbolic's invention or did
> > they get it from some previous Lisp? If it's a Symbolic invention, do
> > any of the resident Lisp Machine hackers know who invented it and how
> > I might get in touch with them?
>
> Okay, to answer my own question--it seems that Maclisp had FORMAT. (Is
> there any way to get one's hands on a Maclisp manual for love or money
> other than being at a university that happens to have a copy in the
> library?) So now my question is, did the Maclisp folks invent the
> FORMAT directives in question?
I don't know, but I'd bet the answer to this question would be
revealed in the references given in this thread. So you read cll?
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
The world will now reboot; don't bother saving your artefacts.
From: Peter Seibel
Subject: Re: Did the FORMAT in ZetaLisp come from elsewhere?
Date:
Message-ID: <m3fz2ug7vi.fsf@javamonkey.com>
Pascal Bourguignon <····@mouse-potato.com> writes:
> Peter Seibel <·····@javamonkey.com> writes:
>
>> Peter Seibel <·····@javamonkey.com> writes:
>>
>> > In my attempts to grok the ~A, ~S, and ~< FORMAT directives I turned
>> > to my 'chinenual and see that ZetaLisp had the same directives with
>> > the same prefix parameters. Was FORMAT a Symbolic's invention or did
>> > they get it from some previous Lisp? If it's a Symbolic invention, do
>> > any of the resident Lisp Machine hackers know who invented it and how
>> > I might get in touch with them?
>>
>> Okay, to answer my own question--it seems that Maclisp had FORMAT. (Is
>> there any way to get one's hands on a Maclisp manual for love or money
>> other than being at a university that happens to have a copy in the
>> library?) So now my question is, did the Maclisp folks invent the
>> FORMAT directives in question?
>
> I don't know, but I'd bet the answer to this question would be
> revealed in the references given in this thread. So you read cll?
You mean the references to Waters's pretty printer papers? I looked at
those. But those are about the XP pretty-printer aspects of FORMAT
which do not, as far as I can tell, include directives such as ~A, ~S,
~< (nor ~F, ~E, ~G which were based on FORTRAN's "edit descriptors" in
a break from Maclisp). Or did I miss some other references?
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@javamonkey.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Peter Seibel <·····@javamonkey.com> writes:
> [.....]
> You mean the references to Waters's pretty printer papers? I looked at
> those. But those are about the XP pretty-printer aspects of FORMAT
> which do not, as far as I can tell, include directives such as ~A, ~S,
> ~< (nor ~F, ~E, ~G which were based on FORTRAN's "edit descriptors" in
> a break from Maclisp). Or did I miss some other references?
This is little-offtopic but maybe (I'm guessing) author of this article
will be able to help you.
http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/dvm/format-stinks.html
Regards, Szymon.
Peter Seibel wrote:
> Okay, to answer my own question--it seems that Maclisp had FORMAT. (Is
> there any way to get one's hands on a Maclisp manual for love or money
Try here:
http://zane.brouhaha.com/~healyzh/doc/lisp.doc.txt
Note that this version is from March 1979, while there is also Revised
version from 1983 and probably intermittent others. FORMAT does not show
up in the 1979 version. I suspect it does show up in the 1983 version,
although I don't have a copy to check. This doesn't bear directly on
exactly when FORMAT was invented. I believe it originated as someone's
private module to occupy the language niche of FORTRAN FORMAT and C/Unix
printf(). Only later did it get adopted as a semi-standard available
module, then a standardly-available language component. Maclisp was a
memory-limited system, so a lot of language components were optional.
The original Franz Lisp project at UCB was motivated as a port of Maclisp
to the huge virtual address space of the DEC Vax.
> other than being at a university that happens to have a copy in the
> library?) So now my question is, did the Maclisp folks invent the
> FORMAT directives in question?
I don't know. I don't even remember if I ever knew. However, in the
early years of Lisp Machines and Maclisp there was significant overlap
both in the people developing for the different environments. Despite
the commercial fissures that developed in the community, there remained
for some time a healthy desire for a measure of software compatibility
across the several lines of platform development.