Yeah, I know there is WHOLE section in the FAQ on implementations. But I
would like a recommendation for a free (or at least cheap) common lisp
that runs on windows, and is fairly complete.
Is the answer "Clisp"? I couldn't get that one to run yet. I think I
could with a tiny bit more effort though.
Is the answer "Allegro"? Not exactly cheap! The free version is too
crippled (no ffi!)
What about "Corman"? Don't know very much about that one...
Am I missing something? What are people using? (I know.. linux! That is
probably the answer I am going to end up using !)
Cheers!
Ron
Ron Legere <······@ll.mit.edu> writes:
> Yeah, I know there is WHOLE section in the FAQ on implementations. But
> I would like a recommendation for a free (or at least cheap) common
> lisp
>
> that runs on windows, and is fairly complete.
>
> Is the answer "Clisp"? I couldn't get that one to run yet. I think I
> could with a tiny bit more effort though.
>
>
> Is the answer "Allegro"? Not exactly cheap! The free version is too
> crippled (no ffi!)
What? No ffi? That's horrible! I'm going to complain to the
management. :-)
Where in the world did you get the idea that Allegro CL's version
is crippled in any way other than heap size?
> What about "Corman"? Don't know very much about that one...
>
> Am I missing something? What are people using? (I know.. linux! That
> is probably the answer I am going to end up using !)
>
>
> Cheers!
>
> Ron
>
>
--
Duane Rettig ·····@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
My apologies... I got the idea from an old faq that listed 'no foriegn
functions' as a limitation of the trial version. Apparently that went
away, or was never correct.
Duane Rettig wrote:
> What? No ffi? That's horrible! I'm going to complain to the
> management. :-)
>
> Where in the world did you get the idea that Allegro CL's version
> is crippled in any way other than heap size?
>
>
Ron Legere <······@ll.mit.edu> writes:
> My apologies... I got the idea from an old faq that listed 'no foriegn
> functions' as a limitation of the trial version. Apparently that went
> away, or was never correct.
I don't remember a time when our foriegn function interface has ever
been disabled, so I'm guessing that the Faq was either wrong, or not
actually related to Allegro CL.
> Duane Rettig wrote:
>
> > What? No ffi? That's horrible! I'm going to complain to the
> > management. :-)
> > Where in the world did you get the idea that Allegro CL's version
> > is crippled in any way other than heap size?
> >
--
Duane Rettig ·····@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Just to clarify the source of my mis-information was the following link,
which was the first place to pop up on google when I searched 'faq lisp'.
I should be more carefull about reading up to date faq's, but even no I
cannot find one. Was the last update really in 97?
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/faqs/lang/lisp/part4/faq-doc-1.html
Cheers,
Ron
Duane Rettig wrote:
> Ron Legere <······@ll.mit.edu> writes:
>
>
>>My apologies... I got the idea from an old faq that listed 'no foriegn
>>functions' as a limitation of the trial version. Apparently that went
>>away, or was never correct.
>
>
> I don't remember a time when our foriegn function interface has ever
> been disabled, so I'm guessing that the Faq was either wrong, or not
> actually related to Allegro CL.
>
>
>
>>Duane Rettig wrote:
>>
>>
>>>What? No ffi? That's horrible! I'm going to complain to the
>>>management. :-)
>>>Where in the world did you get the idea that Allegro CL's version
>>>is crippled in any way other than heap size?
>>>
>
>
>
Ron Legere <······@ll.mit.edu> writes:
> Just to clarify the source of my mis-information was the following
> link, which was the first place to pop up on google when I searched
> 'faq lisp'.
>
>
> I should be more carefull about reading up to date faq's, but even no I
> cannot find one. Was the last update really in 97?
>
> http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/faqs/lang/lisp/part4/faq-doc-1.html
Ouch. That is _really_ old. OK, I recant; there really might have
been a free version of Allegro CL that had no ffi support. It was
the Procyon-based lisp that we bought to get ourselves onto the x86
platform while I worked hard to get our unix-based product ported.
And although 3.0 was a relatively recent one of this ancestry (I
think 3.0.1 was the last before the big merge into our 5.0 unix
source tree) it is still a real blast from the past, which I never
worked on myself.
You might try starting with either
http://www.alu.org/table/contents.htm
or
http://www.franz.com/support/documentation/6.2/doc/faq/index.htm
--
Duane Rettig ·····@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Duane Rettig wrote:
> Ron Legere <······@ll.mit.edu> writes:
>
>
>>Yeah, I know there is WHOLE section in the FAQ on implementations. But
>>I would like a recommendation for a free (or at least cheap) common
>>lisp
>>
>>that runs on windows, and is fairly complete.
>>
>>Is the answer "Clisp"? I couldn't get that one to run yet. I think I
>>could with a tiny bit more effort though.
>>
>>
>>Is the answer "Allegro"? Not exactly cheap! The free version is too
>>crippled (no ffi!)
>
>
> What? No ffi? That's horrible! I'm going to complain to the
> management. :-)
>
> Where in the world did you get the idea that Allegro CL's version
> is crippled in any way other than heap size?
As an aside, I found (after the beta support period ended) that the
Allegro beta of 7.0 fails on my AMD64 machine to expand its heap in a
somewhat memory-intensive application that I was testing. As the beta
support period is over, I understand completely if you just prefer to
ignore this report, but if you're interested, send me mail at mikel @
evins . net. I see no reason for the heap expansion to fail (swap is
nowhere near full). I'd have reported it earlier, but didn't take
delivery of my AMD64 machine until the support period was over.
mikel <·····@evins.net> writes:
> As an aside, I found (after the beta support period ended) that the
> Allegro beta of 7.0 fails on my AMD64 machine to expand its heap in a
> somewhat memory-intensive application that I was testing. As the beta
> support period is over, I understand completely if you just prefer to
> ignore this report, but if you're interested, send me mail at mikel @
> evins . net. I see no reason for the heap expansion to fail (swap is
> nowhere near full). I'd have reported it earlier, but didn't take
> delivery of my AMD64 machine until the support period was over.
We're definitely interested, but this (or private email) is not the
correct forum for such reports. You should send a description of
the problem to ·······@franz.com and we'll create an spr for it.
--
Duane Rettig ·····@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Duane Rettig wrote:
> mikel <·····@evins.net> writes:
>
>
>>As an aside, I found (after the beta support period ended) that the
>>Allegro beta of 7.0 fails on my AMD64 machine to expand its heap in a
>>somewhat memory-intensive application that I was testing. As the beta
>>support period is over, I understand completely if you just prefer to
>>ignore this report, but if you're interested, send me mail at mikel @
>>evins . net. I see no reason for the heap expansion to fail (swap is
>>nowhere near full). I'd have reported it earlier, but didn't take
>>delivery of my AMD64 machine until the support period was over.
>
>
> We're definitely interested, but this (or private email) is not the
> correct forum for such reports. You should send a description of
> the problem to ·······@franz.com and we'll create an spr for it.
>
You're quite right. I'm drafting the mail now. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Duane Rettig wrote:
> mikel <·····@evins.net> writes:
>
>
>>As an aside, I found (after the beta support period ended) that the
>>Allegro beta of 7.0 fails on my AMD64 machine to expand its heap in a
>>somewhat memory-intensive application that I was testing. As the beta
>>support period is over, I understand completely if you just prefer to
>>ignore this report, but if you're interested, send me mail at mikel @
>>evins . net. I see no reason for the heap expansion to fail (swap is
>>nowhere near full). I'd have reported it earlier, but didn't take
>>delivery of my AMD64 machine until the support period was over.
>
>
> We're definitely interested, but this (or private email) is not the
> correct forum for such reports. You should send a description of
> the problem to ·······@franz.com and we'll create an spr for it.
>
Ah, does that supplant ····@franz.com? I reported to that address a
problem with 6.2 (specializing shared-initialize whacks checking for
invalid initargs) but never heard back, except for the autoresponse
ACKing the report.
kt
--
Cells? Cello? Celtik?: http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> Ah, does that supplant ····@franz.com? I reported to that address a
> problem with 6.2 (specializing shared-initialize whacks checking for
> invalid initargs) but never heard back, except for the autoresponse
> ACKing the report.
`bugs' goes to `support'. If you didn't hear anything from us, my
apologies. Please resend.
(sent to both c.l.l. and ····@franz.com)
This is the win32 ACL, version 6.2, with latest patches applied:
International Allegro CL Enterprise Edition
6.2 [Windows] (Sep 3, 2004 12:04)
Copyright (C) 1985-2002, Franz Inc., Berkeley, CA, USA. All Rights
Reserved.
This development copy of Allegro CL is licensed to:
[TC7050] Tekwood Information Technology Consultants
CG/IDE Version: 1.389.2.105.2.14
;; Optimization settings: safety 1, space 1, speed 1, debug 2.
;; For a complete description of all compiler switches given the current
optimization settings
;; evaluate (EXPLAIN-COMPILER-SETTINGS).
[changing package from "COMMON-LISP-USER" to "CELTIC"]
CELTIC(1): (defclass aaa ()((known :initarg :known :initform nil
:accessor known)))
#<STANDARD-CLASS AAA>
CELTIC(2): (make-instance 'aaa :unknown 1)
Error: :UNKNOWN are invalid initargs to make-instance of class
#<STANDARD-CLASS AAA>. The valid initargs are :KNOWN.
[condition type: PROGRAM-ERROR]
>>>> So far so good. <<<<
CELTIC(4): (defmethod shared-initialize :after ((self aaa) slots &rest
iargs)
(declare (ignore slots iargs))
(setf (known self) 0))
#<STANDARD-METHOD SHARED-INITIALIZE :AFTER (AAA T)>
CELTIC(5): (make-instance 'aaa :unknown 1)
#<AAA @ #x21237552>
>>>> yowza <<<<<<
Anybody out there with ACL7 able to see if this bug (feature?) made it
thru from 6.2?
kt
Kevin Layer wrote:
> Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
>
>
>>Ah, does that supplant ····@franz.com? I reported to that address a
>>problem with 6.2 (specializing shared-initialize whacks checking for
>>invalid initargs) but never heard back, except for the autoresponse
>>ACKing the report.
>
>
> `bugs' goes to `support'. If you didn't hear anything from us, my
> apologies. Please resend.
--
Cells? Cello? Celtik?: http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
On Wed, Sep 01, 2004 at 09:37:26AM -0400, Ron Legere wrote:
> Is the answer "Clisp"? I couldn't get that one to run yet. I think I
> could with a tiny bit more effort though.
Maybe this will help: http://common-lisp.net/project/lispbox/
> Is the answer "Allegro"? Not exactly cheap! The free version is too
> crippled (no ffi!)
Really? I thought it was just a heap limit, and registration. Maybe
for 6.2 that is the case.
> What about "Corman"? Don't know very much about that one...
AFAIK it's a smaller project still working on ANSI compatibility, but
has great Windows API support.
--
;;;; Matthew Danish -- user: mrd domain: cmu.edu
;;;; OpenPGP public key: C24B6010 on keyring.debian.org
Ron Legere wrote:
> Yeah, I know there is WHOLE section in the FAQ on implementations. But I
> would like a recommendation for a free (or at least cheap) common lisp
> that runs on windows, and is fairly complete.
>
> Is the answer "Clisp"? I couldn't get that one to run yet. I think I
> could with a tiny bit more effort though.
>
> Is the answer "Allegro"? Not exactly cheap! The free version is too
> crippled (no ffi!)
>
> What about "Corman"? Don't know very much about that one...
>
> Am I missing something? What are people using? (I know.. linux! That is
> probably the answer I am going to end up using !)
Lots of people use Clisp very successfully. I use it sometimes.
When I want to write Windows applications, I use Corman Lisp, which has
several advantages. You can use it for free, if you don't mind the fact
that the free IDE license expires after 30 days. This does not matter to
me because (1) I don't like the IDE anyway, and prefer to struggle
through the process of getting Emacs working with Corman Lisp, and (2) I
like the product well enough in other ways that I didn't mind paying the
$200 for it, which sort of makes the point moot anyhow.
Corman Lisp is rather weak on ANSI compliance, which makes it a pain to
get many free libraries to work with it. For example, I never got ASDF
to work with it (though I understand Edi Weitz has a page on how to make
it sort of work). Also, I've only used Ilisp to interface Emacs with
Corman; I prefer SLIME, but have never tried making it work with Corman
Lisp -- I don;t know whether that's feasiable at all.
On the other hand, it provides good (though rather low-level) support
for writing Windows apps, and you can use it to build DLLs.
Ron Legere <······@ll.mit.edu> writes:
> Am I missing something? What are people using? (I know.. linux! That
> is probably the answer I am going to end up using !)
LispWorks. Not cheap, but still a bargain.
--
(espen)
Greetings! Might want to look at GCL.
Take care,
Ron Legere <······@ll.mit.edu> writes:
> Yeah, I know there is WHOLE section in the FAQ on implementations. But
> I would like a recommendation for a free (or at least cheap) common
> lisp
> that runs on windows, and is fairly complete.
>
> Is the answer "Clisp"? I couldn't get that one to run yet. I think I
> could with a tiny bit more effort though.
>
> Is the answer "Allegro"? Not exactly cheap! The free version is too
> crippled (no ffi!)
>
> What about "Corman"? Don't know very much about that one...
>
> Am I missing something? What are people using? (I know.. linux! That
> is probably the answer I am going to end up using !)
>
> Cheers!
>
> Ron
>
>
--
Camm Maguire ····@enhanced.com
==========================================================================
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -- Baha'u'llah
the bio 01 Sep 2004 09:37:26 -0400, Ron Legere <······@ll.mit.edu>
wrote:
>
>Yeah, I know there is WHOLE section in the FAQ on implementations. But I
>would like a recommendation for a free (or at least cheap) common lisp
>that runs on windows, and is fairly complete.
>
>Is the answer "Clisp"? I couldn't get that one to run yet. I think I
>could with a tiny bit more effort though.
>
>Is the answer "Allegro"? Not exactly cheap! The free version is too
>crippled (no ffi!)
>
>What about "Corman"? Don't know very much about that one...
>
>Am I missing something? What are people using? (I know.. linux! That is
>probably the answer I am going to end up using !)
All of the Lisp implementations have problems.
GCL does not come with a REPL.
Allegro and Lispworks are crippleware. Fine if you are a student
but if your a pro who has limited time in their off hours to learn
a language, you would rather learn using the language to write the
code you use for routine house cleaning.
Many of the libs available work with cmucl ( not available on Windows
) but can be hard to make work with with CLisp or Corman.
The answer is that you are going to have to pay.
The reply-to email address is ··········@yahoo.com.
This is an address I ignore.
To reply via email, remove 2002 and change yahoo to
interaccess,
**
Thaddeus L. Olczyk, PhD
There is a difference between
*thinking* you know something,
and *knowing* you know something.
TLOlczyk <··········@yahoo.com> writes:
> All of the Lisp implementations have problems.
> GCL does not come with a REPL.
No? Then what do you call that:
[······@thalassa pascal]$ gcl
GCL (GNU Common Lisp) 2.6.3 CLtL1 Jul 16 2004 20:19:02
Source License: LGPL(gcl,gmp), GPL(unexec,bfd)
Binary License: GPL due to GPL'ed components: (READLINE BFD UNEXEC)
Modifications of this banner must retain notice of a compatible license
Dedicated to the memory of W. Schelter
Use (help) to get some basic information on how to use GCL.
>(+ 1 2)
3
>
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we.
TLOlczyk <··········@yahoo.com> wrote:
> All of the Lisp implementations have problems.
> GCL does not come with a REPL.
It doesn't?
········@rocker:~$ gcl
GCL (GNU Common Lisp) 2.6.3 CLtL1 Jul 15 2004 18:58:27
Source License: LGPL(gcl,gmp), GPL(unexec,bfd)
Binary License: GPL due to GPL'ed components: (READLINE BFD UNEXEC)
Modifications of this banner must retain notice of a compatible license
Dedicated to the memory of W. Schelter
Use (help) to get some basic information on how to use GCL.
>(defun foo (x) (+ x 1))
FOO
>(compile 'foo)
Compiling gazonk0.lsp.
End of Pass 1.
End of Pass 2.
OPTIMIZE levels: Safety=0 (No runtime error checking), Space=0, Speed=3
Finished compiling gazonk0.lsp.
Loading gazonk0.o
start address -T 0x841ef60 Finished loading gazonk0.o
#<compiled-function FOO>
>(foo 5)
6
--
Karl A. Krueger <········@example.edu>
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Email address is spamtrapped. s/example/whoi/
"Outlook not so good." -- Magic 8-Ball Software Reviews
On Wed, 01 Sep 2004 09:37:26 -0400, Ron Legere wrote:
If you want to do serious work with CL under Windows, you'll have to buy
Allegro or LispWorks (or even Corman Lisp). Then the next point is: Are
the libraries you need available? (They most certainly are for C++ or VB
and have to be paid for again).
But this is the general trend: software for Windows is not free.
If you want to learn Lisp or do some teaching, CLisp should be excellent.
Just read the documentation carefully, it is very easily installled.
Now switching to Linux usually helps (as virtually everything is free) but
you still may come across some problems if you want to use Lisp.
jb
jblazi <······@hotmail.com> wrote:
: Now switching to Linux usually helps (as virtually everything is free) but
: you still may come across some problems if you want to use Lisp.
As someone just looking at Lisp, from a perl background, this seems
the problem with lisp. Where are the free libraries?
If I want to talk to Oracle, LispWorks makes me buy an "Enterprise"
editor for ���. Even if I buy an IDE for perl/python the DBI libraries
are all out there.
Arthur
--
Arthur Clune http://www.clune.org
"Technolibertarians make a philosophy out of a personality defect"
- Paulina Borsook
"Arthur Clune" <·····@york.ac.uk> writes:
> As someone just looking at Lisp, from a perl background, this seems
> the problem with lisp. Where are the free libraries?
Over here --> http://www.cliki.net/
--
;;;; Matthew Danish -- user: mrd domain: cmu.edu
;;;; OpenPGP public key: C24B6010 on keyring.debian.org
>>>>> On 3 Sep 2004 17:44:49 GMT, Arthur Clune ("Arthur") writes:
Arthur> jblazi <······@hotmail.com> wrote:
Arthur> : Now switching to Linux usually helps (as virtually everything is free) but
Arthur> : you still may come across some problems if you want to use Lisp.
Arthur> As someone just looking at Lisp, from a perl background, this seems
Arthur> the problem with lisp. Where are the free libraries?
Maybe you're not looking very hard.
Here's a good startig point: www.cliki.net
Some other things you should look at are:
http://www.alu.org/alu/
http://alu.cliki.net/
http://www.alu.org/alu/res-lisp-tools
>>>>> On 3 Sep 2004 17:44:49 GMT, Arthur Clune ("Arthur") writes:
Arthur> If I want to talk to Oracle, LispWorks makes me buy an
Arthur> "Enterprise" editor for ���.
Many people like CL-SQL.
Arthur> "Even if I buy an IDE for perl/python the DBI
Arthur> libraries are all out there.
Maybe you should stick with Perl or Python,
Christopher C. Stacy <······@news.dtpq.com> wrote:
: Maybe you're not looking very hard.
: Here's a good startig point: www.cliki.net
: Some other things you should look at are:
: http://www.alu.org/alu/
: http://alu.cliki.net/
: http://www.alu.org/alu/res-lisp-tools
Thanks for those links. These don't seem to be of the same order as CPAN
yet though.
I think it's a culture thing as much as anything - reading some of the previous
articles on this thread a "you have to pay for real tools" attitude is still
there to some degree at least. Maybe I'm getting the wrong feel. All I'm doing
is coming in and listening.
: Maybe you should stick with Perl or Python,
Ah. Helpful and courteous replies always win new converts to a language.
I don't want to start a language war. I want to learn lisp. To do that
I need good libraries that will let me write the sort of programs I
write normally (db-interfaces, sysadmin etc) in lisp to learn the
language.
Between the links above and the ones that others have posted there's
clearly enough to get me started.
Arthur
--
Arthur Clune http://www.clune.org
"Technolibertarians make a philosophy out of a personality defect"
- Paulina Borsook
On 2004-09-03 15:38, in article ············@pump1.york.ac.uk, "Arthur
Clune" <·····@york.ac.uk> wrote:
> I think it's a culture thing as much as anything - reading some of the
> previous articles on this thread a "you have to pay for real tools" attitude
> is still there to some degree at least. Maybe I'm getting the wrong feel. All
> I'm doing is coming in and listening.
Arthur,
As someone who was a serious perl user before there was a CPAN, let me say
that I find your attitude somewhat, well, confusing.
I learned to do my job (systems admin, programming, network engineering)
on the job, as I imagine most folks do. I learned perl because it was
helpful for my job. I wrote scripts - and if a library routine didn't exist
to perform some function, I wrote it myself. Every so often, I'd spend some
of my hard earned cash to augment my "toolkit" - begrudgingly so.
It wasn't until I was relatively experienced (10 years of working
full-time) that I realized that if I was going to take control of my own
career path, I needed to start investing in myself. At that point, I began
to purchase my own tools in a more serious manner.
I spent thousands of dollars on resources, which enabled me to obtain my
CCIE certification status. The payback (both in terms of money and in terms
of reduced effort on my part) have been enormous.
Given that CPAN exists, it's pretty pointless to start from scratch - it's
better to start off with what someone else has already done and modify it if
it doesn't work for me. But that's still an investment of my time in
figuring out how to use the library correctly. This is the first commitment
you must make to yourself.
Given that CL doesn't (yet) have a repository of libraries readily
available to match CPAN, you need to answer these questions:
1. What will it cost me (in time and money) to learn CL given the current
state of it?
2. Will the payback (in terms of reduced effort and money) be worth it?
I think that if you can answer both of these questions in the affirmative,
you will neither begrudge the commercial vendors their recompense for
putting in the hard work that *you* won't have to (saving you time).
Further, being the altruistic sort of person you appear to be, you'll, no
doubt, decide that you need to "give back" to the community that gave so
much to you and contribute free libraries of your own design/implementation.
In so doing, you'll be acting out of your most noble instinct - that to help
the other guy, so that he doesn't have to go through what you did.
And that, my friend, is why I wrote this post. To give you the benefit of
my personal experience. To tell you that you can invest in yourself - it's
not wrong to do so, nor is it foolish. The more you invest (in terms of $$$
and time), the more you get out of it. And, once you've reached the high
pinnacle of success that you, no doubt, will, be sure and give back to the
community that helped you along. No man is an island, although I look like
one when I'm in the ocean.
--jon
On 2004-09-03 16:32, in article ······················@comcast.net, "Jon
Boone" <········@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> The payback ... have been enormous.
>
> ...
>
> you will neither begrudge ... (missing 2nd case).
next up on the personal career investment list - English composition
lessons.
--jon
Jon Boone wrote:
> I think that if you can answer both of these questions in the affirmative,
> you will neither begrudge the commercial vendors their recompense for
> putting in the hard work that *you* won't have to (saving you time).
>
> Further, being the altruistic sort of person you appear to be, you'll, no
> doubt, decide that you need to "give back" to the community that gave so
> much to you and contribute free libraries of your own design/implementation.
> In so doing, you'll be acting out of your most noble instinct - that to help
> the other guy, so that he doesn't have to go through what you did.
This juxtaposition doesn't work for a lot of people. Someone who gets
all the stuff they need for free from a community often feels an
obligation to give back to the community. Someone who has to buy the
stuff they need from a community usually considers selling his work
back to the community instead.
Fair's fair, either way: but the free stuff out there has a *much*
bigger "community gratitude factor", and thus influence on my
willingness to produce stuff for free, than does anything purchased.
Bear
On 2004-09-04 12:06, in article ·····················@typhoon.sonic.net,
"Ray Dillinger" <····@sonic.net> wrote:
I elided the previous paragraph because I'm interested in talking about
you personally, not an abstract class of individuals whose properties are
unknown.
> Fair's fair, either way: but the free stuff out there has a *much*
> bigger "community gratitude factor", and thus influence on my
> willingness to produce stuff for free, than does anything purchased.
Perhaps I over-estimated your altruistic nature.
Tit-for-tat is *not* altruistic. Both "giving back to those who gave to
you for free" and "selling to those who sold to you" are just enlightened
self-interest.
Giving to someone who has given you nothing and isn't likely to give you
something in return is altruistic. Given this clarification, do you agree
that you'd be likely to give back to those who gave nothing to you (in the
sense that it wasn't free of $$$) - or did I overestimate your altruism?
One thing that major open-source advocates overlook (intentionally?) is
that an individuals character is as important (or more so) than their
technical abilities. We are a community of people - not machines.
I'm appalled at how long-time open-source advocates have given in to
despair in the face of humanity's capacity for selfishness and have sunk to
the level of appealing to "enlightened" self-interest.
It's increasingly clear that as the open-source movement reaches the
pinnacle of it's popularity and power, it has already lost - because it sold
it's soul to get there in the first place.
Feel free to ignore me - I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I
was merely hoping you were a kindred spirit. C'est la vie.
--jon
Jon Boone <········@comcast.net> wrote:
> One thing that major open-source advocates overlook (intentionally?) is
> that an individuals character is as important (or more so) than their
> technical abilities. We are a community of people - not machines.
I don't think very many open-source advocates overlook that. Issues
such as how easy people are to work with, or whether they take the steps
to respect others' contributions, are pretty commonly discussed in the
open-source world. After seeing (to pick one example) the fragmentation
of the open-source BSD community (into FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD)
largely over personal issues, I don't think anyone can -ignore- that
participants are people and have human personalities.
--
Karl A. Krueger <········@example.edu>
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Email address is spamtrapped. s/example/whoi/
"Outlook not so good." -- Magic 8-Ball Software Reviews
On 2004-09-05 15:26, in article ············@baldur.whoi.edu, "Karl A.
Krueger" <········@example.edu> wrote:
> Jon Boone <········@comcast.net> wrote:
>> One thing that major open-source advocates overlook (intentionally?) is
>> that an individuals character is as important (or more so) than their
>> technical abilities. We are a community of people - not machines.
>
> I don't think very many open-source advocates overlook that. Issues
> such as how easy people are to work with, or whether they take the steps
> to respect others' contributions, are pretty commonly discussed in the
> open-source world. After seeing (to pick one example) the fragmentation
> of the open-source BSD community (into FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD)
> largely over personal issues, I don't think anyone can -ignore- that
> participants are people and have human personalities.
Karl,
I must confess that have not been even a small part of the open-source BSD
community, having spent most of my time prior to the last 18 months in
Linux-land. I've a passing familiarity with some of the BSD community
issues, but don't know nearly enough to comment on them. I'll take your
word for it that these issues are widely discussed in that community.
On the other hand, my observations of the linux-kernel-mailing-list for
the past 6 years or so have lead me to believe that most of the folks in
Linux-land believe in a "meritocracy" where merit is defined to be something
that they happen to posses -- technical skills. Thus, when concern comes up
about reaching out to those who lack technical skills, there is little or no
interest in assisting those who lack "merit."
*Shrug*. It's a minor point, I'm sure -- and wasn't intended as an
over-generalization about all open-source individuals. Rather, it was a
comment on a particular set of members of a particular community. I have no
intention of publicly criticizing these folks by name -- I just hope that
the open-source Lisp community doesn't fall into the same trap.
--jon
Quoth Jon Boone <········@comcast.net>:
> On the other hand, my observations of the
> linux-kernel-mailing-list for the past 6 years or so have lead me to
> believe that most of the folks in Linux-land believe in a
> "meritocracy" where merit is defined to be something that they
> happen to posses -- technical skills. Thus, when concern comes up
> about reaching out to those who lack technical skills, there is
> little or no interest in assisting those who lack "merit."
There are times to "reach out" and times "not to reach out."
I'm involved with a database replication project where there are some
who would like such things as pretty graphical tools and Windows
support.
I do not oppose such things, but it's not in my interests to work on
those things as:
a) I haven't any particular aptitude at those things;
b) My employer, who pays me to do some of this work, wouldn't find
those features valuable.
It's far far better, all in all, for me to not so much as touch these
things, particularly as there's enough other stuff in the queue that I
_can_ keep busy with things that fit better with aptitude and
"professional interest."
For people on the Linux kernel mailing list, I think those sorts of
considerations can fit REALLY well. Nobody should be visiting there
if they're afraid of compiling kernels by hand.
If you're finding that fruitful results come out of doing things that
are simultaneously fitting your aptitudes and the features you find
provide utility, that seems "merit enough" to continue down that road.
--
let name="cbbrowne" and tld="acm.org" in String.concat ·@" [name;tld];;
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/wp.html
"Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?"
-- <·······@inf.fu-berlin.de>, Felix von Leitner
Jon Boone wrote:
> On 2004-09-04 12:06, in article ·····················@typhoon.sonic.net,
> "Ray Dillinger" <····@sonic.net> wrote:
>
>>Fair's fair, either way: but the free stuff out there has a *much*
>>bigger "community gratitude factor", and thus influence on my
>>willingness to produce stuff for free, than does anything purchased.
>
> Perhaps I over-estimated your altruistic nature.
>
> Tit-for-tat is *not* altruistic. Both "giving back to those who gave to
> you for free" and "selling to those who sold to you" are just enlightened
> self-interest.
>
> Giving to someone who has given you nothing and isn't likely to give you
> something in return is altruistic. Given this clarification, do you agree
> that you'd be likely to give back to those who gave nothing to you (in the
> sense that it wasn't free of $$$) - or did I overestimate your altruism?
Well, I certainly have done so before now, several times. All I
said was that free stuff from a community makes me more *likely*
to produce things for free. It's not the only reason.
I have created free software (tools) for someone who was working
on a project I thought was interesting and cool because he was at
a roadblock I knew how to solve, and I wanted to see how it
turned out. He's not going to give away what he's working on,
but I'm personally curious and wonder if it will actually work,
and I was able to get one roadblock out of his way.
I have created free software for a friend of mine who developed
a new game and wanted a robot player to play against. Mainly for
the fun of it.
I have created free software when I got used to using something at
work and wanted to use it on a personal project -- and found that it
had five-digit (in US dollars) licensing fees per seat. When I can't
afford something I monkey up something on my own that can do whatever
part of the job I think is important, as part of doing another
project - and then because I regard it as tool rather than end
product, and because it's not as multi-functional, interface-laden
and integrated as the product I'm used to, I know it's "inferior"
in marketability and don't even try to work it for the money.
I have created software on my own time when I got fed up with badly
designed, limited, or buggy software at work, or when I wanted to
demo a new or better idea to my boss. Some of it that my former
employers didn't pick up, has been released as free software since.
I have created free software when I produced something I never wanted
to lose track of again - upload it to a free software site, and if it's
any good, it will live forever - you never have to worry about having
a backup of it again, and somebody might even make it better while
you're not looking.
And, yah, I have created free software out of gratitude to a community;
free software came to my rescue when I was a flat-broke college student
and every dollar I spent came from washing dishes at a local greasy
spoon at nights and data entry typing for a phone book company during
the day - both for minimum wage. I could barely manage rent, books,
groceries, and tuition; no restaurants, no bars, and no fast food for
me. If I'd had to pay for software too I wouldn't have made it. So
I figured I owed the community for that, and I gave back.
It's always a mix of motives. People produce stuff for reasons that
are often complicated and personal. Some of the stuff they produce
they intend to give away for complex and individual reasons; other
stuff just doesn't become commercial software for yet more
complicated and individual reasons. So some of that becomes free
software, or is forgotten. Altruism's part of it; but there are
plenty of other reasons.
Bear
Arthur Clune wrote:
> Christopher C. Stacy <······@news.dtpq.com> wrote:
>
> : Maybe you're not looking very hard.
> : Here's a good startig point: www.cliki.net
>
> : Some other things you should look at are:
> : http://www.alu.org/alu/
> : http://alu.cliki.net/
> : http://www.alu.org/alu/res-lisp-tools
>
> Thanks for those links. These don't seem to be of the same order as CPAN
> yet though.
You are not wrong. But free libraries come with lotsa users and Lisp is
just starting to break out. My prediction is that free libraries will
come from newbies who miss library X from their perl/python/whatever
days. Like you. So get to work, will you?
:)
kenny
--
Cells? Cello? Celtik?: http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
>>>>> On 3 Sep 2004 19:38:18 GMT, Arthur Clune ("Arthur") writes:
Arthur> Ah. Helpful and courteous replies always win new converts to
Arthur> a language. I don't want to start a language war. I want to
Arthur> learn lisp.
I'm not trying to win you over -- you barged in here saying that
we had no free libraries, and that you liked Perl/Python because
they had those libraries. What I did was to do your work for you
and provide you with the correct information . So quit whining.
Arthur Clune wrote:
> I want to learn lisp. To do that I need good libraries that will let
> me write the sort of programs I write normally (db-interfaces,
> sysadmin etc) in lisp to learn the language.
There is a famous quote by Alan Perlis: "A language that doesn't affect
the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.", and I think
he's right. Therefore, I think it is dangerous to just try to imitate
what you have already done before in other languages because this will
probably leave you with the impression that there is nothing special
about Lisp.
A good approach to learning Lisp, in my experience, is to try to think
of something much bigger than you have programmed before, and try to
tackle that - at least in the case of Common Lisp, because many of its
features only make sense for large programs. (Other Lisp dialects have
different strengths.)
This doesn't directly answer your original question, but it may give you
a different perspective.
Pascal
--
Tyler: "How's that working out for you?"
Jack: "Great."
Tyler: "Keep it up, then."
"Arthur Clune" <·····@york.ac.uk> writes:
> As someone just looking at Lisp, from a perl background, this seems
> the problem with lisp. Where are the free libraries?
what are you looking for?
> If I want to talk to Oracle, LispWorks makes me buy an "Enterprise"
> editor for ���. Even if I buy an IDE for perl/python the DBI libraries
> are all out there.
http://clsql.b9.com/manual/oracle.html
--
-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
"Arthur Clune" <·····@york.ac.uk> writes:
> If I want to talk to Oracle, LispWorks makes me buy an "Enterprise"
> editor for ���. Even if I buy an IDE for perl/python the DBI libraries
> are all out there.
Last time I looked, Oracle wanted several tens of thousands
of dollars per CPU for enterprise licenses. The costs of
a LW license would be a drop in the ocean by comparison.
How can you (i.e. the company you develop for) afford Oracle,
but not Lispworks?
Alain Picard <············@memetrics.com> wrote:
: Last time I looked, Oracle wanted several tens of thousands
: of dollars per CPU for enterprise licenses. The costs of
: a LW license would be a drop in the ocean by comparison.
See my email address. ".ac.uk". We pay much, much less than
the commercial rate. I couldn't get the department to buy
Lispworks (as an example) without being able to prove that
it would be worth it. There's also no easy way for me to
be able to say "spend X on Y and I'll earn you Z", which
would make the case somewhat easier.
To those who think I "barged in here" without doing
my homework, apologies.
For those (many) others who have proved helpful and
thought provoking responses (especially the one about
writing bigger programs) I thank you.
I shall now go back to lurking and listening.
Arthur
--
Arthur Clune http://www.clune.org
"Technolibertarians make a philosophy out of a personality defect"
- Paulina Borsook
Arthur Clune wrote:
> I couldn't get the department to buy Lispworks (as an example)
> without being able to prove that it would be worth it. There's also
> no easy way for me to be able to say "spend X on Y and I'll earn you
> Z", which would make the case somewhat easier.
Check out http://alu.cliki.net/Evaluate%20Lisp - you may find some good
reasons there that you can reuse in your own proposals. That website
also has other sections that may be worthwhile in this regard.
Pascal
--
Tyler: "How's that working out for you?"
Jack: "Great."
Tyler: "Keep it up, then."
"Arthur Clune" <·····@york.ac.uk> writes:
> As someone just looking at Lisp, from a perl background, this seems
> the problem with lisp. Where are the free libraries?
As a non-mainstream language, Lisp doesn't have so many libraries
available, free or otherwise. But there are more than usually
thought, and the situation is improving. I only have subjective
anecdotal evidence of this, I'm afraid you will have no other
confirmation than trust.
Given this, there are at least two options.
You can decide that the lack of Lisp libraries is a showstopper, and
switch to a different language with more libraries. This is
understandable.
Or you can decide that the lack of libraries may be an acceptable
tradeoff for the power and features of Lisp, and contribute in some
way to improving the situation.
It doesn't take a guru for that, and even a novice can provide useful
contributions such as reporting bugs of existing code, keep a weblog
documenting his progress and suggesting tips found with experience,
etc. Or he may write some code, any code: half a dozen lines snippets
are an acceptable contribution for, say, the small-cl-sources mailing
list.
Many Lisp novices underestimate them. I encourage them to read the
code of existing libraries and applications. It's a rich source of
insight on the language, and an example of its pragmatics e design
traditions. If there is motivation, the pieces will fit together, and
bug fixes, improvements or new applications will naturally suggest
themselves.
But even just *using* the available Lisp software would be a valuable
contribution.
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
jblazi wrote:
> On Wed, 01 Sep 2004 09:37:26 -0400, Ron Legere wrote:
>
> If you want to do serious work with CL under Windows, you'll have to buy
> Allegro or LispWorks (or even Corman Lisp). Then the next point is: Are
> the libraries you need available? (They most certainly are for C++ or VB
> and have to be paid for again).
> But this is the general trend: software for Windows is not free.
>
> If you want to learn Lisp or do some teaching, CLisp should be excellent.
> Just read the documentation carefully, it is very easily installled.
>
> Now switching to Linux usually helps (as virtually everything is free) but
> you still may come across some problems if you want to use Lisp.
Switching to Mac OS X helps a lot, since this is the platform that
currently hosts most Lisp implementations, both commercial and open
source. With Virtual PC, you can also run the Windows implementations on
top.
Pascal
P.S.: Sorry, couldn't resist. ;)
--
Pascal Costanza University of Bonn
···············@web.de Institute of Computer Science III
http://www.pascalcostanza.de R�merstr. 164, D-53117 Bonn (Germany)
Hi jblazi,
> If you want to do serious work with CL under Windows, you'll have to buy
> Allegro or LispWorks (or even Corman Lisp). Then the next point is: Are
> the libraries you need available? (They most certainly are for C++ or VB
> and have to be paid for again).
> But this is the general trend: software for Windows is not free.
You've overlooked Java on Windows and the significance of ABCL. Java
defines a large standard library that is (relatively well) supported by a
number of implementations. ABCL integrates with the Java Virtual Machine
and can access any Java library.
Are the libraries you need available? _In Java?_ The answer to this will
quite likely be "yes", but it may limit your choice of Java Virtual
Machine. If the answer is yes then you can implement it using Lisp on top
of Java, even upon Windows.
> If you want to learn Lisp or do some teaching, CLisp should be excellent.
> Just read the documentation carefully, it is very easily installed.
CLISP should not be underrated. Many professional products would benefit
from using CLISP as a base. You just need to be careful that your business
model is a good fit with its licensing.
> Now switching to Linux usually helps (as virtually everything is free) but
> you still may come across some problems if you want to use Lisp.
If you develop _any_ software you will come across problems.
I wish all desktops were Unix-based in preference to the multitude of
Windows desktops presently in use. Maybe one day Microsoft will do an
Apple and build its next generation Windows upon Unix. Java remains a good
choice for those needing well supported cross platform compatibility. If
you can manage to keep most of your business logic on the server then the
Unix-only Lisps are also compelling solutions.
If you don't care about the desktop market there's little reason to even
give Windows a second thought. It's being eclipsed in the server space
by Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft hasn't had the forethought to
promote .NET as a cross platform server solution with tier 1 support for
Linux.
Regards,
Adam
Hi Ron Legere,
> Am I missing something?
Armed Bear Common Lisp (ABCL). It runs upon the Java Virtual Machine.
It's a work in progress that's very well designed and more accessible to
understand and modify than the native Lisps (compiling ABCL along with J
the editor takes about 10 seconds; so it's easy to try out modifications).
You can run ABCL alone using the command:
java org.armedbear.lisp.Main
(Assuming j.jar is in your Classpath. Also try using the -server JVM).
Compilation consists of:
1. Checking out the CVS version:
<http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=55057>
2. Confirming/modifying the build.properties settings.
3. Typing "ant all" from the base directory of the project.
Peter Graves is improving ABCL at an astonishing rate. He's not
particularly interested in certain categories of bug reports:
<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.editors.j.devel/574>
Of recent note there's better debugging and profiling. There have been
enough performance improvements to offset the performance penalty from the
extra functionality:
In the last few days, the existence of a working profiler has
facilitated enough performance improvements to more than offset the
initial penalty introduced by changing things to make the profiler (and
backtrace) work in the first place, so abcl should be faster now,
overall. (I think.)
<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.editors.j.devel/595>
And last week there was this announcement of format and compilation
improvements:
After all of these changes, ABCL has 156 failures out of 17427 tests
in the ANSI test suite (which amounts to 99.1% compliance, if you want
to look at it that way). This is better as a raw number than it was
without the changes, but it's quite possible that something that worked
before is broken now. If you run into such a thing, and if that thing
is standing in your way, please feel free to complain.
<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.editors.j.devel/607>
Regards,
Adam
Adam Warner wrote:
> Armed Bear Common Lisp (ABCL). It runs upon the Java Virtual Machine.
> It's a work in progress that's very well designed and more accessible to
> understand and modify than the native Lisps (compiling ABCL along with J
> the editor takes about 10 seconds; so it's easy to try out modifications).
>
> You can run ABCL alone using the command:
>
> java org.armedbear.lisp.Main
>
> (Assuming j.jar is in your Classpath. Also try using the -server JVM).
On my machine, the following worked:
java -cp j.jar org.armedbear.lisp.Main
...in the "j" directory.
> Compilation consists of:
>
> 1. Checking out the CVS version:
> <http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=55057>
> 2. Confirming/modifying the build.properties settings.
Since this came up in our recent cl-lc meeting: The settings for Mac OS
X are as follows.
jdk=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/
...and...
java=java
(You should follow this by some meditation about the meaning of that
last line. ;)
> 3. Typing "ant all" from the base directory of the project.
You have recently said that ABCL is quite fast. However, it doesn't look
too responsive on my machine. (I know that "fast" and "responsive" are
not the same thing - that's only the very first impression.)
Do things change dramatically with JDK 1.5.0?
Pascal
--
Pascal Costanza University of Bonn
···············@web.de Institute of Computer Science III
http://www.pascalcostanza.de Römerstr. 164, D-53117 Bonn (Germany)
Pascal Costanza <········@web.de> writes:
> You have recently said that ABCL is quite fast. However, it doesn't
> look too responsive on my machine. (I know that "fast" and
> "responsive" are not the same thing - that's only the very first
> impression.)
Do (compile-system) and then restart abcl. (I think this is not part
of the build process.)
Andras
Hi Pascal Costanza,
> You have recently said that ABCL is quite fast.
I believe I said it was very fast in some floating point micro benchmarks.
For a substantial benchmark (Boyer) I found it performed very poorly, and
said so.
> However, it doesn't look too responsive on my machine. (I know that
> "fast" and "responsive" are not the same thing - that's only the very
> first impression.)
I only have limited experience with it. For what I'm doing (text parsing
and building structures) it's significantly slower than CMUCL/SBCL. I can
load my source into SBCL within 4 seconds. It takes 70 seconds with ABCL.
No Java application of any size loads quickly or is initially responsive
(using GCJ ahead-of-time compilation might resolve this). And class
loading can be a huge overhead. But for repeated or longer running
processes ABCL should feel responsive.
Regards,
Adam
Adam Warner wrote:
> Hi Pascal Costanza,
>
>>You have recently said that ABCL is quite fast.
>
> I believe I said it was very fast in some floating point micro benchmarks.
> For a substantial benchmark (Boyer) I found it performed very poorly, and
> said so.
OK, obviously I have taken this out of context. Sorry.
> No Java application of any size loads quickly or is initially responsive
> (using GCJ ahead-of-time compilation might resolve this). And class
> loading can be a huge overhead. But for repeated or longer running
> processes ABCL should feel responsive.
Thanks a lot for the clarification.
Pascal
--
Pascal Costanza University of Bonn
···············@web.de Institute of Computer Science III
http://www.pascalcostanza.de Römerstr. 164, D-53117 Bonn (Germany)
Thanks very much to everyone that replied. I decided to go
with Allegro for the time being, at least while I learn...
Cheers!
Ron Legere wrote:
> Yeah, I know there is WHOLE section in the FAQ on implementations. But I
> would like a recommendation for a free (or at least cheap) common lisp
> that runs on windows, and is fairly complete.
>
> Is the answer "Clisp"? I couldn't get that one to run yet. I think I
> could with a tiny bit more effort though.
>
> Is the answer "Allegro"? Not exactly cheap! The free version is too
> crippled (no ffi!)
>
> What about "Corman"? Don't know very much about that one...
>
> Am I missing something? What are people using? (I know.. linux! That is
> probably the answer I am going to end up using !)
>
> Cheers!
>
> Ron
>
>