From: Marc Battyani
Subject: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <yJidne4BkL4J0QDeRVnyvQ@giganews.com>
"Damir" <·····@x-si.org> wrote
>
> Can you explain about this Lisp Directory so we can brainstorm?

[I'm starting a new thread for this so that it's not confused with Link-it]

I've been playing with the idea of a Lisp repository since the Amsterdam ELM
one year ago but did not really do anything concrete to that day except
exchanging emails with a few Lispers on that subject. The Link-It experience
makes me think that something can be operational soon after all. So let's
try to seen if we can go further today.

There are many Lisp resources now but there is no central "Directory" where
Lispers can find them.

There are already a lot of places containing some info but not a exhaustive
independent and structured one:
-Cliki is some kind of directory but it's limited to free stuff for Linux
and is not organized
-The ALU wiki is another wiki
-Lispwire is for ACL compatible stuff
-Common-lisp.net hosts projects and mailing lists
-The CL cookbook
-Sourceforge
-The various Blogs of Lispers
-The various web sites of the developers
-Most of the new things are mentioned on Planet Lisp
-etc.

So I think it would be a good idea to setup a directory with these features:
-Organized with overlapping categories/sub-categories/etc.
-Containing pointers to libraries, implementations, tutorials, how-to,
information, etc.
-With clear meta-information for the different items. for instance for
libraries/software description: What is does, where to find it, on what
OS/implementations it works, latest version, etc.)
-With organized comments (removable item by item in case of spam)
-Administrable and (administered ;-)
-RSS feeds for each category sub level.

For this to be useful, there would be the need for several people to enter
and maintain the information that it contains otherwise it will only be yet
another partial resource which would miss the point (again).
This is the major point IMO. Without a critical mass of information, it's
useless.

So to start on something real rather than only talking, I propose to make it
based on Link-it (which is now operational). I've already added Lisp
categories to Link-it for this.

Any comments on the utility or not of such a directory ?
Any potential volunteers to help to fill it ?
Any comments ?

Marc

P.S. For the ones who have not followed the Lisp news recently Link-It is
here:
http://linkit.fractalconcept.com
[If you want to discuss Link-It please do it in the Link-it threads.]

From: ········@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <1134388670.995806.280600@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
Hey Marc,

>Any comments?

I don't have a home on the web I could host any dynamic content on, but
I do have a bunch of static space sitting around if it would help with
this project. It might help to have this content archived somewhere in
static form so that it could be googled (I know that's how I navegate
the cliki and other such mishmashed, aggregate resources most of the
time)

>Any potential volunteers to help to fill it ?

Its 0330 in the morning here, but I will help submit some links
tomorrow.

>So I think it would be a good idea to setup a directory with these features:
>-Organized with overlapping categories/sub-categories/etc.
>-Containing pointers to libraries, implementations, tutorials, how-to,
>information, etc.
>-With clear meta-information for the different items. for instance for
>libraries/software description: What is does, where to find it, on what
>OS/implementations it works, latest version, etc.)

...

>Any comments on the utility or not of such a directory ?

Are you asking for suggestions for linkit? Or for volunteers to help
construct some sort of composite resource? I assume by this you are
implying that you plan on [1] a link having a rank for each tag, so
that, say, the hyperspec doesn't appear before a specialty paper in a
list of links related to that specialty paper's category, [2] there
will be a page view of all tags, and that [3] lists of related links
will be "1st class objects" so they can be taged, too.

nick
From: ········@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <1134516895.864602.290880@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
>                  It might help to have this content archived somewhere in
>static form so that it could be googled (I know that's how I navegate
>the cliki and other such mishmashed, aggregate resources most of the
>time)

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=site:reddit.com+linkit&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

something just changed inside of reddit ; - )

nick
From: Babar K. Zafar
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <1134389416.049102.325680@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
Marc, I love the idea.

I proposed something similar in a comment to Dave Roberts (Finding
Lisp Blog) post on the recent Reddit news, a CPAN style central
repository where one can find everything related to Lisp.

Some ideas:

* Listing of Lisp books where each book has a wiki-styled
  FAQ/errata/notes page. Something like "Graham Crackers" [1] which I
  think would be extremly helpful to newcomers such as myself.

* Contact authors of high quality libraries and ask for permission to
  mirror documenation and source code. This may seem redundant but if
  combined with a FAQ/notes/examples/compability page maintained by
  the community we get a long term stabilized enviroment for sharing
  source code.

* Ask authors of high quality articles and guides available on the net
  for permission to mirror their writings.

* Create something like CLEP, Common Lisp Enhancement Proposals.

Count me in, Common Lisp deserves better support.

[1]
http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/academics/courses/325/readings/graham/graham-notes.html
From: Marc Battyani
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <R8ydnY9fPsJqcwDeRVnyvw@giganews.com>
"Babar K. Zafar" <···········@gmail.com> wrote

> Marc, I love the idea.
>
> I proposed something similar in a comment to Dave Roberts (Finding
> Lisp Blog) post on the recent Reddit news, a CPAN style central
> repository where one can find everything related to Lisp.

Reddit? hum... ;-)

> Some ideas:
>
> * Listing of Lisp books where each book has a wiki-styled
>   FAQ/errata/notes page. Something like "Graham Crackers" [1] which I
>   think would be extremly helpful to newcomers such as myself.

Yes, I've planned to put links to documents and books but didn't thought
about errata/notes (other than comments).

> * Contact authors of high quality libraries and ask for permission to
>   mirror documenation and source code. This may seem redundant but if
>   combined with a FAQ/notes/examples/compability page maintained by
>   the community we get a long term stabilized enviroment for sharing
>   source code.
>
> * Ask authors of high quality articles and guides available on the net
>   for permission to mirror their writings.
>
> * Create something like CLEP, Common Lisp Enhancement Proposals.

There is already the CLRFI process though I don't know if it is operational.

> Count me in, Common Lisp deserves better support.

Cool, this will require lots of people

> [1]
>
http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/academics/courses/325/readings/graham/graham-
notes.html

Didn't know that. Interesting. Though maybe it's better hosted on a wiki
system.

It's an annotable directory. The existing things will continue to be there.
I don't want to replace cliki nor common-lisp.net, etc.

Marc
From: RC
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <1134404347.727129.270300@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
Something a la CPAN.
call it CLCAN or CCLAN?

Doesn't matter what it's called as long as people
can tell by its name it's the "mother of all lisp sites."

Authors of packages should have their own upload areas.
A simple and secure way to upload packages.
The system automatically scans and builds links to packages.
ASDF-INSTALL downloads from this one central location not 10,000 other
places.
An implementation should refuse to install a package that is not
certified to run in it.
Simple to use.  Simplicity should be a goal.  

What else?
From: Peter Seibel
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <m23bky15i2.fsf@gigamonkeys.com>
"RC" <·······@comcast.net> writes:

> Something a la CPAN.
> call it CLCAN or CCLAN?
>
> Doesn't matter what it's called as long as people
> can tell by its name it's the "mother of all lisp sites."

I think there's an aspect to CPAN that is missed by CCLAN. Before
there was CPAN there was The Modules List which was a list of existing
*and* future modules. Part of the point of the list was to divy up the
namespace of Perl packages. But one of the consequences of that was it
provided a map of where work was happening and where there were holes
to be filled.

The other thing that made CPAN work was that there was much more
standardization (much of it a consequence of the guidance given by the
Module List itself) in terms of how modules were documented (POD) and
tested. Thus it was easier for folks to browse through libraries and
get a sense of what they were about.

The actual CPAN (as a network of mirrors from which one could dowload
modules) came later, and the CPAN module (the Perl analogue to
asdf-install) later yet. So from that perspective CCLAN/ASDF-INSTALL
is currently working from the other direction--we have a way to
automatically download libraries but no catalog of what's available
(that I'm aware of) other than the simple list of names at
<http://www.cliki.net/asdf-install>. Which is not to say that the work
that has beeen done on ASDF-INSTALL and CCLAN is not valuable--just
that there is other stuff that could usefully be done.

-Peter

-- 
Peter Seibel           * ·····@gigamonkeys.com
Gigamonkeys Consulting * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/
Practical Common Lisp  * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
From: Arthur Lemmens
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <op.s1n6wwcvwpmq96@news.xs4all.nl>
Marc Battyani wrote:

> There are many Lisp resources now but there is no central "Directory" where
> Lispers can find them.

I think this is a very good idea (but you know that already ;-)).

One feature that I'd like to see in such a thing is the possibility to upload
files: audio/video registrations of user meetings, publications, source code,
anything (as long as it's related to Common Lisp of course).
From: Edi Weitz
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <u1x0i1oy9.fsf@agharta.de>
Hi Marc!

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 11:10:16 +0100, "Marc Battyani" <·············@fractalconcept.com> wrote:

> There are many Lisp resources now but there is no central
> "Directory" where Lispers can find them.

We talked about this already and you know that I think this is a good
idea.  Two differentiate this from CLiki it should not only include
stuff that's supposedly "non-free" or non-Unixy but IMHO it should
also be better organized (some kind of structure with categories,
sub-categories, comments, rankings, compatibility notes, version
history, ...) and only be editable by registered users to avoid spam
and junk.

Obviously, this not only requires a thought-out infrastructure but
also a critical mass of users willing to do the grunt work over a
longer period, so it might fail pretty soon for "social" reasons.  Or
maybe not - we'll see...

Thanks for taking the initiative!

Cheers,
Edi.

-- 

Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.

Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
From: Paolo Amoroso
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <874q5eny73.fsf@plato.moon.paoloamoroso.it>
"Marc Battyani" <·············@fractalconcept.com> writes:

> I've been playing with the idea of a Lisp repository since the Amsterdam ELM
[...]
> So to start on something real rather than only talking, I propose to make it
> based on Link-it (which is now operational). I've already added Lisp
> categories to Link-it for this.
[...]
> Any potential volunteers to help to fill it ?

When the directory infrastructure is ready, I am willing to help fill it.


Paolo
-- 
Why Lisp? http://wiki.alu.org/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools:
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- CFFI: Foreign Function Interface
From: bradb
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <1134401692.145412.170170@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
I believe that everybody that has signed up for GL Gardeners has pretty
much implicitly signed up for exactly this kind of thing.  Gardeners
has only just started, but when it is off the ground you should have a
bunch of people willing to tend to this project.

Cheers
Brad
From: Peter Seibel
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <m27jaa1fgi.fsf@gigamonkeys.com>
"bradb" <··············@gmail.com> writes:

> I believe that everybody that has signed up for GL Gardeners has pretty
> much implicitly signed up for exactly this kind of thing.  Gardeners
> has only just started, but when it is off the ground you should have a
> bunch of people willing to tend to this project.

Indeed. I've been thinking along similar lines of a "Lisp Library
List" for some time and was thinking that that might be something that
the CL Gardeners might help out with. So we should coordinate. Folks
interested in this project may want to join the CL Gardners mailing
list:

  <http://www.lispniks.com/mailman/listinfo/gardeners>

-Peter

-- 
Peter Seibel           * ·····@gigamonkeys.com
Gigamonkeys Consulting * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/
Practical Common Lisp  * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
From: Marc Battyani
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <WYydnUS0yMwPcQDenZ2dnUVZ8qednZ2d@giganews.com>
"Peter Seibel" <·····@gigamonkeys.com> wrote in
> "bradb" <··············@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > I believe that everybody that has signed up for GL Gardeners has pretty
> > much implicitly signed up for exactly this kind of thing.  Gardeners
> > has only just started, but when it is off the ground you should have a
> > bunch of people willing to tend to this project.
>
> Indeed. I've been thinking along similar lines of a "Lisp Library
> List" for some time and was thinking that that might be something that
> the CL Gardeners might help out with. So we should coordinate. Folks
> interested in this project may want to join the CL Gardners mailing
> list:
>
>   <http://www.lispniks.com/mailman/listinfo/gardeners>

Is this the Janitors project? In my understanding (though I've not looked
very closely at it) I thought this was to provide content. (how to setup a
lisp, use adsf, libraries, etc.) From a newbies point of view with the help
of some experienced guys. Is this right ?

In that case the Lisp directory will be the perfect complement to organize
the huge bunch of stuff you are going to produce.

Marc
From: Alain Picard
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <874q5dpeq7.fsf@memetrics.com>
Peter Seibel <·····@gigamonkeys.com> writes:

> Indeed. I've been thinking along similar lines of a "Lisp Library
> List" for some time 

Years ago, there was a very well maintained archive of
emacs lisp packages (at Ohio state U, IIRC), which could
be browsed and accessed directly from within emacs.

Now there's the ELL (emacs lisp library), but it isn't
anywhere near as well organized and maintained as that
old archive was.

Perhaps such a utility as a portable common lisp library
would be a cool thing to write for someone.
From: Marc Battyani
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <2pKdne5i9vbBcgDeRVnyvA@giganews.com>
"Paolo Amoroso" <·······@mclink.it> wrote
> "Marc Battyani" <·············@fractalconcept.com> writes:
>
> > I've been playing with the idea of a Lisp repository since the Amsterdam
ELM
> [...]
> > So to start on something real rather than only talking, I propose to
make it
> > based on Link-it (which is now operational). I've already added Lisp
> > categories to Link-it for this.
> [...]
> > Any potential volunteers to help to fill it ?

Hi Paolo,

> When the directory infrastructure is ready, I am willing to help fill it.

Great!

Marc
From: Bernd Schmitt
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <439de7c1$0$24936$9b622d9e@news.freenet.de>
Marc Battyani wrote:
> There are many Lisp resources now but there is no central "Directory" where
> Lispers can find them.
Oh, yes, that would be very helpful.

> Any potential volunteers to help to fill it ?
if somebody can make up a calculation of costs per year, we know how 
much to donate ;)


Ciao,
Bernd



-- 
          T_a_k_e__c_a_r_e__o_f__y_o_u_r__R_I_G_H_T_S.
            P_r_e_v_e_n_t__L_O_G_I_C--P_A_T_E_N_T_S
     http://www.ffii.org, http://www.nosoftwarepatents.org
From: Marc Battyani
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <2pKdne9i9vbKcgDeRVnyvA@giganews.com>
"Bernd Schmitt" <··················@gmx.net> wrote
> Marc Battyani wrote:
> > There are many Lisp resources now but there is no central "Directory"
where
> > Lispers can find them.
> Oh, yes, that would be very helpful.
>
> > Any potential volunteers to help to fill it ?
> if somebody can make up a calculation of costs per year, we know how
> much to donate ;)

OK, I will add some code for paypal and credit card processing ;-)

Marc
From: Marc Battyani
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <oYednUE4Rvw4mgPeRVny2g@giganews.com>
"Marc Battyani" <·············@fractalconcept.com> wrote
>
[Snipped desciption of the directory...]

Here is a rough sketch:

A category node will contain a name, description, comments, links to
sub-categories, links to related
categories, links to libraries nodes, links to information nodes, etc.

A library node would contain links to the categories it belongs to, to
required libraries and to libraries using it, to compatible implementations,
an optional how-to, etc.

An information node would either directly contain the information or link to
a web page, along with other links, etc.

etc...

OK The first think I will do (tomorrow evening. It's too late tonight ;-) is
the category/subcategory structure:

I will put a tree of categories and each category will have the possibility
to be linked to related categories elsewhere in the tree(forming a DAG).

The items put in the tree will be attached to categories from this tree.

Simple enough IMO.

Now what to put in the different kinds of nodes?
Comments?

Marc
From: Damir Horvat
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <1134452681.019681.186920@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
At first glance (it's still early here...;-) this looks like a
hyperspec or sort of wiki for lisp realted stuff. Or it is too early?

Damir
From: Tayssir John Gabbour
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <1134468512.076741.226030@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>
Marc Battyani wrote:
> "Damir" <·····@x-si.org> wrote
> >
> > Can you explain about this Lisp Directory so we can brainstorm?
>
> [I'm starting a new thread for this so that it's not confused with Link-it]
>
> I've been playing with the idea of a Lisp repository since the Amsterdam ELM
> one year ago but did not really do anything concrete to that day except
> exchanging emails with a few Lispers on that subject. The Link-It experience
> makes me think that something can be operational soon after all. So let's
> try to seen if we can go further today.
>
> There are many Lisp resources now but there is no central "Directory" where
> Lispers can find them.
>
> So to start on something real rather than only talking, I propose to make it
> based on Link-it (which is now operational). I've already added Lisp
> categories to Link-it for this.
>
> Any comments on the utility or not of such a directory ?
> Any potential volunteers to help to fill it ?

Sounds great to me, I certainly wouldn't mind populating it with the
sorts of things I find interesting.


> Any comments ?

My main interest is a place where people can easily mention
workarounds/difficulties they come across. It is too common that I hit
unexpected problems and have to experiment to find the irregularities
which seem to be mentioned nowhere on the net or in the docs.

Had I known about them beforehand, I wouldn't wonder if I did something
wrong, or my computer's setup is somehow the problem.

Of course, this info can become obsoleted...


Tayssir
From: Erik Enge
Subject: Re: Proposition for a Lisp Directory
Date: 
Message-ID: <1134497779.390133.255070@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
Marc Battyani wrote:
> Any potential volunteers to help to fill it ?

Once your infrastructure is up and runnnig (I'll be happy to
participate in discussions) I will write some code so that all projects
on common-lisp.net which are making releases could possibly have their
entries in the directory automatically updated.  Or if that's not
interesting I at least commit to keeping my own libraries up-to-date in
the directory.

Erik.