|   Having read the URLs of cltl2, I wonder how I can download ALL the
|   htmls that belong to it.  I have tried ftp, but obviously they don't
|   allow anonymous access.  It would be great if somebody had a tar-file
|   with the whole html-version of cltl2.

[Simon Brooke]

|   Gosh, yes, wouldn't that be useful?  I bet the reason that you can't is
|   that it's copyright, and somebody (GS?) wants to make a living out of
|   it (after all it took a great deal of work to put it together).
|   However, I think I'd much rather pay UKP 40 to have html on CD-ROM than
|   to have plain text on paper.

what utter baloney!  the book was released to the public right before the
standard was finalized.  by Guy Steele himself, as far as I remember.  if
this doesn't say "I don't think it's right to charge money for a book that
is no longer the authoritative reference", I don't know what it says.  the
LaTeX source files are available from cambridge.apple.com, and I got the
HTML files from Mark Kantrowitz.

I can't find an FTPable source for the HTML files, anymore, but this is now
publicly accessible.  I have both the HTML and the original LaTeX
distribution files spinning on my disks.  if you want it, I'm sure Mark
wouldn't object to shipping copies around as long as he can have URL's to
add to his mirror list.  let me know, and I'll make them available.

the tex files should still be on ftp.digitool.com

si...@rheged.dircon.co.uk moved upon the face of the 'Net and spake thusly:

My fiance gave me a copy of CLTL2 for an engagement present--now
that's what I call a true understanding of my geekness.

cjb

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And yes, the creators of this page have permission from the publisher to
provide this information.  It seems that Digital Press is charging (in
their eyes) for the printing and materials of CLTL2, not for the
information contained within.

The source to the HTML version is available in the repository as
   ftp.cs.cmu.edu:/user/ai/lang/lisp/doc/cltl/cltl_ht.tgz
I ask that anybody who sets up a copy on a moderately public WWW
server send me the URL so that I can add it to the page of mirrors.

The HTML version's index is, as some people have mentioned, not as
good as the printed version. Someone here at CMU volunteered to set up
a Glimpse server for the book, but I'm not sure when that will be available.

I have asked ANSI about making the standard available in a similar
fashion. As you may be aware, ANSI sells copies of the standard to
cover its costs, so obviously they can't make it available for free. I
asked ANSI about making a one-time payment for worldwide online
distribution rights (e.g., equivalent to their earnings from n paper
copies), but did not receive a firm answer. (That ANSI is considering
making its standards available via the WWW on a pay-per-view service
may have had something to do with their reluctance to pursue that as
an option.)

|   I have asked ANSI about making the standard available in a similar
|   fashion.  As you may be aware, ANSI sells copies of the standard to
|   cover its costs, so obviously they can't make it available for free.

I thought part of the deal with ANSI was that the text should be made
available for free.

|   I asked ANSI about making a one-time payment for worldwide online
|   distribution rights (e.g., equivalent to their earnings from n paper
|   copies), but did not receive a firm answer.

the GNU Common Lisp project has made the Draft ANSI Standard available in
the form of info files as part of its release 2.1 just this past week, and
uses the info files in their implementation of the `describe' function.

maybe you should talk to Bill Schelter <w...@math.utexas.edu>.

   In article <19950509T040103Z.e...@naggum.no> Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.no> writes:
   >I thought part of the deal with ANSI was that the text should be made
   >available for free.

   What "deal with ANSI" are you referring to?

I do not know what kind of deal you guys are referring to (I gather
that Barry is implying that there was no such deal :) ), but it would
tremendously help (help what?) if the price of the ANSI Standard book
would be in the neighborhood of the $40.00 I paid for my copy of
CLtL2, instead of the $4575.032299 it looks like it's going to sell
for.

The people involved in the ANSI committee who are reading this
newsgroup could (and IMHO, should) make their voice heard in order to
make this happen.

Cheers

--
Marco Antoniotti - Resistente Umano
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----
Robotics Lab            | room: 1220 - tel. #: (212) 998 3370
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   In article <MARCOXA.95May10092...@liberty.cs.nyu.edu> marc...@liberty.cs.nyu.edu (Marco Antoniotti) writes:
   >tremendously help (help what?) if the price of the ANSI Standard book
   >would be in the neighborhood of the $40.00 I paid for my copy of
   >CLtL2, instead of the $4575.032299 it looks like it's going to sell
   >for.

   My guess is that it will be in the neighborhood of $125.  I'm not sure why
   I think that, though; it just strikes me as about the maximum anyone might
   pay for it.

125$ is too much for the typical University bookstore customer.

   >The people involved in the ANSI committee who are reading this
   >newsgroup could (and IMHO, should) make their voice heard in order to
   >make this happen.

   ANSI Technical Committees have virtually no say in the policies of ANSI as
   a publishing company.

Pardon me, but has the CL committee actually said anything to ANSI
Publishing? They may choose not to hear you, but you make their job
easier if you do not say anything.

   My belief is that ANSI prices their standards based on the perceived
   market.  A standard like Common Lisp is not likely to be widely purchased,
   no matter how low they set the price.  In order for them to make a profit
   on publishing it, they have to set the price relatively high.

Which in turn will have less people buy it and less people trying to
make a dent in learning Common Lisp. Maybe even less of a profit for
ANSI Publishing.

Just stating a fact.

Cheers

Marco
--
Marco Antoniotti - Resistente Umano
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----
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Courant Institute NYU   | e-mail: marc...@cs.nyu.edu

|   ANSI standards have never been intended for educational use.  They are
|   expected to be used by vendors to precisely define the language that
|   they're implementing.  Customers may also use them to point out bugs to
|   their vendor ("Your implementation doesn't do what section X.Y.Z
|   says.")  Textbooks, vendor documentation, and mass market books are the
|   expected ways that most people will learn about a language.

I beg to differ.  for information technology standards and programming
languages in particular, you can't trust either of the textbooks, vendor
documentation or mass market books to be both accurate and complete.

it is my experience from five years of standardization work that authors of
mass market books screw up about half of the fine points that the committee
spent years working on the wording to obtain the desired precision.  since
the stupid standards are copyrighted and ANSI is uncooperative in efforts
to increase their stupid sales, there is also a _low_ limit to how much of
the same vocabulary and the definitions can be re-used in those textbooks,
vendor documentation and mass market books, estranging the programmer from
the Real Thing, thus increasing the need to obtain a copy.

"ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI", as someone said over in
alt.folklore.computers.

those generally cost less than ANSI standard docs. I'll probably wait
for CLtL3.

far as I can tell, there's no really good "mass market book" for Lisp
the way there is for C, Visual Basic, etc. Paul Graham's book "On Lisp",
while quite good, is deep. it doesn't fill in the small holes in CLtL2.

vendor dox are fine, but they probably don't incorporate the standards,
just their variances on it. Allegro comes with a copy of CLtL2.

I'm all in favor of buying the standard, if it's more than just a
statement of the function definition. I was to see examples with the
definitions. granted, that expands the size considerably, but the std is
already huge. publish it in two vols if necessary...

|   In article <19950509T040103Z.e...@naggum.no>,
|   Erik Naggum  <e...@naggum.no> wrote:
|   >[Mark Kantrowitz]
|   >
|   >|   I have asked ANSI about making the standard available in a similar
|   >|   fashion.  As you may be aware, ANSI sells copies of the standard to
|   >|   cover its costs, so obviously they can't make it available for free.
|   >
|   >I thought part of the deal with ANSI was that the text should be made
|   >available for free.
|  
|   This is definitely not the case, according to email I received from
|   Lynn Barra, the coordinator for Standards Processing for X3. If anybody
|   has a different story FROM AN OFFICIAL SOURCE, I would like to hear
|   about it.

I finally found the note from which I drew my conclusion.  sorry to
disappoint you all: all it says is that ANSI has agreed to let the draft
documents be freely distributable.  not a word about the final standard.