Common Lisp for Mac OS X
Marc Mientki
Which implementation of Common Lisp should I choose if I want to write
applications for OS X? Thus created applications must have the look and
feel of native Mac software.
reagrds
Marc
PS. Sorry for my poor english!
Raffael Cavallaro
> Which implementation of Common Lisp should I choose if I want to write
> applications for OS X? Thus created applications must have the look and
> feel of native Mac software.
Clozure Common Lisp, totally native look and feel, cocoa bridge, free,
both 32 and 64 bit, ppc and intel:
LispWorks Common Lisp, Native look and feel, cocoa bridge, cross
platform gui toolkit, 32 & 64 bit, ppc and intel, paid with a free
trial version:
<http://www.lispworks.com/downloads/index.html>
hth
Ralph
--
Raffael Cavallaro
Pascal J. Bourguignon
However, if the OP plans to deploy his application on iPhone/iPod/iPad
eventually, and to spread some FUD, I'll note that both these
implementations unfortunately contain their own compiler, and
therefore are forbidden AFAIUI by the EULA or whatever "agreement"
Apple imposes on developers wanting to distribute applications for
these platforms thru the AppStore.
On the other hand, clisp would be compiled by Apple's gcc, so it
would, formally, be closer to be acceptable by Apple. (Besides, I'd
like to see a cocoa bridge in clisp, and I don't have the time to do
it myself, so let's spread this FUD, if it helps motivate somebody to
do it >:-} ).
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__
http://www.informatimago.com
Raymond Toy
> However, if the OP plans to deploy his application on iPhone/iPod/iPad
> eventually, and to spread some FUD, I'll note that both these
> implementations unfortunately contain their own compiler, and
> therefore are forbidden AFAIUI by the EULA or whatever "agreement"
> Apple imposes on developers wanting to distribute applications for
> these platforms thru the AppStore.
>
> On the other hand, clisp would be compiled by Apple's gcc, so it
> would, formally, be closer to be acceptable by Apple. (Besides, I'd
But clisp has its own compiler, so if the presence of a compiler
disqualifies an app, won't clisp be disqualified? Maybe not having a
native-code compiler is enough?
Ray
Pascal J. Bourguignon
Well, Apple's EULA is silly anyways, but specifically in the case of
clisp, I would argue that it implements the "Interpreter pattern" in
Objective-C (which is a superset of C). A VM interprets a sequence of
small objects.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Marc Mientki
> On 2010-05-27 05:16:44 -0400, Marc Mientki said:
>
>> Which implementation of Common Lisp should I choose if I want to write
>> applications for OS X? Thus created applications must have the look
>> and feel of native Mac software.
>
> Clozure Common Lisp, totally native look and feel, cocoa bridge, free,
> both 32 and 64 bit, ppc and intel:
>
> <http://trac.clozure.com/ccl>
Thanks for this hint! It seems to be very interested and I will try it out.
regards
Marc
Raffael Cavallaro
> But clisp has its own compiler, so if the presence of a compiler
> disqualifies an app, won't clisp be disqualified?
Yes, clisp is disqualified for the simple reason that the current Apple
developer agreement stipulates that:
"Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or
JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine."
Pretty sure that clisp compiles code that is "originally written in"
common lisp, not a C variant. Apple's agreement specifically prohibits
"an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool." So the
fact that clisp is compiled by gcc means nothing. The kernel of CCL is
compiled by gcc too, but that doesn't make CCL apps "originally written
in Objective-C, C, C++;" they're written in common lisp, just like
clisp apps.
Pascal said "*closer* to be acceptable by Apple." (emphasis added) In
practice, this may not amount to much. However, if Apple relents and
changes this particular part of the agreement, then things like ecl and
gambit scheme will be usable for iPhone/iPad apps (there's actually a
gambit/opengl app in the store now, but it won't be there for the new
OS because of the agreement quoted above). I wouldn't hold my breath
waiting for apple to change the dev agreement though.
warmest regards,
Ralph
--
Raffael Cavallaro
game_designer
It is really a shame that Apple has this kind of policy. I wonder how
this really works.Do they have some kind of honor code certification
box where developers must certify that they did write the app in
Objective-C/C++/JavaSCript the same way that people declare at the
airport that they have nothing to declare, or is there some technical
mechanism in place that allows Apple to scan the binary for suspicious
pattern.
Imagine this kind of scenario. One could write an application in Xcode
(Objective-C) which would be the high level app. This app would
clearly be written originally in Objective-C. The app would load
several libraries (e.g., CCL and some base implementation levels of
your app written in Lisp). Is there a clause that forbids the loading
of libraries? Furthermore, the app could load data files. XML would
probably be no problem while loading, and evaling files containing s-
expressions would be a bit too obvious.
Would there be a legal or technical issue with that?
Alex
Pascal J. Bourguignon
> On 2010-05-27 13:16:24 -0400, Raymond Toy said:
>
>> But clisp has its own compiler, so if the presence of a compiler
>> disqualifies an app, won't clisp be disqualified?
>
> Yes, clisp is disqualified for the simple reason that the current
> Apple developer agreement stipulates that:
>
> "Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or
> JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine."
But this doesn't mean anything! "Interpreter Pattern" "Brain Waves" !!!
Pascal J. Bourguignon
> "Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or
> JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine."
In addition to the overall meaning, I have a problem with each word of
this sentence.
What is an "application"? What about bits, libraries, subroutines?
"must" Of course, this is the main problem in this sentence.
"be" We're talking about ideas here. What kind of "be" do they
mean? If that's a physical existence, "applications" don't exist,
only electrons. If that's the information they mean, see "written" below.
"originally" Ok, so we cannot port any old program. We must write only
new "applications". No spreadsheet, no web browser, no calculator, no
video player, no nothing! Only something new.
"written" Also a big problem where. What do they mean "written"?
Bits stored in RAM? On a magnetic hard disk file? On paper? What
about the code I write in my mind before transcribing it to emacs?
"in" OK, perhaps the less controversal one.
"Objective-C", "C", "C++", "or", "JavaScript". Need I to comment
here? Why should Apple promote such a setback?
"as" I'll let you think about the fuzziness of the notion expressed by
this 'as'...
"executed by" Yes, these programming languages don't execute (run)
applications, they do execute (kill) them. I don't want my
applications be executed like that!
"iPhone OS" What OS? No multi-tasking, no OS!
"WebKit" No, thank you. I wanted to write an application, not a web
page.
"engine" Really!? Hey! It's all bits and electrons!
Tim Bradshaw
> But this doesn't mean anything!
I think it means something fairly obvious: Apple can deny you access to
the deployment mechanism if they feel like it. If you then dispute
this they have some wording and since they have more money than you,
you can't afford to dispute this.
Am I the only one laughing at all the fanbois who bought Apple stuff
while claiming it was so much more ideologically sound than Microsoft,
and not at all because it was shiny and pretty, no, of course not?
--tim (I bought it because it was shiny, pretty, and a Unix system not
held together with gaffa tape and spit)
Thomas A. Russ
> Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelc...@pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> writes:
>
> > "Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or
> > JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine."
IANAL and I certainly don't work for Apple, but I believe the intent is
to scope this as
written in [Objective-C], [C], [C++], or
[JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine].
as opposed to say, some other standard JavaScript specfiication. I
think one of the main goals is to exclude Flash applications.
> "iPhone OS" What OS? No multi-tasking, no OS!
Well, this only applies to applications that will be run on the iPhone
or other devices using the iPhone OS, so it hardly seems like a
limitation that comes primarily from the license.
--
Thomas A. Russ, USC/Information Sciences Institute
Pascal J. Bourguignon
Honestly, the unix system under the MacOSX facade feels like it's held
together with tape and spit, when you compare it to Linux.
Three examples:
- maintaince of Darwin is of low priority for Apple (ie there are bugs);
- the performance of MacOSX swap and file system is abysmal, compared
to Linux (at least as it feels to the users);
- every time you get an update of MacOSX, you have to reinstall X11,
because it botches some library or something.
Pascal J. Bourguignon
> p...@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) writes:
>
>> Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelc...@pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> writes:
>>
>> > "Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or
>> > JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine."
>
> IANAL and I certainly don't work for Apple, but I believe the intent is
> to scope this as
>
> written in [Objective-C], [C], [C++], or
> [JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine].
>
> as opposed to say, some other standard JavaScript specfiication. I
> think one of the main goals is to exclude Flash applications.
That's the problem with lawyers, they can't say what they mean. It
would have been much simplier and clearer to have written:
"It is forbidden to run Flash implementations from Adobe on iPhone OS."
or:
"It is forbidden to run any Flash implementation on iPhone OS."
Bob Felts
[...]
>
> - every time you get an update of MacOSX, you have to reinstall X11,
> because it botches some library or something.
I've never had this problem and I'm running 10.6.3 (having started with
10.6).
Pascal J. Bourguignon
It's in the README of the X11.dmg I got from apple.com, and happens in fact.
Bob Felts
> wr...@stablecross.com (Bob Felts) writes:
>
> > Pascal J. Bourguignon <p...@informatimago.com> wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> >>
> >> - every time you get an update of MacOSX, you have to reinstall X11,
> >> because it botches some library or something.
> >
> > I've never had this problem and I'm running 10.6.3 (having started with
> > 10.6).
>
> It's in the README of the X11.dmg I got from apple.com, and happens in fact.
Curious. I just downloaded Apple's X11 package
(http://support.apple.com/kb/DL641) and their update
(http://support.apple.com/kb/DL304) and neither of them come with a
README (unless it's embedded in the installer -- both both installers
don't go past "you don't need this software").
I used to have the problem you're now having, but that was quite some
time ago, possibly Tiger era. Never had a problem with Snow Leopard and
X11.
Pascal J. Bourguignon
Harald Hanche-Olsen
the xquartz project:
http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/wiki
It's an official Apple project, but releases more frequently than the
regular system updates. Unfortunately, because system updates and
xquartz releases are somewhat unsynchronized, you sometimes need to
reapply the latest xquartz installation after a system update.
Appl's X11 support after the release of Leopard was a disaster. At some
time they must have realized they had a problem, and hired Jeremy
Huddles to get their X11 support up to speed. He has been doing a great
job of it, as far as I can tell. But to some extent, it seems his
success is due to working outside the main Apple software release
cycle. Hence the need to track xquartz.
--
* Harald Hanche-Olsen <URL:http://www.math.ntnu.no/~hanche/>
- It is undesirable to believe a proposition
when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
-- Bertrand Russell
Tim Bradshaw
> Honestly, the unix system under the MacOSX facade feels like it's held
> together with tape and spit
Tape and spit is how Unix systems are meant to be held together.
> every time you get an update of MacOSX, you have to reinstall X11,
> because it botches some library or something.
The best thing about macs is that you can finally get away from the
tentacled horror that is X11.
Tim Bradshaw
> Appl's X11 support after the release of Leopard was a disaster.
I think you mean "X11 was a disaster" don't you?
Andrew Reilly
> On 2010-05-29 02:48:34 +0100, Pascal J. Bourguignon said:
>
>> Honestly, the unix system under the MacOSX facade feels like it's held
>> together with tape and spit
>
> Tape and spit is how Unix systems are meant to be held together.
While completely true, I think that as a Unix, MacOSX holds together
better than most of the other commercial Unixes I've used over the
years. (Except VAX Ultrix, which was very nearly just BSD4.x) SunOS 4
and earlier were similar, but slightly weird (especially once NeWS and X
were thrown in), and have got stranger since 5.
That's not to say it is as coherent a Unix as, say, FreeBSD or Debian,
but there are disparate forces at work.
I wish that one of the BSDs would bite the bullet and move to launchd as
system daemon herder, instead of the (nicely tuned, highly pedigreed)
anarchic mess that is rc.d.
>> every time you get an update of MacOSX, you have to reinstall X11,
>> because it botches some library or something.
>
> The best thing about macs is that you can finally get away from the
> tentacled horror that is X11.
Just as it's starting to become interesting, with vector drawing
libraries that are finally attaining the competence of Acorn's Draw
module, circa 1988, or Display Postscript circa 1990...
Cheers,
--
Andrew
Pascal J. Bourguignon
Well Display Postscript is insupperable, but Apple ditched it.
Therefore X11 is the only one that has the essential feature for me to
be able to display remotely.
Moreover, ratpoison (and similar window manager) run only in X11, not
on Aqua, AFAIK.
Tim Bradshaw
> While completely true, I think that as a Unix, MacOSX holds together
> better than most of the other commercial Unixes I've used over the
> years. (Except VAX Ultrix, which was very nearly just BSD4.x) SunOS 4
> and earlier were similar, but slightly weird (especially once NeWS and X
> were thrown in), and have got stranger since 5.
>
> That's not to say it is as coherent a Unix as, say, FreeBSD or Debian,
> but there are disparate forces at work.
> I wish that one of the BSDs would bite the bullet and move to launchd as
> system daemon herder, instead of the (nicely tuned, highly pedigreed)
> anarchic mess that is rc.d.
From my perspective, it smells like a BSD, which is good as I grew up
with BSD systems. Launchd is a huge improvement over init scripts of
any kind (for instance it's really nice that non-privileged users can
have their own things that wake up when the log in, and it's got the
nice cron-like thing (that some cron's have too now) of being able to
run something once a day, even if the machine was asleep at the
scheduled time, which is very nice for backups and log rolling.
Launchd I think isn't as nice as Sun's SMF could be (no dependency
graph), but Sun fouled up the implementation of SMF in various ways.
Packages are not as nice as Debianoid systems (you can't remove them,
there may be no dependency system), but OK. To counter that, most
things just run from their *.app directory.
You don't get to spend half your life making it work on whatever flaky
random crapness using an x86 system involves this week. Strangely, I
don't miss that.
Because it is a commercial system there is a refreshing absence of
whining ideologues[1], though you tend to get a different sort of
annoying people[2] to make up for it.
Apple seem no more and no less unpleasant than other companies that
size (though the recent flash thing gives me pause there).
--tim
[1] Yes, I know, making sure you only use the right kind of license is
so much more important than, say, dealing with starving people or
global warming.
[2] Yes, I know, design is more important life.
Tamas K Papp
> You don't get to spend half your life making it work on whatever flaky
> random crapness using an x86 system involves this week. Strangely, I
> don't miss that.
That's interesting to hear. I got a new Dell laptop in September.
Put the latest Ubuntu on a USB stick, and installed it in less than 30
minutes. Everything was working fine for the first time (and I had to
admit, this surprised me quite a bit, I have been using Linux for a
long time and it wasn't always this nice).
> Because it is a commercial system there is a refreshing absence of
> whining ideologues[1], though you tend to get a different sort of
> annoying people[2] to make up for it.
>
> Apple seem no more and no less unpleasant than other companies that size
> (though the recent flash thing gives me pause there).
I had an Apple laptop around 2004-2005. It was still the Power CPU
series. I bought it in the US, and tried using OS X for about 5
months, putting up with every annoying thing (standard Unix and X11
tools were tolerated, but not nicely supported, Emacs was either
quirky X11 or alpha Aquamacs, etc). Then I went to Europe for a few
weeks, and tried to watch a DVD I rented there. I was told that I can
change the region setting - but only a total of 5 times. I got very
angry with Apple then: I paid big bucks for this laptop, and they are
telling me what I can do with it? Next day, I started running good
old Debian on it. But then it was just an overpriced PC with a
different CPU architecture :-) I got rid of it in a year or so.
I am under the impression that Apple's approach to total control
hasn't got any better since. So I am staying away from their products
for practical reasons -- I would go crazy if I paid big $$$ for
something which then tried to impose be arbitrary limitations on me.
Maybe that's just me, and more patient people can put up with Apple
nicely.
Tamas
Pascal Costanza
The restriction with regard to changing region codes is forced by the
movie industry, Apple has very little choice in that area. For some
machines, there exists open source solutions to circumvent this.
But usually, all DVD players are required to have this restriction...
Pascal
--
My website: http://p-cos.net
Common Lisp Document Repository: http://cdr.eurolisp.org
Closer to MOP & ContextL: http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/
Pascal J. Bourguignon
Hence my boycot of DVD (and following support standards, assuming they
do the same, if they don't I don't care, they lose, since), now I just
buy more hard disks to do my backups and archives.
Now, perhaps I'm the only one vs. 5999999999 others, boycotting DVD,
etc, but it's a question of principle.
Tim Bradshaw
> I got very
> angry with Apple then: I paid big bucks for this laptop, and they are
> telling me what I can do with it?
Actually, I think the DVD region people are saying what you can do with it.
Tamas K Papp
My impression is that Apple is chums with these people, so even if
they were asked to do it, I doubt that they protested too loudly. But
my Apple had a lot of silly DRM stuff going on anyway. We can of
course try to blame that on the companies which provided the content,
but I still think that Apple just loves lock-in and complete control.
Anyhow, I am not claiming that Apple is more evil than the average
software company of a similar size/market power. I think that above a
certain size, the lure of this kind of control becomes irresistible.
Consequently, for anything more complicated than a microwave oven, I
prefer companies that sell hardware, and let me deal with the software
part.
Actually, I should thank Apple for the lesson this episode gave me. I
have a relative who is a pro photographer and consequently a hardcore
Mac fan, so I have always heard high praise about Macs. In 2004, I
was dazzled by the shiny design, and reading Paul Grahams essay [1]
finally made me drink the Kool-Aid. Now I consider myself immunized.
Best,
Tamas
RG
Tamas K Papp
If I recall correctly, I did get VLC, but it was not working for some
reason. I also tried various tools for circumventing the restriction,
but could not get them working either (I think that I had a revised
firmware or drive, Apple was one step ahead in the game at that
point). And more importantly, I was fed up with OS X by that point
for various other reasons.
But at the moment I booted up Debian from the HD for the first time, I
knew I made the right decision. I didn't need to fight the OS any
more, everything was just an apt-get away.
Tamas
Tim Bradshaw
> I bought it in the US, and tried using OS X for about 5
> months, putting up with every annoying thing (standard Unix and X11
> tools were tolerated, but not nicely supported, Emacs was either
> quirky X11 or alpha Aquamacs, etc).
I think this mostly explains the differing opinions. Realising I
wouldn't have to deal with X any more was (along with mot needing to
put up with ugly-as-shit, broken, x86 HW) was, for me, some kind of
experience that psychiatrists probably have a name for: I felt happy
for days. It took me significantly longer that the same might be true
for Emacs: I could just stop dealing with thousands of lines of Emacs
customisation code which broke every time I installed a new release (I
still do have an Emacs on the system, but I basically never use it, and
I use XEmacs intentionally because it seems to be essentially dead so
never changes).
I just want tools that do what I want and which work without spending
the rest of my life fiddling with them.
Pascal Costanza
> On Mon, 31 May 2010 19:19:17 +0100, Tim Bradshaw wrote:
>
>> On 2010-05-31 13:48:42 +0100, Tamas K Papp said:
>>
>>> I got very
>>> angry with Apple then: I paid big bucks for this laptop, and they are
>>> telling me what I can do with it?
>>
>> Actually, I think the DVD region people are saying what you can do with
>> it.
>
> My impression is that Apple is chums with these people, so even if
> they were asked to do it, I doubt that they protested too loudly. But
> my Apple had a lot of silly DRM stuff going on anyway. We can of
> course try to blame that on the companies which provided the content,
> but I still think that Apple just loves lock-in and complete control.
Apple used a DRM method for iTunes in the beginning because that was the
only way to get the music industry on board. Later, it was Apple that
successfully pushed the music industry to get rid of DRM.
Apple makes mistakes, for sure, but the issues with regard to DVD region
codes and DRM are not Apple's fault.
Pascal Costanza
Your story doesn't make sense. Enforcing region codes is either done in
software, or in hardware (i.e., the actual DVD player). If it is done in
software it can be circumvented, if it is done in hardware, it can't.
This is independent of the operating system you use. (I successfully
used a way to circumvent region codes on an older Apple laptop using Mac
OS X.)
By now I don't bother anymore. It's just a nuisance, and not very well
thought through by the content providers. My internal DVD drive plays RC
2, and I have an external DVD drive for RC 1. All that region codes do
is boosting the sales of DVD drives... ;)
Pascal J. Bourguignon
> By now I don't bother anymore. It's just a nuisance, and not very well
> thought through by the content providers. My internal DVD drive plays
> RC 2, and I have an external DVD drive for RC 1. All that region codes
> do is boosting the sales of DVD drives... ;)
And the use of eDonkey.
Tamas K Papp
>> If I recall correctly, I did get VLC, but it was not working for some
>> reason. I also tried various tools for circumventing the restriction,
>> but could not get them working either (I think that I had a revised
>> firmware or drive, Apple was one step ahead in the game at that point).
>> And more importantly, I was fed up with OS X by that point for various
>> other reasons.
>>
>> But at the moment I booted up Debian from the HD for the first time, I
>> knew I made the right decision. I didn't need to fight the OS any
>> more, everything was just an apt-get away.
>
> Your story doesn't make sense. Enforcing region codes is either done in
> software, or in hardware (i.e., the actual DVD player). If it is done in
> software it can be circumvented, if it is done in hardware, it can't.
If only the world was categorizable using these simple dichotomies :-)
I think it was "hardware", but the circumvention method was installing
a new firmware for the DVD drive. I didn't bother, though.
Tamas
Tamas K Papp
> On 2010-05-31 13:48:42 +0100, Tamas K Papp said:
>
>> I bought it in the US, and tried using OS X for about 5 months, putting
>> up with every annoying thing (standard Unix and X11 tools were
>> tolerated, but not nicely supported, Emacs was either quirky X11 or
>> alpha Aquamacs, etc).
>
> I think this mostly explains the differing opinions. Realising I
> wouldn't have to deal with X any more was (along with mot needing to put
> up with ugly-as-shit, broken, x86 HW) was, for me, some kind of
> experience that psychiatrists probably have a name for: I felt happy for
> days. It took me significantly longer that the same might be true for
> Emacs: I could just stop dealing with thousands of lines of Emacs
> customisation code which broke every time I installed a new release (I
I rarely, if ever, touch my Emacs config file these days. Ubuntu
keeps updating the packages whenever new versions come out, but that
doesn't break things. I am not saying that you could not have the
kind of experience you describe, just that mine was/is totally
different.
> I just want tools that do what I want and which work without spending
> the rest of my life fiddling with them.
I guess we all wish for that. But in my experience, sooner or later
you do have to fiddle, or in other scenarios, it is worthwhile to
fiddle. In these cases, I prefer to have the tools which are
fiddle-friendly.
Again, I am sure that Macs are great for certain people. None of my
comments were meant to imply that they are somehow inferior to any
other alternative, just that they are not the right match for me.
People have heterogenous preferences for almost all kinds for durable
and nondurable goods, and computers/software are no exception.
Tamas
Pascal Costanza
> Pascal Costanza<p...@p-cos.net> writes:
>> By now I don't bother anymore. It's just a nuisance, and not very well
>> thought through by the content providers. My internal DVD drive plays
>> RC 2, and I have an external DVD drive for RC 1. All that region codes
>> do is boosting the sales of DVD drives... ;)
>
> And the use of eDonkey.
Buying several DVD drives, one for each region code, is not illegal.
This is a stronger argument why region codes are nonsense, stronger than
referring to illegal practices.
Note that I'm using the terms 'legal' and 'illegal' in a neutral way
here, I'm not implying any value judgments here.
Pascal Costanza
If you didn't bother, this means that switching to Debian couldn't have
possibly solved your problem either.
Espen Vestre
> I rarely, if ever, touch my Emacs config file these days. Ubuntu
> keeps updating the packages whenever new versions come out, but that
> doesn't break things. I am not saying that you could not have the
> kind of experience you describe, just that mine was/is totally
> different.
Ubuntu has definitely made using linux for workstations very painless
compared to how it used to be (although newer versions seems to have
some issues, I tend to be careful with upgrading). Using both Ubuntu and
Mac OS X, I'm very happy with both environments. And they're not all
that different either, I use the same lisp environment (LispWorks) and I
use Emacs and the bash shell a lot on the mac too. The main differences
are aestethic and ergonomic: Everything, including LispWorks, looks
prettier on the Mac, and the user interface is very consistent. I use
Ubuntu for my main workstation at work, and Mac OS X for my laptop (also
for Windows, which I run inside VMware Fusion), and also for my private
computing needs (e.g. for my photography hobby).
--
(espen)
Tamas K Papp
> On 01/06/2010 12:46, Tamas K Papp wrote:
>> On Tue, 01 Jun 2010 11:17:34 +0200, Pascal Costanza wrote:
>>
>>>> If I recall correctly, I did get VLC, but it was not working for some
>>>> reason. I also tried various tools for circumventing the
>>>> restriction, but could not get them working either (I think that I
>>>> had a revised firmware or drive, Apple was one step ahead in the game
>>>> at that point).
>>>> And more importantly, I was fed up with OS X by that point for
>>>> various
>>>> other reasons.
>>>>
>>>> But at the moment I booted up Debian from the HD for the first time,
>>>> I knew I made the right decision. I didn't need to fight the OS any
>>>> more, everything was just an apt-get away.
>>>
>>> Your story doesn't make sense. Enforcing region codes is either done
>>> in software, or in hardware (i.e., the actual DVD player). If it is
>>> done in software it can be circumvented, if it is done in hardware, it
>>> can't.
>>
>> If only the world was categorizable using these simple dichotomies :-)
>>
>> I think it was "hardware", but the circumvention method was installing
>> a new firmware for the DVD drive. I didn't bother, though.
>
> If you didn't bother, this means that switching to Debian couldn't have
> possibly solved your problem either.
You appear to be very quick to jump to conclusions. First, you claim
that the story doesn't make sense, then you claim that I could not
have solved my problem the way I did. Unfortunately, neither claim is
warranted.
Switching to Debian and installing the appropriate decoding library
did solve my problem. I don't know whether that was because
Debian/Linux uses a different decoding mechanism (software instead of
hardware?), or whether OS X enforced something which prevented similar
software doing the same, but I do not care -- the important thing is
that it worked easily in Debian after a few minutes work, and I could
not get it to work on OS X, despite asking for advice on several
forums and spending quite a few hours on it.
Please don't feel that you have to defend Apple/OS X: I am sure that
it works fine for you, it just didn't work for me. I understand that
it is possible to entertain the notion that this wasn't the fault of
Apple.
OTOH, I don't think they are very keen on open architectures and
relinquishing even a tiny bit of control (the iPhone App Store is a
recent example). If you can live with that, that's fine. I can't.
Cheers,
Tamas
Pascal Costanza
This is actually just one claim.
> Unfortunately, neither claim is warranted.
>
> Switching to Debian and installing the appropriate decoding library
> did solve my problem. I don't know whether that was because
> Debian/Linux uses a different decoding mechanism (software instead of
> hardware?), or whether OS X enforced something which prevented similar
> software doing the same, but I do not care -- the important thing is
> that it worked easily in Debian after a few minutes work, and I could
> not get it to work on OS X, despite asking for advice on several
> forums and spending quite a few hours on it.
Indeed, I cannot judge how easy it was to achieve in Debian, but I
certainly achieved it on OS X. It's true, Apple doesn't have an interest
to make this convenient, because it would harm them.
> Please don't feel that you have to defend Apple/OS X: I am sure that
> it works fine for you, it just didn't work for me. I understand that
> it is possible to entertain the notion that this wasn't the fault of
> Apple.
I'm not defending Apple. For example, the restrictions on what
programming language to use for iPhone/iPad applications are plain
ridiculous.
> OTOH, I don't think they are very keen on open architectures and
> relinquishing even a tiny bit of control (the iPhone App Store is a
> recent example). If you can live with that, that's fine. I can't.
I'm not sure yet what to think about the app store. Apple seems to be
successful in (re)establishing business models for content providers,
which in principle I think is a good thing. Quality work needs time and
skills, and people need to payed for investing time and skills. Apple
seems to be pushing too far in some regards, though. I'm not sure what a
good balance would be.
Harald Hanche-Olsen
> On 2010-05-29 18:33:58 +0100, Harald Hanche-Olsen said:
>
>> Appl's X11 support after the release of Leopard was a disaster.
>
> I think you mean "X11 was a disaster" don't you?
No, I don't. I am well aware that many people think so, but X11 has
served me well over the years, warts and all. I am not really qualified
to speculate on whether or how a networking window system could have
been done better, though.
Andrew Reilly
> + Tim Bradshaw <t...@tfeb.org>:
>> I think you mean "X11 was a disaster" don't you?
>
> No, I don't. I am well aware that many people think so, but X11 has
> served me well over the years, warts and all. I am not really qualified
> to speculate on whether or how a networking window system could have
> been done better, though.
I think that there are quite a few people who don't think that the
"network" part is necessary, given that most machines capable of running
X (well) are also capable of running the whole GUI, and that the
partition should be elsewhere. This was the original premise of Java, as
it grew out of experience with NeWS (which was a PostScript based GUI
that Sun played with for a while --- I can't remember if you could run
NeWS apps over a network, but I can't think of any reason why not.)
The only other networked window system that I've heard of was that of
plan9. I've never used it, but I do like the model, as I've read about
it. The difference from X is that it ran the window manager on the
terminal, and every window was an independent communications link over a
tty mux (pty-style) to some server process on the (remote) host. I don't
know the details of the graphics language that was spoken over these
channels, though. Thinking about it now, it could very easily have been
Display PostScript, and that would have been very fine indeed...
Cheers,
--
Andrew
Tim Bradshaw
> I think that there are quite a few people who don't think that the
> "network" part is necessary, given that most machines capable of running
> X (well) are also capable of running the whole GUI, and that the
> partition should be elsewhere. This was the original premise of Java, as
> it grew out of experience with NeWS (which was a PostScript based GUI
> that Sun played with for a while --- I can't remember if you could run
> NeWS apps over a network, but I can't think of any reason why not.)
I'm fairly sure NeWS stood for *network* extensible window system, and
yes, it could run things over a network. It was a good idea, but it
was slow on anything you could afford and Sun cocked it up in the way
they cocked up almost everything.
Obviously when X was designed, a window system that would run over a
network was pretty useful, because if you had a 3/50 on your desk
(which would run X11 OK after the release that improved performance -
R4 maybe?), but there were much bigger systems in the basement, you
didn't want to run too much on the 3/50.
Nowadays it's still important, but in a way X doesn't provide.
Obviously the Linux fanboys don't see it as important because they live
in a world where compute power is cheap and it's easy to provide on
your desk. (But no one actually cares what they think.) But think
about a bank or something: they have maybe a few tens of thousands of
desktops, all of which have operating systems which are busily
persistently caching data. This is a hideous security & compliance
nightmare for them, so there's basically nothing they'd like more than
to put all of that in some central secure location and remove any
persistent storage from desktops. As an added bonus they then get rid
of a lot of maintenance costs. But what they need, which X can't do,
is to be able to move the whole desktop to another screen, so people
can move around. Of course there are systems which can do this,
they're just not X.
Pascal J. Bourguignon
> Nowadays it's still important, but in a way X doesn't provide.
> Obviously the Linux fanboys don't see it as important because they
> live in a world where compute power is cheap and it's easy to provide
> on your desk. (But no one actually cares what they think.) But think
> about a bank or something: they have maybe a few tens of thousands of
> desktops, all of which have operating systems which are busily
> persistently caching data. This is a hideous security & compliance
> nightmare for them, so there's basically nothing they'd like more than
> to put all of that in some central secure location and remove any
> persistent storage from desktops. As an added bonus they then get rid
> of a lot of maintenance costs. But what they need, which X can't do,
> is to be able to move the whole desktop to another screen, so people
> can move around. Of course there are systems which can do this,
> they're just not X.
This is possible, using xmove.
Tim Bradshaw
> This is possible, using xmove.
Which is basically a proxy X server, right? So yes, you can do it by
virtualising the server, which is how all these things work. I guess
you could argue that virtualising the X server is better than
virtualising the framebuffer (I think technically it might be, but
ractically it's not).
Raffael Cavallaro
> That's the problem with lawyers, they can't say what they mean. It
> would have been much simplier and clearer to have written:
>
> "It is forbidden to run Flash implementations from Adobe on iPhone OS."
>
> or:
>
> "It is forbidden to run any Flash implementation on iPhone OS."
On the contrary, lawyers almost always say precisely what they mean. In
this case, they just mean more than "no flash." They have been careful
to word this as restrictively as possible, to prevent an end-run by
Adobe and others (e.g., rebranding flash, or a flash to objc compiler,
a lua to objective-c compiler, etc.)
Quite clearly, Apple wants devs to:
1. only use the Apple tool chain, or tool chains approved by Apple,
with the languages approved by Apple.
2. leave iPhone OS apps open to inspection, and copying/replacement by
Apple without compensation (yes, that's in the license too, has been
since the very first version).
3. allow Apple to deny or remove their apps from the app store for the
broad range of reasons available to Apple in the agreement (security,
inappropriateness, etc.).
If you submit to these conditions, you get to have Apple market your
app for you to millions of users whose credit cards are already on file
and for whom a purchase is a click away. All in exchange for a 30% cut
that goes to Apple. Many devs consider this a value proposition, so
there are thousands of apps in the app store.
warmest regards,
Ralph
--
Raffael Cavallaro
Rob Warnock
+---------------
| Tamas K Papp wrote:
| > Please don't feel that you have to defend Apple/OS X: I am sure that
| > it works fine for you, it just didn't work for me. I understand that
| > it is possible to entertain the notion that this wasn't the fault of
| > Apple.
|
| I'm not defending Apple. For example, the restrictions on what
| programming language to use for iPhone/iPad applications are plain
| ridiculous.
|
| > OTOH, I don't think they are very keen on open architectures and
| > relinquishing even a tiny bit of control (the iPhone App Store is a
| > recent example). If you can live with that, that's fine. I can't.
|
| I'm not sure yet what to think about the app store. Apple seems to be
| successful in (re)establishing business models for content providers,
| which in principle I think is a good thing. Quality work needs time and
| skills, and people need to payed for investing time and skills. Apple
| seems to be pushing too far in some regards, though. I'm not sure what a
| good balance would be.
Well, they certainly seem to be moving even *farther* "off-balance"
from more recent news:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/01/apple_boots_widgety_apps_from_app_store/
Steve Jobs beheads iPad apps for acting like desktops
'Off with their widgets!'
By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Posted in Developer, 1st June 2010 23:12 GMT
The Apple App Store police are now rejecting iPhone and iPad
applications for behaving like "widgets" and "creating their
own desktops," according to one developer who's busy eating
his previous claims that Apple isn't evil.
...
MyFrame, from Groundhog Software, layers various data and tools atop
digital photos as you view them on the iPad, and three successive
versions of the app were previously approved by the App Store police.
But on Monday, the police called to say they'd changed their minds,
accusing the app of being too widgety. The app is still available from
the store, but Apple has apparently told GroundHog it's coming down.
"They refused to be pinned down to an exact reason, simply stating
that they were doing a cull of any applications that presented widgets
to the user," reads the Aussie's blog post. "All the guy on the phone
would say is how much he liked our application, and how sorry he was,
but there was nothing he could do. All we got out of him was that
Apple no longer liked `widgets' and wanted all widget apps removed."
...
Said developer even wrote directly to Steve Jobs, politely asking "WTF?",
and got back the following one-liner reply from Jobs:
We are not allowing apps that create their own desktops. Sorry.
Also reported here:
http://www.ipodnn.com/articles/10/06/03/company.could.be.working.on.first.party.answer/
Apple culling widget apps from App Store?
09:55 am EDT, Thu June 3, 2010
http://theappleblog.com/2010/06/03/widget-apps-get-the-axe-in-latest-app-store-purge/
Apple yanks widget apps, likely to add feature to iPhone OS 4
By Daniel Eran Dilger
Published: 07:00 PM EST
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/197809/apple_purging_widget_iphone_ipad_apps.html
Apple Purging 'widget' IPhone, IPad Apps
By Dan Moren, Macworld
June 02, 2010 12:50 PM
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <rp...@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
Günther Thomsen
> On 2010-06-03 01:40:17 +0100, Andrew Reilly said:
>
> > I think that there are quite a few people who don't think that the
> > "network" part is necessary, given that most machines capable of running
> > X (well) are also capable of running the whole GUI, and that the
> > partition should be elsewhere. This was the original premise of Java, as
> > it grew out of experience with NeWS (which was a PostScript based GUI
> > that Sun played with for a while --- I can't remember if you could run
> > NeWS apps over a network, but I can't think of any reason why not.)
>
> I'm fairly sure NeWS stood for *network* extensible window system, and
> yes, it could run things over a network. It was a good idea, but it
> was slow on anything you could afford and Sun cocked it up in the way
> they cocked up almost everything.
of a hit and miss, I'd say (Solaris is a sound, even if not
comfortable, OS and ZFS is one of the best production quality single-
node filesystems out there currently).
>
> Obviously when X was designed, a window system that would run over a
> network was pretty useful, because if you had a 3/50 on your desk
> (which would run X11 OK after the release that improved performance -
> R4 maybe?), but there were much bigger systems in the basement, you
> didn't want to run too much on the 3/50.
>
> Nowadays it's still important, but in a way X doesn't provide.
> Obviously the Linux fanboys don't see it as important because they live
> in a world where compute power is cheap and it's easy to provide on
> your desk.
Yeah, that's pretty much the world I live in. Or rather that part of
the world. Compute power to the desk is basically limited by the noise
one can bear. Could you clarify, which part of the world you are
referring to?
> (But no one actually cares what they think.)
Yes, sadly not enough are.
> But think
> about a bank or something: they have maybe a few tens of thousands of
> desktops, all of which have operating systems which are busily
> persistently caching data. This is a hideous security & compliance
> nightmare for them, so there's basically nothing they'd like more than
> to put all of that in some central secure location and remove any
> persistent storage from desktops. As an added bonus they then get rid
> of a lot of maintenance costs. But what they need, which X can't do,
> is to be able to move the whole desktop to another screen, so people
> can move around. Of course there are systems which can do this,
> they're just not X.
I cringe every time I walk into a Citibank or Wellsfargo branch and
see all those PCs running Windows and IE and if I'm not mistaken, even
with internet access (on the very same desktop). I wonder, if they
ever even tried Sun's thin clients (Sun Ray)? It works great for me
(not that I'd care so much about the security aspect of it or the ease
of maintenance, but rather the mobility of the user session as well as
the lack of noise) and it was just made for such (they seem to have
enjoyed moderate success within hospitals, but I'd think banks and
schools are an obvious application too).
Tim Bradshaw
> On the contrary, lawyers almost always say precisely what they mean.
I can tell you from experience in reading, and having a lawyer read, a
number of contracts that this is not the case. Very often things are
worded intentionally vaguely or in an intentionally over-broad way. I
suppose you could argue that this intentional confusion *is* what they
mean, in which case I would agree with you.
Tim Bradshaw
> No, I can't agree there. They had good products, they had flops. More
> of a hit and miss, I'd say (Solaris is a sound, even if not
> comfortable, OS and ZFS is one of the best production quality single-
> node filesystems out there currently).
I think both Solaris and ZFS are good examples of Sun cocking things up
actually. Both are technically very fine products let down by poor
productionisation. [I've elided a long rant/explanation here, which is
unfair on you, but I shouldn't be too rude about the people my income
depends on, I think...]
> Yeah, that's pretty much the world I live in. Or rather that part of
> the world. Compute power to the desk is basically limited by the noise
> one can bear. Could you clarify, which part of the world you are
> referring to?
Any kind of organisation where security compliance is a big deal.
Raffael Cavallaro
> Very often things are worded intentionally vaguely or in an
> intentionally over-broad way. I suppose you could argue that this
> intentional confusion *is* what they mean, in which case I would agree
> with you.
Precisely. Apple has been careful to word the agreement as broadly as
possible (or as restrictively as possible from the devs' perspective)
in order to provide Apple with the maximum possible leeway to
refuse/terminate/replace apps.
The net result is that devs will self-select/self-censor and only
submit apps that use the Apple tool chain in the way that Apple wants
them to use it.