pop-forum getting rid of ALL the special ved characters in documentation files
Aaron Sloman
pop-11 for teaching. One factor that I have been aware of for a long
time, but now seems to have reached the stage where it could be a
fatal obstacle to reversal of the decline of pop-11 use, is the
special character encoding used in a large proportion of REF, HELP
and DOC files (including all the popvision documentation).
If I had still been at sussex when that started I would have opposed
it vigorously, but I wasn't and by the time I learnt about the
change, the process had gone a long way and I no longer had any say.
The issue has become very serious since last week a conference was
held here on "Computing at School" and it seems clear to me that
there is an important need for a language with a great deal of
teaching documentation that bridges the gap between the purely
graphical teaching packages that make it fun to assemble programs by
moving components around with a mouse and then making them run,
which I think cannot teach some of the important ways of thinking
about structure and process, and the languages that are widely used
for practical applications, such as Java, C++, Perl, Python, etc.
(Python seems closest to Pop-11 in this middle ground, but lacks
many of its important features.)
It became clear from talking to people at the conference, and
exchanging email messages afterwards, that there are people who
would be willing to investigate use of Pop-11 for teaching but do
not wish to have to use a special editor, whatever the benefits.
So although the Emacs conversion package will help Emacs users (who
refused long ago to convert to Ved) there are other people who would
rather do their programming in a browser with support for editing or
in some other standalone text editor, even if that means copying and
pasting program code to the pop11 prompt to get individual
procedures or commands compiled, or saving a file then giving a
'load' command to get a whole file compiled.
The ideal solution would be to provide a browser-based editor with
all the functionality of Ved, including being able to hand text to
the compiler, the ability to keep track of changes to search lists,
so that teach, help, showlib, and other commands work properly, etc.
That might require re-implementing most of Ved in Java??
That would also provide excellent support for use of pop-11
remotely, though there would still be a problem about running
graphical programs, unless someone has a browser add-on that
emulates an X server.
Anyhow I can't see any of that happening in the near future.
So in order to try to save pop-11 from death by editor
incompatibility I propose to convert all the documentation as
proposed above. Fortunately the 'stripvedfile' library that John
Gibson provided makes it not too difficult to convert lots of files.
(None of the documentation I have ever written makes
any use of the new character codes: I just went on using the old
format As far as I can tell that has not interfered with its
usability even if it looks old fashioned.)
Examples of already stripped versions of standard files can be found
here, if you want to see the effects:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/popref/
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/lispref
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/lisphelp/
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/pmlhelp/
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/prologhelp/
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/prologteach/
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/popxhelp/
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/popxnews
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/popxref/
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/popxteach/
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/popxvedhelp/
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/popxvedref/
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/popxvedteach/
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/popvision/help/
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/popvision/teach/
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/doc/objectclassdocs/
These stripped files, unlike the originals are actually readable in
web browsers (my original reason for stripping them in 2001).
So instead of making these available to people who don't like the
standard format, I'll make this the standard format, and make the
old versions available to people who want it.
Does anyone have any objection to what I am proposing?
Does anyone think it a good idea?
Does anyone think it a bad idea? Why?
Ian Morgan
As you mentioned the format is a bit old fashioned, so it might be good to automatically go through and add standard CSS, as well as edit the files to hyperlink both within the same files (as Enter G once did) and between files (which I can't remember Enter G doing).
It would also be good to have a standard method of accessing the files through a home page, using some sort of search. I think that the PHP site (http://www.php.net/) is a good example of what good documentation is about.
I haven't used pop11 for quite some time (since I was doing the course at birmingham in fact) but I would be more than happy to help put something together if you think it's required. Any subsequent editor in JAVA could then connect to the documentation URL and provide a summary of a function, or concept.
Best wishes
Ian.
From: Aaron Sloman <A.Sl...@cs.bham.ac.uk>
To: pop-...@cs.bham.ac.uk
Sent: Sunday, 28 June, 2009 0:12:13
Subject: pop-forum getting rid of ALL the special ved characters in documentation files
Nico Aragón
2009/6/28 Aaron Sloman <A.Sl...@cs.bham.ac.uk>:
> The ideal solution would be to provide a browser-based editor with
> all the functionality of Ved, including being able to hand text to
> the compiler, the ability to keep track of changes to search lists,
> so that teach, help, showlib, and other commands work properly, etc.
It shouldn't be too difficult to give a simple web interface to
Poplog. It just takes to write a CGI or PHP page that executes Poplog
and communicates with it through pipes. For single user it must be
easy.
> That might require re-implementing most of Ved in Java??
The textarea HTML widget provides basic text capabilities. I believe
that it could be extended with JavaScript or called from some editors
through HTTP.
> So in order to try to save pop-11 from death by editor
> incompatibility I propose to convert all the documentation as
> proposed above. Fortunately the 'stripvedfile' library that John
> Gibson provided makes it not too difficult to convert lots of files.
Being plain text, the pages could be put in a wiki. Could the
"stripper" program convert links to HTML format?
--
saludos,
Nico Aragón
Anthony Worrall
Some time ago I wrote some cgi script in pop11 (compiled) which
converted ved help files into simple html.
See http://www.poplog.cs.reading.ac.uk/poplog/
If any wants the code they are more than welcome to have it.
My ultimate aim was to make ved understand subset of html or XML to make
it easier to do this conversion.
Cheers
Anthony Worrall
ITNG
School of Systems Engineering
University of Reading
> The ideal solution would be to provide a browser-based editor with
> all the functionality of Ved, including being able to hand text to
> the compiler, the ability to keep track of changes to search lists,
> so that teach, help, showlib, and other commands work properly, etc.
>
> That might require re-implementing most of Ved in Java??
>
> That would also provide excellent support for use of pop-11
> remotely, though there would still be a problem about running
> graphical programs, unless someone has a browser add-on that
> emulates an X server.
>
> Anyhow I can't see any of that happening in the near future.
>
> So in order to try to save pop-11 from death by editor
> incompatibility I propose to convert all the documentation as
> proposed above. Fortunately the 'stripvedfile' library that John
> Gibson provided makes it not too difficult to convert lots of files.
>
Aaron Sloman
I have created an experimental release with all the documentation
stripped (unless I missed some!) here
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/v15.63
with the usual get-and-install scripts in anyone wants to try that:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/v15.63/get-and-install-v15.63-poplog
fetch and install poplog in the default location
/usr/local/poplog
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/v15.63/get-and-install-v15.63-poplog-here
fetch and install poplog in the directory below the one
from which the get-and-install-here script is invoked.
I shall later try producing a version of v15.63-amd64 poplog, but
that will depend on my copying it to a 64bit machine to recompile
the $popsrc/initial.p with the new pop_internal_version (15.6300)
Ian Morgan <kangaro...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Certainly I think the language lives or dies partly as a result of
> the community and the documentation, so any degree of online
> documentation would make pop11 much more usable for people to learn
> the language as part of an academic course, and also for those
> wanting to improve the community, create additions to the language
> and become aware of the language in the first place.
There has been a lot of online documentation, but most of it has
never worked in a web browser or text editors apart from ved and
emacs with the vedemacs package. Anthony's html version has been
available for some time, but is based on an earlier version of
poplog and since then the documentation has been updated and
reorganised.
> As you mentioned the format is a bit old fashioned, so it might be
> good to automatically go through and add standard CSS, as well as
> edit the files to hyperlink both within the same files (as Enter G
> once did) and between files (which I can't remember Enter G doing).
That's what happens on the Reading Poplog Online site:
http://www.poplog.cs.reading.ac.uk/
(Unfortunately it uses frames, which looks quite nice, though I
always avoid them because they make bookmarking difficult and can
screw up other things.)
> It would also be good to have a standard method of accessing the
> files through a home page, using some sort of search. I think that
> the PHP site (http://www.php.net/) is a good example of what good
> documentation is about.
Currently I am treating this as the 'home' page,
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/freepoplog.html
But my style is not the best and I don't have much time to do a
really good job. I have, however, recently drastically modified this
part:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/freepoplog.html#whatspoplog
And inserted a section on teaching materials with a lot of links (to
stripped versions of files):
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/freepoplog.html#teaching
It also links to Waldek's documentation, wikipedia entries, the
Computers and Thought book, the Pop-11 primer, and the Reading web
site.
Unfortunately www.poplog.org has disappeared completely (it's not
known to DNS servers) and because it disabled robots it has not been
stored on the 'wayback' web site. I should have found a way to make
a mirror of the bits that don't mirror the bham site.
The current list of documentation files linked to (mainly intended
to interest people who are considering using Pop-11 for teaching, at
various levels) is still somewhat ad hoc, but gives a feel for the
variety of things available that could be relevant to teaching.
If someone is aware of teaching resources that should be linked from
there but haven't been please let me know. Ideally there should be a
collection of sample "syllabus structures" composed of existing
documentation (plus relevant libraries).
> I haven't used pop11 for quite some time (since I was doing the
> course at birmingham in fact) but I would be more than happy to help
> put something together if you think it's required. Any subsequent
> editor in JAVA could then connect to the documentation URL and
> provide a summary of a function, or concept.
Thanks for the offer. We really need a web site that allows pop-11
code to be edited and run, with access to the documentation, which
can be used either to run poplog on a remote machine (as already
happens with the Birmingham Eliza
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/eliza/
)
Or can be used to run poplog on the local machine.
I.e. we should allow people to replace Ved/XVed with a editing
enabled browser as Nico suggested.
Textual interaction would not be too hard (as in eliza), but
allowing graphical commands (using rc_graphic or rclib for example)
would probably be very difficult (except for users who alread have a
local X server running).
I believe those that are available for Windows are not cheap (e.g.
eXceed costs over $500).
Aaron
Aaron Sloman
"Anthony Worrall" wrote:
> Some time ago I wrote some cgi script in pop11 (compiled) which
> converted ved help files into simple html.
> See http://www.poplog.cs.reading.ac.uk/poplog/
>
> If any wants the code they are more than welcome to have it.
I think the code is available on the Birmingham site here:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/poponline/
But I don't know if that version is still up to date.
> My ultimate aim was to make ved understand subset of html or XML to make
> it easier to do this conversion.
Steve Leach did something like this:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/xml-dist
Matthias Scheutz one developed pop-11 code to create html displays
reporting on progress of distributed evolutionary programs run on a
grid. He is now at the University of Indiana, Bloomington.
Aaron
Aaron Sloman
Nico Arag�n wrote:
> 2009/6/28 Aaron Sloman <A.Sl...@cs.bham.ac.uk>:
> > The ideal solution would be to provide a browser-based editor with
> > all the functionality of Ved, including being able to hand text to
> > the compiler, the ability to keep track of changes to search lists,
> > so that teach, help, showlib, and other commands work properly, etc.
>
> It shouldn't be too difficult to give a simple web interface to
> Poplog. It just takes to write a CGI or PHP page that executes Poplog
> and communicates with it through pipes. For single user it must be
> easy.
Doing one command at a time is very easy (as in the pop-11 eliza
program).
Maintaining state, including remembering which documentation and
program library search lists have been extended, is harder, though
it must be possible, as many interactive web sites already do that.
Brian Logan had to do this to make Emacs work properly wiht Polog. I
can't remember exactly how he did it, but I know that one thing we
discussed was to make Emacs interrogate Pop-11 whenever it was asked
to fetch a documentation file or obey a 'showlib' command.
Essentially that's what Ved does. I assume a browser editor could do
the same, in order to compute the url required to obey a 'help',
'ref', 'teach' or 'showlib' etc. command, etc. (Also 'src',
'sourcefile' 'showinclude', ....)
> > That might require re-implementing most of Ved in Java??
>
> The textarea HTML widget provides basic text capabilities. I believe
> that it could be extended with JavaScript or called from some editors
> through HTTP.
I suspect the required technology exists, but would require more
work than anyone has spare time for. I did try a few times to get
funding from a research council in the UK to make poplog more
usable, and more portable, but did not get far.
> > So in order to try to save pop-11 from death by editor
> > incompatibility I propose to convert all the documentation as
> > proposed above. Fortunately the 'stripvedfile' library that John
> > Gibson provided makes it not too difficult to convert lots of files.
>
> Being plain text, the pages could be put in a wiki. Could the
> "stripper" program convert links to HTML format?
This is what Anthony has done. I have not had time to do that, but
in any case I wanted a version that still worked in Ved. Changing
Ved to interpret html would be possible, but non-trivial, I think.
I suppose it could be do that for all but program files.
Anthony Worrall
You can use the following but then you lose the search option.
http://www.poplog.cs.reading.ac.uk/poplog/popbook/index.html
Some browsers allow you to bookmark the contents of a frame.
Anthony
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Aaron Sloman [mailto:A.Sl...@cs.bham.ac.uk]
> Sent: 30 June 2009 00:19
> To: pop-...@cs.bham.ac.uk
> Subject: pop-forum Re: getting rid of ALL the special ved characters
> indocumentation files
>
Nico Aragón
2009/6/30 Aaron Sloman <A.Sl...@cs.bham.ac.uk>:
> Doing one command at a time is very easy (as in the pop-11 eliza
> program).
>
> Maintaining state, including remembering which documentation and
> program library search lists have been extended, is harder, though
> it must be possible, as many interactive web sites already do that.
There is a simpler option: a single-user HTTP server that executes
Poplog and connects to its standard input and output, while it
communicates with the user through the HTML interface of a browser.
I'll give it a try with Python.
--
saludos,
Nico Aragón
Jeff Best
At OpenPoplog we have a prototype web server for Poplog (created by
Jonathan Cunningham and extended by myself) that can easily handle a
single user connected via a browser. It does not yet scale up well to
handle many simultaneous connections, and at the moment, we have only
used it to serve up static content, although I have added a primitive
CGI interface with support for invoking PHP or Python. It would be
fairly straight-forward to extend to cater for processing Pop11 code
dynamically, but a more generic CGI mechanism is required so that
external mechanisms can be enabled and disabled through a configuration
process, rather than having to modify the code.
There are a number of approaches to providing web-based Pop11
functionality. With the current webserve.p we allow redefinition of
various server functions. I have been exploring the extension of this to
provide replaceable hook functions at each stage of request processing
and response production, so that we can support external modules. My
initial approach for this has been to work towards an object-oriented
redesign of the entire server using objectclass, although there may be a
simpler route that will work with the existing procedural design.. I
have also experimented with a XUL-based client interface that will run
in Mozilla-class browsers, so that web-runner shells can encapsulate
server-based Pop11 applications.
A second approach to integrating a web application with the Pop11 server
is to provide a CGI module that can process Pop11 web page scripts, in
the same manner that the Apache php module operates on php pages, but as
I suggested earlier, this ought to work with a yet-to-be-written generic
module mechanism.
Both approaches are probably required, since external modules will need
to hook into various server procedures in order to work properly, and
client applications that support the dynamic creation of Pop11 code will
need a Pop11 module to cater for their needs while applications that
embed the web server and redefine its hook procedures will be more
suited to presenting captive content to the user.
I will try to find some time to make sure that the web server code is
checked into the SourceForge repository.
Regards,
Jeff
Waldek Hebisch
> I have been talking to various people about the possibility of using
> pop-11 for teaching. One factor that I have been aware of for a long
> time, but now seems to have reached the stage where it could be a
> fatal obstacle to reversal of the decline of pop-11 use, is the
> special character encoding used in a large proportion of REF, HELP
> and DOC files (including all the popvision documentation).
> all the functionality of Ved, including being able to hand text to
> the compiler, the ability to keep track of changes to search lists,
> so that teach, help, showlib, and other commands work properly, etc.
>
> That might require re-implementing most of Ved in Java??
>
Some remarks:
1) It should be possible to have reversible convertion between
html (better xml) and current Ved files. That way release could
contain files in form usable by modern tools and Ved could
read them like the old ones (produce current intenal form on
reading and store xml on output). Note: I do not speak
about reading arbitrary html files -- simply being able to
read back what is written in html or xml form. It is more
than few hours of work, but should be doable in few days.
2) I would say that supporting Ved-like functionality in other
editor is easy. Namely, as an text editor Ved is very
simple-minded, most currect editors can do more. Only
special thing about Ved is it connection to Poplog
system. However, given appropriate communication
protocol modern editors can connect to external programs
and invoke appropriate operation. So one simply needs to
identify basic operation which Ved uses (like passing a text
block to the compiler or searching trough help). Than one needs
to expose those operations via appropriate communication protocol.
In other words, all Poplog specific things would happen in
persistent running Poplog system. Now, do not get me wrong:
while easy such editor integration requires work...
--
Waldek Hebisch
heb...@math.uni.wroc.pl
Aaron Sloman
[AS]
> > Doing one command at a time is very easy (as in the pop-11 eliza
> > program).
> >
> > Maintaining state, including remembering which documentation and
> > program library search lists have been extended, is harder, though
> > it must be possible, as many interactive web sites already do that.
[NA]
> There is a simpler option: a single-user HTTP server that executes
> Poplog and connects to its standard input and output, while it
> communicates with the user through the HTML interface of a browser.
> I'll give it a try with Python.
I think various people have tried this in the past (see Jeff Best's
message responding to this). I have just remembered the web-server
that is part of Matthias (and colleagues) SWAGES package, documented
in
http://hri.cogs.indiana.edu/publications/scheutzetal06alifeswages.pdf
scheutz, matthias; schermerhorn, paul; connaughton, ryan; and
dingler, aaron (2006)
SWAGES--an extendable parallel grid experimentation system for
large-scale agent-based alife simulations
In proceedings of the 10th international conference on the
Simulation and synthesis of living systems, Bloomington, IN,
June 2006, 412--418
Code for the SWAGES package used to be available on their web site
but for some reason is not.
However it is here:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cosy/papers/scheutz/swages
See the file
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cosy/papers/scheutz/swages/src/webserver.p
It wasn't intended as a general interface to the pop-11 compiler,
but as a way of allowing users of the swages package running pop11
programs distributed on a linux grid to monitor progress of the
programs. They all reported to the server which managed the html
display.
I have never tried it out. I should check whether it is worth adding
as a new package to Poplog. (It would need a startup file to extend
seach lists, instead of just copying files to shared directories,
as in the past.)
Aaron
Anthony Worrall
Aaron Sloman
from a Windows machine using a web browser:
> Textual interaction would not be too hard (as in eliza), but
> allowing graphical commands (using rc_graphic or rclib for example)
> would probably be very difficult (except for users who alread have a
> local X server running).
>
> I believe those that are available for Windows are not cheap (e.g.
> eXceed costs over $500).
Since then things have developed.
Our department is willing to allow school teachers who wish to
experiment with remote access to a linux machine from a windows or
from a lightweight local linux machine, to access one of our linux
servers, for an experimental period.
I hope to be talking about some of the things that can be done with
Poplog/pop-11 at the Open Source Schools project "Unconference" on
Monday 20th July, in Nottingham
http://opensourceschools.org.uk/unconference09
If anyone knows of a school in the uk that might be interested in
trying this remotely please ask them to email me. It's not only
poplog that would be available.
NB:
I have learnt that there is a tool called Xming that is freely
available for use on Windows, in conjunction wiht an ssh client,
like PuTTy, to access a remote linux machine.
Provided that the ssh connection is set to permit X11 tunnelling,
Xming acts as an X11 server and when I tried this on my wife's
machine, logged in either to my linux PC at home or (via 20MB/sec
cable modem connection) to a university linux machine, it worked
extremely well. XVed worked as expected, and all the RCLIB demos
shown in this file worked
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/figs/rclib/
as well as SimAgent demos
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/figs/simagent
There was a slight delay when opening a new window, but once it was
on the screen, interactions with it, and drawing on it were pretty
fast. Of course, this depends on the connection speed and could be
painful with a slower link.
XMing can be downloaded from here:
http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/
A detailed tutorial on how to install and set up Xming is here:
http://gears.aset.psu.edu/hpc/guides/xming/
They recommend installing PuTTY separately from xming.
One advantage of having PuTTY separately (or the SSH Secure Shell
Client) is that for each remote host to be accessed you can run
PuTTY, set up a profile, and save it.
Moreover, it is important to ensure that you use PuTTY's
configuration options (on left), expand SSH, go to X11, select
Enable X11 forwarding
MIT Magic-cookie
as shown in the section of the above tutorial headed
Configure X11 Forwarding in SSH Clients
(then go back and save the configuration for future use).
If instead you use the SSH client, select "Tunnel X11 Connections"
as shown in the tutorial.
The basic idea is that if you have Xming running (it shows on the
task bar) you can log in securely to a remote Linux/Unix machine
using PuTTY or SSH, then once logged in you can run an xterm window
and run graphical programs on the remote machine that will use the
local display (via Xming).
(That's the great benefit of the X Window System).
=========================
I have heard that there may be another possibility that does not
require a special tool like Xming to be installed locally, but uses
only a Java-enabled web browser. Namely if there is a VNC server on
the remote machine, a user can access it remotely via a web browser,
which will then fetch and run a java script that emulates an x11
server.
Has anyone tried using VNC like that? Can different users access the
same vnc server and have their interactions kept separate? (I know
that for teaching purposs VNC can support different users seeing
exactly the same display, but that's not what would be desirable for
remote access to poplog for learning progamming.)
My impression is that doing things that way does not give the
security benefit of using ssh plus X11 tunnelling, but I don't
understand enough about VNC to be sure.
The great advantage of something like Xming is that it allows a
windows PC to be used simultaneously for accessing a remote linux
server and running windows programs as usual (e.g. email). there is
no need to reboot and no need to install a VM system with linux
running in it.