[Announce] Pico Lisp System
Alexander Burger
the Pico Lisp system is being released under the GPL. Though it is in existence
and use since almost 15 years now, it was never distributed in a formal way
(just given freely to anyone interested).
The newest versions will always be available at
http://www.software-lab.de/down.html
Pico Lisp compiles and runs only under Linux :-)
About Pico Lisp:
Pico Lisp can be viewed from two different aspects: As a general purpose
programming language, and a dedicated application server framework.
(1) As a programming language, Pico Lisp provides a 1-to-1 mapping of a clean
and powerful Lisp derivate, to a simple and efficient virtual machine. It
supports persistent objects as a first class data type, resulting in a database
system of Entity/Relation classes and a Prolog-like query language tightly
integrated into the system.
The virtual machine was designed to be
Simple
The internal data structure should be as simple as possible. Only one
single data structure is used to build all higher level constructs.
Unlimited
There are no limits imposed upon the language due to limitations of the
virtual machine architecture. That is, there is no upper bound in symbol
name length, number digit counts, or data structure and buffer sizes,
except for the total memory size of the host machine.
Dynamic
Behavior should be as dynamic as possible ("run"-time vs. "compile"-time).
All decisions are delayed till runtime where possible. This involves
matters like memory management, dynamic symbol binding, and late method
binding.
Practical
Pico is not just a toy of theoretical value. Pico is used since 1988 in
actual application development, research and production.
The language inherits the major advantages of classical Lisp systems like
- Dynamic data types and structures
- Formal equivalence of code and data
- Functional programming style
- An interactive environment
Pico Lisp is very different from any other Lisp dialect. This is partly due to
the above design principles, and partly due to its long development history
since 1984.
(2) As an application server framework, Pico Lisp provides for
Database Management
Index trees
Nested transactions
Object local indexes
Entity/Relation classes
Pilog (Pico Prolog) queries
Multi-user synchronization
DB Garbage collection
User Interface
Browser GUI
HTML/WML generation
Applet I/O
Application Server
Process management
Process family communication
XML I/O
Import/export
User administration
Internationalization
Security
Object linkage
Java reflection
Postscript/Printing
Pico Lisp is not an IDE. Program development is done at the console, using bash,
vim and the Lisp interpreter.
The only type of GUI supported for applications is through a browser via HTML.
This makes the client side completely platform idependent. Applets are created
dynamically. They connect back to the Pico server and establish an interactive
user interface frontend, while all application logic runs on the server. Each
key press or mouse click is propagated to the server and can cause immediate
actions like in a local desktop application.
The GUI is deeply integrated with - and generated dynamically from - the
application's data model. Because the application logic runs on the server,
multiple users can view and modify the same database object without conflicts,
everyone seeing changes done by other users on her screen immediately due to the
internal process and database synchronization.
Hannah Schroeter
Alexander Burger <a...@software-lab.de> wrote:
>[...]
>Pico Lisp compiles and runs only under Linux :-)
^^^
And what's so nice about being non-portable?
>[...]
Kind regards,
Hannah.
Alexander Burger
> Hello!
> Alexander Burger <a...@software-lab.de> wrote:
>>[...]
>>Pico Lisp compiles and runs only under Linux :-)
> ^^^
> And what's so nice about being non-portable?
All you need is Linux :-)
Actually, Pico Lisp is quite portable. Originally developed on the
Macintosh, it was later ported to SCO Unix and MS-DOS. The current
version, however, makes heavy use of the Unix system interface.
It will probably run on any flavor of Unix if you fix a single location
(a non-standard feature of 'select' under Linux). I'll help if somebody
wants to give it a try.
- Alex <a...@software-lab.de>
Paolo Amoroso
> Alexander Burger <a...@software-lab.de> wrote:
> >[...]
>
> >Pico Lisp compiles and runs only under Linux :-)
> ^^^
>
> And what's so nice about being non-portable?
You should ask those who develop software that runs only under Windows.
Paolo
--
EncyCMUCLopedia * Extensive collection of CMU Common Lisp documentation
http://www.paoloamoroso.it/ency/README
Hannah Schroeter
Paolo Amoroso <amo...@mclink.it> wrote:
>> >Pico Lisp compiles and runs only under Linux :-)
>> ^^^
>> And what's so nice about being non-portable?
>You should ask those who develop software that runs only under Windows.
I asked the original poster not only because of the non-portability
itself, but because of the smiley on it. I don't think non-portability
is something to especially smile about.
Kind regards,
Hannah.
Hannah Schroeter
Alexander Burger <a...@software-lab.de> wrote:
>[...]
>It will probably run on any flavor of Unix if you fix a single location
>(a non-standard feature of 'select' under Linux). I'll help if somebody
>wants to give it a try.
Ah. Sounds much better than "only on Linux", and the smiley on it.
Maybe not now, but perhaps sometimes I can give it a try on OpenBSD/x86.
>- Alex <a...@software-lab.de>
Kind regards,
Hannah.
PS: You could set a title on your web page. And you could perhaps use
a better download URL so the name suggestion of the average browser
make more sense.
Marc Spitzer
>
> I asked the original poster not only because of the non-portability
> itself, but because of the smiley on it. I don't think non-portability
> is something to especially smile about.
Well some non portability is a good thing, VB & C# only work on windows
and that is bad enough. Just think how much irritation they would cause
on fun OS's.
marc
Christopher Browne
Actually, that's not quite true, at least not for C#...
[cbbrowne@chvatal:cbbrowne] mint
mint 0.18, the Mono ECMA CLI interpreter, (C) 2001, 2002 Ximian, Inc.
Usage is: mint [options] executable args...
[cbbrowne@chvatal:cbbrowne]
And I believe there's an officially-Micro****-sanctioned rewrite of a
bunch of .NET runtime (e.g. - runtime for C#) for FreeBSD...
--
output = ("cbbrowne" "@cbbrowne.com")
http://cbbrowne.com/info/multiplexor.html
C is almost a real language. (see assembler) Even the name sounds like
it's gone through an optimizing compiler. Get rid of all of those
stupid brackets and we'll talk. (see LISP)