FW: Medley Interlisp in EaaSi?

[Larry Masinter]

FYI …

EaaSi status

also evidence that someone can get up and running in only a few minutes 😊

 

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https://LarryMasinter.net https://interlisp.org

 

From: Ethan Gates <ethan...@hey.com>
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2021 7:39 AM
To: Larry Masinter <l...@acm.org>
Subject: Re: Medley Interlisp in EaaSi?

 

Hi Larry,

This is very interesting, and thanks for bringing it to my attention. I will raise it with our developers on Emulation-as-a-Service/EaaSI in Freiburg when I can, but at first blush (and from getting up and running with Medley myself in only a few minutes) my impression is that it should be possible to run such environments in EaaSI.

You are correct in your comment in that GitHub thread that something like Dark Star would more directly fit with EaaSI's efforts and environments to date (we already have environments based on LCM+L's ContrAlto), because our focus/assumption for preservation purposes is that full hardware emulation will *always* become necessary - eventually. However, I see no reason why a VM emulator like Maiko wouldn't also work. If it runs in a Docker container and generates an X window that we can forward into the EaaSI client, I believe it *should* just be a matter of writing the EaaSI-specific configuration metadata necessary to run in the framework. You can see examples here of our other container-ized emulators if you haven't yet.

The catch is that the Freiburg team is currently near the end of a rehaul of that entire system of managing emulators. The ultimate goal is to make the EaaSI configuration metadata more abstract - exactly to make it simpler to add new emulators to EaaSI, as the current method is still tied very tightly to pieces of the application itself and it's basically not possible to add new emulators without a considerable amount of custom work from the devs. So we probably don't want to try to do this right this moment but it would make a good test case for the new configuration system when it's in production (which, knock on wood, should be later this fall).

If you don't mind, I will circle back to you when I'd be ready to experiment on this with you and talk in more detail. I also wonder if this is something the folks at Computer History Museum would like to see in their EaaSI node; we could coordinate with them. (It was a great disappointment for EaaSI when LCM+L shut down - ever since then, there's not been a lot of discussion or experience in the community regarding environments from the '70s or early '80s, so this would definitely be an interesting use case for us to tackle!)

Best,
Ethan

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Ethan Gates
Archivist, writer, technician, teacher (in some order)
Amherst, MA

 

On August 27, 2021, Larry Masinter <l...@acm.org> wrote:

Hi –

 

I and some old friends (including some who worked on the software 40 years ago)
are working on both preservation and improved access to Interlisp. I wonder
if you might have some thoughts as to

 

make Medley docker configuration fit into EaaS framework · Issue #300 · Interlisp/medley (github.com)

 

Let me know if you’d like to talk.

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https://LarryMasinter.net https://interlisp.org

 

[Larry Masinter]

Thanks for the feedback.  I’d like to have some kind of resource to help people know what to do once they have a stable install

 

 

 

https://LarryMasinter.net https://interlisp.org

 

From: Ethan Gates <ethan...@hey.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2021 6:36 AM
To: Larry Masinter <l...@acm.org>
Subject: Re: Medley Interlisp in EaaSi?

 

Of course, please share my reply.

And yes, I just followed your instructions on the latest medley release, with the linux x86_64 maiko (I use Ubuntu 20.04 as my daily OS). Quite simple. But I admit I don't really have any idea what I'm doing with the Interlisp environment once it's up! I will have to look more at the bibliography when I get a chance - what a wonderful and thorough resource.

Best,
Ethan

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Ethan Gates
Archivist, writer, technician, teacher (in some order)
Amherst, MA

 

On August 30, 2021, Larry Masinter <l...@acm.org> wrote:

Would you mind if I posted your reply to the github issue #300?

 

• from getting up and running with Medley myself in only a few minutes

 

did you use the release? I was working on it just this last weekend.

 

We’ve spoken with CHM folks several times. Hansen Hsu suggested demo/interview but I haven’t been so successful demoing.

We were pursuing with Frank Halasz a demo of the “notecards” system – hypertext before the web or hypercard.

Frank was running notecards.online using an AWS docker instance and Xpra X-server in a browser.

 

Each user would get persistent storage.

 

Another thing we’ve started is a Zotero bibliography. Interlisp | Zotero and exporting via json to https://interlisp.org/bibliography HTML

…

 

[John Cowan]

To parody a classic Smalltalk saying:  if (cons a b) works, everything works.

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[Larry Masinter]

What do you think of sending people to Medley-Primer.pdf (interlisp.org) ?

(cons a b) should give an error.

(cons ‘a ‘b) would be better

 

 

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https://LarryMasinter.net https://interlisp.org

[John Cowan]

Oops, yes,  I haven't looked at the Primer, but the tile is encouraging.