More history
14 views
Skip to first unread message
Arun Welch
Feb 28, 2024, 8:43:20 PM2/28/24
to Lisp Core
Paulo’s playing around with Lafite prompted me to dig through some of my old mail files, wherein I found the following discussion of history from the info-1100 newsgroup.
Michel Denber’s response has very detailed dates for releases, except for Harmony.
*start*
03011 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 07:37:51 1991
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA11515; Tue, 29 Oct 91 07:24:29 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA11400; Tue, 29 Oct 91 07:10:20 -0500
Received: from USENET by news.cis.ohio-state.edu with netnews
for info...@cis.ohio-state.edu (info...@cis.ohio-state.edu);
contact use...@news.cis.ohio-state.edu if you have questions.
To: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Date: 29 Oct 91 10:38:30 GMT
Message-Id: <1991Oct29....@gorm.ruc.dk>
Organization: Roskilde Universitetscenter, Danmark
From: ba...@gorm.ruc.dk (Anders Gilbro Nielsen)
Subject: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
In my master thesis I need an appendix describing the history of the
Interlisp programming environment, but I'm not quite sure of what
versions have been around and what they actually contained of new
additions to the environment. But here is the history (in short) as I see it.
It's supposed to end up in a time-line schematic shape. I probably
got a lot of things wrong, and I got some questions too. So if anyone can
help my it would be much appreciated.
History of Interlisp:
The Interlisp programming environment was originally introduced as a text-
based environment, which is described in article "The Interlisp Programming
Environment" by Warren Teitelman and Larry Masinter, Computer, 14:4, 1981.
Later on a graphical user interface was added to the environment, which made
especially the structure editor easier to use. The environmet was at this
point truly incremental since any changes made by the structure editor was
made directly in the internal program describtion. The system - now named
Interlisp-D - is described by B.A. Sheil in article "Power Tools for Pro-
grammers", Datamation Magazine, 1983.
There were a couple of Interlisp-D versions around. For example the Koto
release and the Lyrics release. In the latest version CommonLisp was
integrated, which ment that the editor - SEdit - not anymore was a
structure editor. Now the Lisp-code was parsed following an editsession,
giving almost the same functionality as the structure editor. All other tools
were the same.
Now the questions are:
Am I wrong somewhere?
When and in which version was CommonLisp integrated?
What was the difference between the Koto and Lyrics Release?
When was the graphical user interface added and what is the name of the
interface?
What is happening to the Interlisp Environment these days. Is annything
similar coming up?
Any references to articles containing the answers are also welcome.
Please e-mail or repply to the newslist.
Thank you.
Anders Gilbro Nielsen
Roskilde University Centre
Computer Science Dept.
House 20.1
4000 Roskilde, Denmark
E-mail: ba...@gorm.ruc.dk
PS. I regret any spelling errors. I'm not used to write in English.
*start*
02073 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 09:31:23 1991
Received: by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA17303; Tue, 29 Oct 91 09:31:08 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: from mimsy.umd.edu by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA17298; Tue, 29 Oct 91 09:31:05 -0500
Received: by mimsy.UMD.EDU (5.61/UMIACS-0.9/04-05-88)
id AA09656; Tue, 29 Oct 91 09:31:02 -0500
Received: from rattler by rattler!cs.umd.EDU (4.0/SMI-4.0)
id AA03467; Tue, 29 Oct 91 09:21:23 EST
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 09:21:23 EST
From: rattler!ba...@cs.UMD.EDU (Bob Bane)
Message-Id: <9110291421.AA03467@rattler!cs.umd.EDU>
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
In-Reply-To: ba...@gorm.ruc.dk (Anders Gilbro Nielsen)'s message of 29 Oct 91 10:38:30 GMT
To: ba...@gorm.ruc.dk (Anders Gilbro Nielsen)
Cc: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
I've only hacked Interlisp since 1985, but I was there when Lyric was
implemented. The major difference between it and Koto was Common Lisp;
the most visible change was the addition of packages.
Your description of SEdit is half-right; SEdit IS a structure editor,
but Common Lisp semantics require a structure mung between the code you
edit and the code that is executed (primarily comment-stripping). If
you REALLY want to, you can use pure Common Lisp text files in post-Koto
Interlisp.
These days, the environment is named Medley, is sold by Venue, and is
actually being sold profitably for the first time in its existence. It
has been ported to many Un*x workstations via an emulator that runs the
same compiled-code format as the D-machines. Possible future extensions
include making the Interlisp window system an interface to X windows,
and ports to non-Un*x platforms.
Your English is excellent; MUCH better than my Danish would be under the
circumstances. Could you send Venue a copy of your thesis when it's
finished? Thanks!
Venue
1549 Industrial Road
San Carlos CA 94070
USA
- Bob Bane
*start*
03952 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 10:10:18 1991
Received: by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA17751; Tue, 29 Oct 91 10:10:12 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: from alpha.Xerox.COM by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA17743; Tue, 29 Oct 91 10:10:09 -0500
Received: from The_Grouch.Wbst129.Xerox.xns by alpha.xerox.com via XNS id <11730>; Tue, 29 Oct 1991 07:09:52 -0800
X-Ns-Transport-Id: 0000AA006D79FE5E2CC2
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1991 07:09:32 -0800
From: Michel_Den...@xerox.com
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
In-Reply-To: "ba...@gorm.ruc:dk:Xerox's message of 29 Oct 91 05:38 EST"
To: ba...@gorm.ruc.dk
Cc: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Message-Id: <91Oct29.070...@alpha.xerox.com>
"There were a couple of Interlisp-D versions around. For example the
Koto release and the Lyrics release"
More than a couple. At first, new releases had no formal names - they were
simply announced via mail messages. For example:
-------
Date: 24 FEB 1982 2139-PST
From: MASINTER.PA
Subject: Newer version of Interlisp-D available
To: LispUsers^
A slightly newer version of the Interlisp-D system has been stored on file
servers Phylum, Indigo, Rose and Cask, including, on the directory
<Lisp>Current>, the files
Lisp.run, Lisp.sysout, DolphinLispMC.Run.
-------
I believe the first named release was called "ConBrio", dating to mid-1982.
This was followed by "Wind", which was a pre-release version of "Chorus", which
was released 1/13/83. Chrous recoded most of the low-level BCPL code in Lisp.
The window package was completely revised and floating point moved to
microcode.
The next release was Fugue.0 (6/30/83). Fugue.1 was never released. Fugue.2
came out 8/18/83, and Fugue.3 came out 10/13/83. Fugue marked the addition of
multi-processing and NS support. Chat and DEdit were promoted from Lispusers
to the base system.
The next major release was Carol, on Jan. 27, 1984. This included a local file
system for Dandelions. Carol.1 came out 3/2/84. The official Carol
announcement was June 21, 1984.
Next came Intermezzo, in early 1985. Intermezzo included a new TEdit format,
NS Chat, and expanded vmem to 32 meg. By this point, the documentation was
starting to look "official". Koto came out later in 1985 and included the
first edition of the integrated IRM (until then, the documentation was the old
Interlisp-10 manual of Oct. 1978, plus a "D" supplement.
Lyric came out in early 1987 and had major changes, including a compiler
incompatibility. Compiled files were renamed ".LCOM" from ".DCOM". Fonts and
streams underwent major revisions too in Lyric. Common Lisp was included.
SEdit was included (although it was available as a Lispusers package for Koto).
The language was now called "Xerox Lisp".
Around that time, Xerox spun off the Lisp group into the ill-fated Envos Corp.,
which released Medley. Medley 1.1 came out in January 1989, 1.2 last year, and
2.0 just a few months ago. Medley was the first release to run on Suns. I
understand that there will be no more new names, just incremented version
numbers.
"When was the graphical user interface added and what is the name of
the interface?"
I believe this goes clear back to the very beginning of time, i.e. the
legendary Alto Lisp (I tried loading it once, but couldn't get it to run.
Larry Masinter tells me it did work, although it had performance problems - not
too surprising considering the Alto-II had only 256K memory and 4 meg. of
disk). The basic window system as it exists today was certainly all there by
1982 when the 1100 (Dolphin) came out. The graphic interface is basic to the
system - I don't think it has a separate name. In the Sept. 1982 Interlisp-D
User's Guide, it's simply called "graphics display and window system".
- Michel
*start*
00924 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 10:42:08 1991
Received: by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA18179; Tue, 29 Oct 91 10:41:51 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: from CAMIS.Stanford.EDU by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA18171; Tue, 29 Oct 91 10:41:48 -0500
Received: by CAMIS.Stanford.EDU (4.1/inc-1.0)
id AA19236; Tue, 29 Oct 91 07:41:35 PST
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1991 7:41:35 PST
From: Timothy Koschmann <t...@camis.stanford.edu>
To: ba...@gorm.ruc.dk
Cc: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Subject: RE: History of Interlisp
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.68...@camis.Stanford.EDU>
Anders,
I briefly covered some of this history in my Lisp text ("The Common Lisp
Companion", New York: John Wiley, 1990). You might want to check out
the first chapter and also the bibliography.
Tim
*start*
01045 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 11:15:56 1991
Received: by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA18535; Tue, 29 Oct 91 11:15:42 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: from alpha.Xerox.COM by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA18525; Tue, 29 Oct 91 11:15:27 -0500
Received: from MS8.XSIS.Xerox.xns by alpha.xerox.com via XNS id <11719>; Tue, 29 Oct 1991 08:14:25 -0800
X-Ns-Transport-Id: 0000AA006E1BD4DC2C83
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1991 08:14:02 -0800
From: Don_Stew...@xerox.com
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
In-Reply-To: "Michel Denber:WBST147:Xerox's message of 29-October-91 (Tuesday) 7:09:32 PST"
To: Michel_Den...@xerox.com
Cc: Don_Stew...@xerox.com, ba...@gorm.ruc.dk, info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Message-Id: <"29-Oct-91 8:14:02 PST".*.Don_Stewart.XSIS@Xerox.com>
My memory is that the Alto removable disk packs were all 2.5 MB capacity.
Don
*start*
02074 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 11:27:54 1991
Received: by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA18727; Tue, 29 Oct 91 11:27:36 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: from alpha.Xerox.COM by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA18719; Tue, 29 Oct 91 11:27:32 -0500
Received: from mega.EuroPARC.Xerox.COM ([13.1.252.106]) by alpha.xerox.com with SMTP id <11597>; Tue, 29 Oct 1991 08:26:26 -0800
Received: by mega.EuroPARC.Xerox.COM
(5.65c/IDA-1.2.9) id AA08985; Tue, 29 Oct 1991 16:19:47 GMT
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1991 08:19:47 -0800
From: Lennart Lovstrand <Lovs...@europarc.xerox.com>
Message-Id: <1991102916...@mega.EuroPARC.Xerox.COM>
Received: by NeXT Mailer (1.63.RR)
To: Michel_Den...@xerox.com
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
Cc: ba...@gorm.ruc.dk, info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Michel,
Great summary! Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there also a
Harmony version between Carol and Intermezzo? I think TEdit was
pretty new then (and very buggy -- it was hard to believe that it
would ever be a serious editor at that time). I also seem to
remember an internal release in time for IJCAI in 1985 called "JCAI"
to fill in for the missing J version.
Then there was also BBN Lisp and/or Interlisp-10 for the DECsystem-10
and 20 and even a version for the IBM 360. I can't remember if they
had any version numbers or names, though. In any case, that was
before Interlisp became a Xerox product.
DEdit was the structure editor of choice before SEdit. It was
modelled after a TTY version that existed in Interlisp-10. It had
commands like "remove the 3rd element from the 2nd subexpression" and
"go up to levels and then prettyprint the current expression" -- all
with numbers and [mostly] single letter commands. And yes, it was
actually really useful if you didn't have a screen based editor.
Took a bit of getting used to, though.
--Lennart
*start*
02602 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 13:14:29 1991
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA19804; Tue, 29 Oct 91 13:13:02 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA19348; Tue, 29 Oct 91 12:56:40 -0500
Received: from USENET by news.cis.ohio-state.edu with netnews
for info...@cis.ohio-state.edu (info...@cis.ohio-state.edu);
contact use...@news.cis.ohio-state.edu if you have questions.
To: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Date: 29 Oct 91 17:47:55 GMT
Message-Id: <LANNING.91...@archer.parc.xerox.com>
Organization: Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA
From: lan...@parc.xerox.com (Stan Lanning)
References: <1991102916...@mega.EuroPARC.Xerox.COM>up
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
The early Interlisp manuals includes a brief history of Interlisp.
Here's some of the early versions:
Dec PDP-1 Lisp
D. G. Bobrow and D. L. Murphy at BBN
1966
SDS 940 Lisp
Bobrow and Murphy at BBN
1967
"This system contained the seeds for many of the capability and
features of the current systems: a compatible compiler and
interpreter, uniform error handling, an on-line LISP oriented editor,
sophisticated debugging facilities, etc. 940 LISP was also the first
LISP system to demonstrate the feasibility of using software paging
techniques and a large virtual memory in conjuntion with
list-processing system."
"BBN LISP" for the PDP-10
Bobrow, Murphy, A. K. Hartley, and W. Teitelman at BBN
1970
"The name of the system was changed from BBN-LISP to Interlisp in
1973, when the maintenance and development of the system evolved into
a joint effort between Bolt Beranek and Newman, and Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center."
By the way, the structure editor was not called DEdit -- DEdit was the
Display (hence the D) version of the TTY oriented structure editor.
to as "the Interlisp editor".
There was also a VAX/VMS version of Interlisp, too, based (I think) or
the Interlisp Virtual Machine paper. (Is that what it was called? I
can't find my copy.) I used it for a while back in '84 (or was it '83?
or '82? Ah, how the memory plays tricks on you.). It came with a
LispUser package that turned the TTY based structure editor into a
screen based editor. Well, not quite -- the commands were the same old
structure editor commands, but at least you got a display of the
structure you were editing. That is, if you were running on a VT100.
--
-- smL
*start*
03113 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 15:34:15 1991
Received: by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA22238; Tue, 29 Oct 91 15:32:51 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: from uno.cc.geneseo.edu by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA22233; Tue, 29 Oct 91 15:32:41 -0500
Received: from brastias.cs.geneseo.edu by geneseo.bitnet with PMDF#10361; Tue,
29 Oct 1991 15:33 EST
Received: by brastias.cs.geneseo.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA02003; Tue, 29 Oct 91
15:31:18 EST
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 15:31:16 -0500
From: Hans Koomen <koo...@brastias.cs.geneseo.edu>
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
In-Reply-To: Your message of "29 Oct 91 17:47:55 GMT."
<LANNING.91...@archer.parc.xerox.com>
To: lan...@parc.xerox.com (Stan Lanning)
Cc: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu, Hans Koomen <koo...@brastias.cs.geneseo.edu>
Message-Id: <911029203...@brastias.cs.geneseo.edu>
>> Date: 29 Oct 91 17:47:55 GMT
>> Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
>> To: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
>> From: lan...@parc.xerox.com (Stan Lanning)
...
>> There was also a VAX/VMS version of Interlisp, too, based (I think) or
>> the Interlisp Virtual Machine paper. (Is that what it was called? I
>> can't find my copy.) I used it for a while back in '84 (or was it '83?
>> or '82? Ah, how the memory plays tricks on you.). It came with a
>> LispUser package that turned the TTY based structure editor into a
>> screen based editor. Well, not quite -- the commands were the same old
>> structure editor commands, but at least you got a display of the
>> structure you were editing. That is, if you were running on a VT100.
There was, indeed. Interlisp-Vax was developed at USC-ISI around 80-82. It
was more or less :-) 100% compatible with Interlisp-10, and was developed to
get past the pdp-10 memory limitations. Vaxen were hot, those days, and
offered big virtual memory. Interlisp-Vax allowed for much larger programs
than the pdp-10 could support. On the other hand, Interlisp-Vax never quite
reached the speed of Interlisp-10, which at that point had been fine tuned for
about a decade. Interlisp-Vax was based on the Interlisp VM description,
with various corrections and additions to make it "real-life." The display
editor mentioned above was a neat little addition that gave a 24x80 window
into the structure editor. I believe several hundred sites used Interlisp-Vax
at some time or another. For further details, see "Implementation of
Interlisp on the VAX" by Bates, Dyer & Koomen, 1982 ACM Symp. on Lisp and
Functional Programming.
- - - /-/ a n s Paper: Johannes A. G. M. Koomen, Ph.D.
Department of Computer Science
Phone: (716) 245-5401 State University of New York
EMail: koo...@cs.geneseo.edu Geneseo, NY 14454
PS. I believe at one time there was also a version of Interlisp for the IBM
370, developed at Lynkoping and/or Weizmann Institute, but I don't remember
much about it...
*start*
03404 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Wed Oct 30 04:31:37 1991
Received: by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA00172; Wed, 30 Oct 91 04:31:14 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: from corton.inria.fr by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA00166; Wed, 30 Oct 91 04:31:10 -0500
Received: from laas.laas.fr by corton.inria.fr (5.65c8d/90.0.9)
via Fnet-EUnet id AA23828; Wed, 30 Oct 1991 10:31:02 +0100 (MET)
Received: from orion.laas.fr by laas.laas.fr, Wed, 30 Oct 91 10:25:31 +0100,Sendmail 5.61+
Return-Receipt-To: ra...@vega.laas.fr
Received: by orion.laas.fr, Wed, 30 Oct 91 10:30:47 +0100,Sendmail 5.61+
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 10:30:47 +0100
From: "Ralph P. Sobek" <ra...@vega.laas.fr>
Message-Id: <911030093...@orion.laas.fr>
To: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
In-Reply-To: <911029203...@brastias.cs.geneseo.edu>
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
Hans Koomen <koo...@brastias.cs.geneseo.edu> wrote:
| PS. I believe at one time there was also a version of Interlisp for the IBM
| 370, developed at Lynkoping and/or Weizmann Institute, but I don't remember
| much about it...
As an old user of Interlisp-10 (around '75) , I switched over to
Interlisp/360 /370 back in '79. This version was available from Dr.
Klaus Appel, U.D.A.C., University of Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden as well
as Dr. Martin Raim, Dept. of Applied Mathematics, Weizmann Institute,
Rehovot, Israel. It ran in the IBM TSO and VM/CMS conversational
modes.
There were 2 systems, The Basic System which is compatible
with the "BBN LISP Reference Manua"l, 1971, and the Advanced System
(from Weizmann Institute) which runs major subsystems of Interlisp-10
(such as CLISP and DWIM) as described in W.Teitelman, "The Interlisp
Reference Manual", Xerox Corp., 1975.
A private communication that I had, stated that Interlisp/370
was actually based on the 1974 version of Interlisp-10: the version
before the spaghetti stack was added to Interlisp. As such, the
sections of "The Interlisp Reference Manual" marked with the '+'
change bars were *not* implemented in Interlisp/370.
Section 22 of the manual, the Programmer's Assistant and
LISPX, were ported by J.W. Goodwin at Linko"ping University, Norway.
In addition to the Programmer's Assistant and LISPX, the
Weizmann Institute also ported QLISP to Interlisp/370. QLISP is SRI's
implementation of pattern-directed invocation based upon their
in-house QA4 system.
Even though this version of Interlisp had none of the
graphical features of the D machine versions, it was the fastest
version of Lisp available anywhere for quite a long time. As IBM came
out with new processors, my code would execute in half the time!
(There was an embargo at that time on the exportation of the Xerox
Dorado.) As workstations started coming out with implementations of
Common Lisp, Interlisp/370 held its own with respect to execution
speed.
I would be curious to know if it still exists anywhere.
Cheers,
Ralph P. Sobek Disclaimer: The above ruminations are my own.
ra...@laas.fr Addresses are ordered by importance.
ra...@laas.uucp, or ...!uunet!laas!ralph
If all else fails, try: so...@eclair.Berkeley.EDU
Telephone: (+33-)61-33-62-66 FAX-1: (+33-)61-33-64-55 FAX-2: (+33-)61-55-35-77
*start*
02656 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Thu Oct 31 12:45:30 1991
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA09776; Thu, 31 Oct 91 12:43:16 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA09531; Thu, 31 Oct 91 12:32:34 -0500
Received: from USENET by news.cis.ohio-state.edu with netnews
for info...@cis.ohio-state.edu (info...@cis.ohio-state.edu);
contact use...@news.cis.ohio-state.edu if you have questions.
To: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Date: 31 Oct 91 10:09:09 GMT
Message-Id: <HT.91Oct...@spark.cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: HCRC, University of Edinburgh
From: h...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Henry S. Thompson)
References: Michel_Den...@xerox.comh
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
In article <91Oct29.070...@alpha.xerox.com> Michel_Den...@xerox.com writes:
> "When was the graphical user interface added and what is the name of
> the interface?"
>
> I believe this goes clear back to the very beginning of time, i.e.
> the legendary Alto Lisp (I tried loading it once, but couldn't get
> it to run. Larry Masinter tells me it did work, although it had
> performance problems - not too surprising considering the Alto-II
> had only 256K memory and 4 meg. of disk). The basic window system
> as it exists today was certainly all there by 1982 when the 1100
> (Dolphin) came out. The graphic interface is basic to the system -
> I don't think it has a separate name. In the Sept. 1982
> Interlisp-D User's Guide, it's simply called "graphics display and
> window system".
>
> - Michel
There was in fact a predecessor to Interlisp-D's graphical user
interface which was briefly used at Xerox PARC around the time Alto
Lisp was being developed. It was a hybrid, using the Alto as a
display server for an Interlisp-10 client running on Maxc, PARC's
PDP-10 clone. I used it, perhaps around 1976-7, but can't remember
what it was called. Warren Teitelman built it, I think.
I think Bobrow and Goldstein's work which was the predecessor of Loops
used this at first.
While we're including attributions, the Alto Lisp effort was directed by
L. Peter Deutsch and the implementation mostly done by Willie Sue Haugeland.
ht
--
Henry Thompson, Human Communication Research Centre, University of Edinburgh
2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND -- (44) 31 650-4440
Fax: (44) 31 650-4587 ARPA: h...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk JANET: h...@uk.ac.ed.cogsci
UUCP: ...!uunet!mcsun!ukc!cogsci!ht
*start*
08296 00024 USa
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Fri Nov 1 02:45:56 1991
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA06660; Fri, 1 Nov 91 02:43:19 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA06408; Fri, 1 Nov 91 02:22:06 -0500
Received: from USENET by news.cis.ohio-state.edu with netnews
for info...@cis.ohio-state.edu (info...@cis.ohio-state.edu);
contact use...@news.cis.ohio-state.edu if you have questions.
To: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Date: 31 Oct 91 17:14:15
Message-Id: <MASINTER.91...@poplar.parc.xerox.com>
Organization: Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA
From: masi...@parc.xerox.com (Larry Masinter)
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Project
Here is some information and additional references on Interlisp:
Graphical user interfaces:
In the late '70s, the first initial graphical user interface for
Interlisp was built, using Interlisp-10 on the timesharing system
(Maxc, a PDP-10 clone), with the display manager running on an Alto.
While these were published and demonstrated at conferences,
they never made their way out as products. This system was called
DLisp.
* Warren Teitelman. "A Display Oriented Programmer's Assistant". Xerox
PARC report CSL-77-3. "A version of this paper appeared in Proceedings
5th IJCAI, Vol 2, pp 905-915; MIT; Cambridge, MA August 1977".
* Robert F. Sproull. "Raster Graphics for Interactive Programming
Environments". Xerox PARC CSL-79-6.
"A shortened version of this paper appeared in Computer Graphics,
Summer, 1979."
* Mitchel L. Model. "Monitoring System Behavior in a Complex
Computational Environment". Xerox PARC CSL-79-1, January 1979, also
Stanford University Computer Science Department Report CS-79-701.
Alto Lisp:
The Alto Lisp effort Alto Lisp was a separate development, primarily
by Peter Deutsch and Willie Sue Haugland (now Orr). Alto Lisp was an
implementation of the core Interlisp language; it had no graphical
user interface.
* L.P.Deutsch. "A LISP Machine with Very Compact Programs". Third
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Stanford,
CA., August, 1973.
* L.P.Deutsch. "Bytelisp and its Alto Implementation". 1980 LISP
Conference, Stanford, CA, 1980.
* L.Masinter, L.P.Deutsch. "Local Optimization in a Computer for
Stack-based LISP Machines.", 1980 LISP Conference, Stanford, CA.
DoradoLisp, DolphinLisp:
Alto Lisp was later modified, enhanced, and ported to various
microcoded "D" machines of Xerox design: Dorado, Dolphin, Dandelion,
Daybreak. The first port was to the Dorado processor, although the
Dorado was not released as a product until well after the Dolphin
became the Xerox 1100 Scientific Information Processor. (I think there
was some corporate sensitivity to having a product identified as a
'computer'.)
* R.Burton, L.Masinter,W.S.Haugeland,R.Kaplan,B.A.Sheil, "Overview and
implementation status of DoradoLisp", 1980 LISP Conference,
Stanford, CA.
Interlisp-Maxc:
There was a separate 9-bit-byte-coded Lisp instruction set for the
Maxc system. Unfortunately, this didn't result in a significant enough
improvement in performance or space for it to be worth the cost of
maintenance of separate versions of compiled code.
"The Maxc Systems", Edward R. Fiala, IEEE Computer, May 1978.
Interlisp-Jericho:
There was a machine designed and built at Bolt Beranek & Newman called
the 'Jericho'; it had a full Interlisp-D implementation. It was never
released, and I don't remember ever seeing any documentation about
it.) However, we did maintain 'Jericho-compatibility' software in the
Interlisp sources for many years.
Interlisp/360-370:
* Anders Haraldson, "LISP-details. Interlisp/360-370".Uppsala
University, Datalogilaboratoriet, Department of Computer Sciences,
1975.
Interlisp-VAX:
* L.Masinter. "Interlisp-VAX: A Report." Stanford University CS Report
No. STAN-CS-81-879, August 1981.
* R.Bates,et al. "Interlisp-VAX Users Manual, First Edition,
Preliminary Draft." December, 1982.
"Interlisp-VAX is sponsored by DARPA under contract number MDA
903-81-C-0335".
Interlisp-D:
The addition of a 'graphical user interface' to the 'personal
microcoded machine' came in two stages; first the addition of
graphical output contexts (display streams) in 1980, and later the
addition of a real window system in 1981.
Environment:
Programming environment tools evolved along a couple of lines:
Editing:
I think the history of the 'tty' editor thru DEdit and SEdit was
descussed adequately. SEdit was originally done as an editor for
Interlisp only by Mike Dixon, and only ported and modified to deal
with Common Lisp, packages, and other elements later.
The most frequently discussed issue in Lisp environments was the
distinction between "text-based" and "resident" environments. Most
programming environments are 'text-based': you edit files and load
them. Interlisp, from the beginning, took the 'resident' approach, in
the sense that it was always based on the model of editing program
structure in place, and then writing out the appropriate elements of
program structure in order to save state.
Program management:
Since the environment was 'residential', it was important to keep
track of what changed, and evolve strategies for periodically
rewriting source and compiled files to correspond to current program
state. This evolved from simple "prettydef" commands (write out
current program state), to the more complex "File Package" facilities,
which kept track of which program elements belonged with which files,
when they were changed, and the state of the editing process. (The
idea of having the editor notify some global state that some program
element changed was some kind of breakthrough.) Most of this work was
through the '70s, although there was an attempt at some point to
regularize a set of facilities for programmatically manipulating
program elements ("take the definition of X as a macro from file Y and
put it in file Z"). Some typical facilities included auto-time-stamp
and initials for individual functions when edited, writing out the
list of changes between one version and the next at the top of a file,
automatic program formatting with different fonts for user functions,
cross references in program listings.
Error correction:
DWIM, "Do What I Mean", has fallen into disrepute. No program system
today would have the audacity to 'guess' what a programmer might have
meant in the face of an error. At the time, it seemed like a good
idea.
Programmer History:
The idea that the environment might keep track of previous events
was novel at the time.
In addition to the Teitelman&Masinter 1981 IEEE Computer article and
the "Power Tools" in Datamation:
* Teitelman, W. "Toward a Programming Laboratory," Proceedings of
First International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
(1971?).
* Teitelman, W. "Automatic Programming- The Programmer's Assistant."
Proc. Fall Joint Computer Conference, December 1972.
* Teitelman, W. "Do What I Mean." Computers and Automation, April 1972.
Other references:
Stephen H. Kaisler. INTERLISP, The Language and Its Usage. John Wiley
& Sons, Inc, ISBN 0-471-81644-2, 1986.
Release names: we decided to name releases out of the Harvard Concise
Dictionary of Music. At first, the names were haphazard, until we
decided to use names in alphabetic order. I don't remember the order
of Allegro, ConBrio, Key, and Wind; these were primarily reworks of
the microcode, instruction set, and low-levels of the system to get
better performance. (Key moved some of the keyboard handling out of
BCPL into interrupt-driven Lisp.)
Michael Denber's post covered release dates & through ConBrio and
beyond.
================================================================
Postscript:
The tools I have now for debugging C are far superior to the tools I
used to have for debugging microcode. Emacs is much better than Teco,
which we used for the PDP-10 assembler code in Interlisp-10.
--
Larry Masinter (masi...@parc.xerox.com)
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
3333 Coyote Hill Road; Palo Alto, CA USA 94304
Phone: (415) 812-4365 Fax: (415) 812-4333
Michel Denber’s response has very detailed dates for releases, except for Harmony.
*start*
03011 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 07:37:51 1991
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA11515; Tue, 29 Oct 91 07:24:29 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA11400; Tue, 29 Oct 91 07:10:20 -0500
Received: from USENET by news.cis.ohio-state.edu with netnews
for info...@cis.ohio-state.edu (info...@cis.ohio-state.edu);
contact use...@news.cis.ohio-state.edu if you have questions.
To: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Date: 29 Oct 91 10:38:30 GMT
Message-Id: <1991Oct29....@gorm.ruc.dk>
Organization: Roskilde Universitetscenter, Danmark
From: ba...@gorm.ruc.dk (Anders Gilbro Nielsen)
Subject: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
In my master thesis I need an appendix describing the history of the
Interlisp programming environment, but I'm not quite sure of what
versions have been around and what they actually contained of new
additions to the environment. But here is the history (in short) as I see it.
It's supposed to end up in a time-line schematic shape. I probably
got a lot of things wrong, and I got some questions too. So if anyone can
help my it would be much appreciated.
History of Interlisp:
The Interlisp programming environment was originally introduced as a text-
based environment, which is described in article "The Interlisp Programming
Environment" by Warren Teitelman and Larry Masinter, Computer, 14:4, 1981.
Later on a graphical user interface was added to the environment, which made
especially the structure editor easier to use. The environmet was at this
point truly incremental since any changes made by the structure editor was
made directly in the internal program describtion. The system - now named
Interlisp-D - is described by B.A. Sheil in article "Power Tools for Pro-
grammers", Datamation Magazine, 1983.
There were a couple of Interlisp-D versions around. For example the Koto
release and the Lyrics release. In the latest version CommonLisp was
integrated, which ment that the editor - SEdit - not anymore was a
structure editor. Now the Lisp-code was parsed following an editsession,
giving almost the same functionality as the structure editor. All other tools
were the same.
Now the questions are:
Am I wrong somewhere?
When and in which version was CommonLisp integrated?
What was the difference between the Koto and Lyrics Release?
When was the graphical user interface added and what is the name of the
interface?
What is happening to the Interlisp Environment these days. Is annything
similar coming up?
Any references to articles containing the answers are also welcome.
Please e-mail or repply to the newslist.
Thank you.
Anders Gilbro Nielsen
Roskilde University Centre
Computer Science Dept.
House 20.1
4000 Roskilde, Denmark
E-mail: ba...@gorm.ruc.dk
PS. I regret any spelling errors. I'm not used to write in English.
*start*
02073 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 09:31:23 1991
Received: by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA17303; Tue, 29 Oct 91 09:31:08 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: from mimsy.umd.edu by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA17298; Tue, 29 Oct 91 09:31:05 -0500
Received: by mimsy.UMD.EDU (5.61/UMIACS-0.9/04-05-88)
id AA09656; Tue, 29 Oct 91 09:31:02 -0500
Received: from rattler by rattler!cs.umd.EDU (4.0/SMI-4.0)
id AA03467; Tue, 29 Oct 91 09:21:23 EST
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 09:21:23 EST
From: rattler!ba...@cs.UMD.EDU (Bob Bane)
Message-Id: <9110291421.AA03467@rattler!cs.umd.EDU>
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
In-Reply-To: ba...@gorm.ruc.dk (Anders Gilbro Nielsen)'s message of 29 Oct 91 10:38:30 GMT
To: ba...@gorm.ruc.dk (Anders Gilbro Nielsen)
Cc: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
I've only hacked Interlisp since 1985, but I was there when Lyric was
implemented. The major difference between it and Koto was Common Lisp;
the most visible change was the addition of packages.
Your description of SEdit is half-right; SEdit IS a structure editor,
but Common Lisp semantics require a structure mung between the code you
edit and the code that is executed (primarily comment-stripping). If
you REALLY want to, you can use pure Common Lisp text files in post-Koto
Interlisp.
These days, the environment is named Medley, is sold by Venue, and is
actually being sold profitably for the first time in its existence. It
has been ported to many Un*x workstations via an emulator that runs the
same compiled-code format as the D-machines. Possible future extensions
include making the Interlisp window system an interface to X windows,
and ports to non-Un*x platforms.
Your English is excellent; MUCH better than my Danish would be under the
circumstances. Could you send Venue a copy of your thesis when it's
finished? Thanks!
Venue
1549 Industrial Road
San Carlos CA 94070
USA
- Bob Bane
*start*
03952 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 10:10:18 1991
Received: by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA17751; Tue, 29 Oct 91 10:10:12 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: from alpha.Xerox.COM by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA17743; Tue, 29 Oct 91 10:10:09 -0500
Received: from The_Grouch.Wbst129.Xerox.xns by alpha.xerox.com via XNS id <11730>; Tue, 29 Oct 1991 07:09:52 -0800
X-Ns-Transport-Id: 0000AA006D79FE5E2CC2
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1991 07:09:32 -0800
From: Michel_Den...@xerox.com
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
In-Reply-To: "ba...@gorm.ruc:dk:Xerox's message of 29 Oct 91 05:38 EST"
To: ba...@gorm.ruc.dk
Cc: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Message-Id: <91Oct29.070...@alpha.xerox.com>
"There were a couple of Interlisp-D versions around. For example the
Koto release and the Lyrics release"
More than a couple. At first, new releases had no formal names - they were
simply announced via mail messages. For example:
-------
Date: 24 FEB 1982 2139-PST
From: MASINTER.PA
Subject: Newer version of Interlisp-D available
To: LispUsers^
A slightly newer version of the Interlisp-D system has been stored on file
servers Phylum, Indigo, Rose and Cask, including, on the directory
<Lisp>Current>, the files
Lisp.run, Lisp.sysout, DolphinLispMC.Run.
-------
I believe the first named release was called "ConBrio", dating to mid-1982.
This was followed by "Wind", which was a pre-release version of "Chorus", which
was released 1/13/83. Chrous recoded most of the low-level BCPL code in Lisp.
The window package was completely revised and floating point moved to
microcode.
The next release was Fugue.0 (6/30/83). Fugue.1 was never released. Fugue.2
came out 8/18/83, and Fugue.3 came out 10/13/83. Fugue marked the addition of
multi-processing and NS support. Chat and DEdit were promoted from Lispusers
to the base system.
The next major release was Carol, on Jan. 27, 1984. This included a local file
system for Dandelions. Carol.1 came out 3/2/84. The official Carol
announcement was June 21, 1984.
Next came Intermezzo, in early 1985. Intermezzo included a new TEdit format,
NS Chat, and expanded vmem to 32 meg. By this point, the documentation was
starting to look "official". Koto came out later in 1985 and included the
first edition of the integrated IRM (until then, the documentation was the old
Interlisp-10 manual of Oct. 1978, plus a "D" supplement.
Lyric came out in early 1987 and had major changes, including a compiler
incompatibility. Compiled files were renamed ".LCOM" from ".DCOM". Fonts and
streams underwent major revisions too in Lyric. Common Lisp was included.
SEdit was included (although it was available as a Lispusers package for Koto).
The language was now called "Xerox Lisp".
Around that time, Xerox spun off the Lisp group into the ill-fated Envos Corp.,
which released Medley. Medley 1.1 came out in January 1989, 1.2 last year, and
2.0 just a few months ago. Medley was the first release to run on Suns. I
understand that there will be no more new names, just incremented version
numbers.
"When was the graphical user interface added and what is the name of
the interface?"
I believe this goes clear back to the very beginning of time, i.e. the
legendary Alto Lisp (I tried loading it once, but couldn't get it to run.
Larry Masinter tells me it did work, although it had performance problems - not
too surprising considering the Alto-II had only 256K memory and 4 meg. of
disk). The basic window system as it exists today was certainly all there by
1982 when the 1100 (Dolphin) came out. The graphic interface is basic to the
system - I don't think it has a separate name. In the Sept. 1982 Interlisp-D
User's Guide, it's simply called "graphics display and window system".
- Michel
*start*
00924 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 10:42:08 1991
Received: by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA18179; Tue, 29 Oct 91 10:41:51 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: from CAMIS.Stanford.EDU by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA18171; Tue, 29 Oct 91 10:41:48 -0500
Received: by CAMIS.Stanford.EDU (4.1/inc-1.0)
id AA19236; Tue, 29 Oct 91 07:41:35 PST
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1991 7:41:35 PST
From: Timothy Koschmann <t...@camis.stanford.edu>
To: ba...@gorm.ruc.dk
Cc: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Subject: RE: History of Interlisp
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.68...@camis.Stanford.EDU>
Anders,
I briefly covered some of this history in my Lisp text ("The Common Lisp
Companion", New York: John Wiley, 1990). You might want to check out
the first chapter and also the bibliography.
Tim
*start*
01045 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 11:15:56 1991
Received: by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA18535; Tue, 29 Oct 91 11:15:42 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: from alpha.Xerox.COM by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA18525; Tue, 29 Oct 91 11:15:27 -0500
Received: from MS8.XSIS.Xerox.xns by alpha.xerox.com via XNS id <11719>; Tue, 29 Oct 1991 08:14:25 -0800
X-Ns-Transport-Id: 0000AA006E1BD4DC2C83
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1991 08:14:02 -0800
From: Don_Stew...@xerox.com
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
In-Reply-To: "Michel Denber:WBST147:Xerox's message of 29-October-91 (Tuesday) 7:09:32 PST"
To: Michel_Den...@xerox.com
Cc: Don_Stew...@xerox.com, ba...@gorm.ruc.dk, info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Message-Id: <"29-Oct-91 8:14:02 PST".*.Don_Stewart.XSIS@Xerox.com>
My memory is that the Alto removable disk packs were all 2.5 MB capacity.
Don
*start*
02074 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 11:27:54 1991
Received: by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA18727; Tue, 29 Oct 91 11:27:36 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: from alpha.Xerox.COM by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA18719; Tue, 29 Oct 91 11:27:32 -0500
Received: from mega.EuroPARC.Xerox.COM ([13.1.252.106]) by alpha.xerox.com with SMTP id <11597>; Tue, 29 Oct 1991 08:26:26 -0800
Received: by mega.EuroPARC.Xerox.COM
(5.65c/IDA-1.2.9) id AA08985; Tue, 29 Oct 1991 16:19:47 GMT
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1991 08:19:47 -0800
From: Lennart Lovstrand <Lovs...@europarc.xerox.com>
Message-Id: <1991102916...@mega.EuroPARC.Xerox.COM>
Received: by NeXT Mailer (1.63.RR)
To: Michel_Den...@xerox.com
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
Cc: ba...@gorm.ruc.dk, info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Michel,
Great summary! Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there also a
Harmony version between Carol and Intermezzo? I think TEdit was
pretty new then (and very buggy -- it was hard to believe that it
would ever be a serious editor at that time). I also seem to
remember an internal release in time for IJCAI in 1985 called "JCAI"
to fill in for the missing J version.
Then there was also BBN Lisp and/or Interlisp-10 for the DECsystem-10
and 20 and even a version for the IBM 360. I can't remember if they
had any version numbers or names, though. In any case, that was
before Interlisp became a Xerox product.
DEdit was the structure editor of choice before SEdit. It was
modelled after a TTY version that existed in Interlisp-10. It had
commands like "remove the 3rd element from the 2nd subexpression" and
"go up to levels and then prettyprint the current expression" -- all
with numbers and [mostly] single letter commands. And yes, it was
actually really useful if you didn't have a screen based editor.
Took a bit of getting used to, though.
--Lennart
*start*
02602 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 13:14:29 1991
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA19804; Tue, 29 Oct 91 13:13:02 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA19348; Tue, 29 Oct 91 12:56:40 -0500
Received: from USENET by news.cis.ohio-state.edu with netnews
for info...@cis.ohio-state.edu (info...@cis.ohio-state.edu);
contact use...@news.cis.ohio-state.edu if you have questions.
To: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Date: 29 Oct 91 17:47:55 GMT
Message-Id: <LANNING.91...@archer.parc.xerox.com>
Organization: Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA
From: lan...@parc.xerox.com (Stan Lanning)
References: <1991102916...@mega.EuroPARC.Xerox.COM>up
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
The early Interlisp manuals includes a brief history of Interlisp.
Here's some of the early versions:
Dec PDP-1 Lisp
D. G. Bobrow and D. L. Murphy at BBN
1966
SDS 940 Lisp
Bobrow and Murphy at BBN
1967
"This system contained the seeds for many of the capability and
features of the current systems: a compatible compiler and
interpreter, uniform error handling, an on-line LISP oriented editor,
sophisticated debugging facilities, etc. 940 LISP was also the first
LISP system to demonstrate the feasibility of using software paging
techniques and a large virtual memory in conjuntion with
list-processing system."
"BBN LISP" for the PDP-10
Bobrow, Murphy, A. K. Hartley, and W. Teitelman at BBN
1970
"The name of the system was changed from BBN-LISP to Interlisp in
1973, when the maintenance and development of the system evolved into
a joint effort between Bolt Beranek and Newman, and Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center."
By the way, the structure editor was not called DEdit -- DEdit was the
Display (hence the D) version of the TTY oriented structure editor.
to as "the Interlisp editor".
There was also a VAX/VMS version of Interlisp, too, based (I think) or
the Interlisp Virtual Machine paper. (Is that what it was called? I
can't find my copy.) I used it for a while back in '84 (or was it '83?
or '82? Ah, how the memory plays tricks on you.). It came with a
LispUser package that turned the TTY based structure editor into a
screen based editor. Well, not quite -- the commands were the same old
structure editor commands, but at least you got a display of the
structure you were editing. That is, if you were running on a VT100.
--
-- smL
*start*
03113 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 29 15:34:15 1991
Received: by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA22238; Tue, 29 Oct 91 15:32:51 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: from uno.cc.geneseo.edu by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA22233; Tue, 29 Oct 91 15:32:41 -0500
Received: from brastias.cs.geneseo.edu by geneseo.bitnet with PMDF#10361; Tue,
29 Oct 1991 15:33 EST
Received: by brastias.cs.geneseo.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA02003; Tue, 29 Oct 91
15:31:18 EST
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 15:31:16 -0500
From: Hans Koomen <koo...@brastias.cs.geneseo.edu>
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
In-Reply-To: Your message of "29 Oct 91 17:47:55 GMT."
<LANNING.91...@archer.parc.xerox.com>
To: lan...@parc.xerox.com (Stan Lanning)
Cc: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu, Hans Koomen <koo...@brastias.cs.geneseo.edu>
Message-Id: <911029203...@brastias.cs.geneseo.edu>
>> Date: 29 Oct 91 17:47:55 GMT
>> Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
>> To: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
>> From: lan...@parc.xerox.com (Stan Lanning)
...
>> There was also a VAX/VMS version of Interlisp, too, based (I think) or
>> the Interlisp Virtual Machine paper. (Is that what it was called? I
>> can't find my copy.) I used it for a while back in '84 (or was it '83?
>> or '82? Ah, how the memory plays tricks on you.). It came with a
>> LispUser package that turned the TTY based structure editor into a
>> screen based editor. Well, not quite -- the commands were the same old
>> structure editor commands, but at least you got a display of the
>> structure you were editing. That is, if you were running on a VT100.
There was, indeed. Interlisp-Vax was developed at USC-ISI around 80-82. It
was more or less :-) 100% compatible with Interlisp-10, and was developed to
get past the pdp-10 memory limitations. Vaxen were hot, those days, and
offered big virtual memory. Interlisp-Vax allowed for much larger programs
than the pdp-10 could support. On the other hand, Interlisp-Vax never quite
reached the speed of Interlisp-10, which at that point had been fine tuned for
about a decade. Interlisp-Vax was based on the Interlisp VM description,
with various corrections and additions to make it "real-life." The display
editor mentioned above was a neat little addition that gave a 24x80 window
into the structure editor. I believe several hundred sites used Interlisp-Vax
at some time or another. For further details, see "Implementation of
Interlisp on the VAX" by Bates, Dyer & Koomen, 1982 ACM Symp. on Lisp and
Functional Programming.
- - - /-/ a n s Paper: Johannes A. G. M. Koomen, Ph.D.
Department of Computer Science
Phone: (716) 245-5401 State University of New York
EMail: koo...@cs.geneseo.edu Geneseo, NY 14454
PS. I believe at one time there was also a version of Interlisp for the IBM
370, developed at Lynkoping and/or Weizmann Institute, but I don't remember
much about it...
*start*
03404 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Wed Oct 30 04:31:37 1991
Received: by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA00172; Wed, 30 Oct 91 04:31:14 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: from corton.inria.fr by mail.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA00166; Wed, 30 Oct 91 04:31:10 -0500
Received: from laas.laas.fr by corton.inria.fr (5.65c8d/90.0.9)
via Fnet-EUnet id AA23828; Wed, 30 Oct 1991 10:31:02 +0100 (MET)
Received: from orion.laas.fr by laas.laas.fr, Wed, 30 Oct 91 10:25:31 +0100,Sendmail 5.61+
Return-Receipt-To: ra...@vega.laas.fr
Received: by orion.laas.fr, Wed, 30 Oct 91 10:30:47 +0100,Sendmail 5.61+
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 10:30:47 +0100
From: "Ralph P. Sobek" <ra...@vega.laas.fr>
Message-Id: <911030093...@orion.laas.fr>
To: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
In-Reply-To: <911029203...@brastias.cs.geneseo.edu>
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
Hans Koomen <koo...@brastias.cs.geneseo.edu> wrote:
| PS. I believe at one time there was also a version of Interlisp for the IBM
| 370, developed at Lynkoping and/or Weizmann Institute, but I don't remember
| much about it...
As an old user of Interlisp-10 (around '75) , I switched over to
Interlisp/360 /370 back in '79. This version was available from Dr.
Klaus Appel, U.D.A.C., University of Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden as well
as Dr. Martin Raim, Dept. of Applied Mathematics, Weizmann Institute,
Rehovot, Israel. It ran in the IBM TSO and VM/CMS conversational
modes.
There were 2 systems, The Basic System which is compatible
with the "BBN LISP Reference Manua"l, 1971, and the Advanced System
(from Weizmann Institute) which runs major subsystems of Interlisp-10
(such as CLISP and DWIM) as described in W.Teitelman, "The Interlisp
Reference Manual", Xerox Corp., 1975.
A private communication that I had, stated that Interlisp/370
was actually based on the 1974 version of Interlisp-10: the version
before the spaghetti stack was added to Interlisp. As such, the
sections of "The Interlisp Reference Manual" marked with the '+'
change bars were *not* implemented in Interlisp/370.
Section 22 of the manual, the Programmer's Assistant and
LISPX, were ported by J.W. Goodwin at Linko"ping University, Norway.
In addition to the Programmer's Assistant and LISPX, the
Weizmann Institute also ported QLISP to Interlisp/370. QLISP is SRI's
implementation of pattern-directed invocation based upon their
in-house QA4 system.
Even though this version of Interlisp had none of the
graphical features of the D machine versions, it was the fastest
version of Lisp available anywhere for quite a long time. As IBM came
out with new processors, my code would execute in half the time!
(There was an embargo at that time on the exportation of the Xerox
Dorado.) As workstations started coming out with implementations of
Common Lisp, Interlisp/370 held its own with respect to execution
speed.
I would be curious to know if it still exists anywhere.
Cheers,
Ralph P. Sobek Disclaimer: The above ruminations are my own.
ra...@laas.fr Addresses are ordered by importance.
ra...@laas.uucp, or ...!uunet!laas!ralph
If all else fails, try: so...@eclair.Berkeley.EDU
Telephone: (+33-)61-33-62-66 FAX-1: (+33-)61-33-64-55 FAX-2: (+33-)61-55-35-77
*start*
02656 00024 US
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Thu Oct 31 12:45:30 1991
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA09776; Thu, 31 Oct 91 12:43:16 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA09531; Thu, 31 Oct 91 12:32:34 -0500
Received: from USENET by news.cis.ohio-state.edu with netnews
for info...@cis.ohio-state.edu (info...@cis.ohio-state.edu);
contact use...@news.cis.ohio-state.edu if you have questions.
To: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Date: 31 Oct 91 10:09:09 GMT
Message-Id: <HT.91Oct...@spark.cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: HCRC, University of Edinburgh
From: h...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Henry S. Thompson)
References: Michel_Den...@xerox.comh
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Environment
In article <91Oct29.070...@alpha.xerox.com> Michel_Den...@xerox.com writes:
> "When was the graphical user interface added and what is the name of
> the interface?"
>
> I believe this goes clear back to the very beginning of time, i.e.
> the legendary Alto Lisp (I tried loading it once, but couldn't get
> it to run. Larry Masinter tells me it did work, although it had
> performance problems - not too surprising considering the Alto-II
> had only 256K memory and 4 meg. of disk). The basic window system
> as it exists today was certainly all there by 1982 when the 1100
> (Dolphin) came out. The graphic interface is basic to the system -
> I don't think it has a separate name. In the Sept. 1982
> Interlisp-D User's Guide, it's simply called "graphics display and
> window system".
>
> - Michel
There was in fact a predecessor to Interlisp-D's graphical user
interface which was briefly used at Xerox PARC around the time Alto
Lisp was being developed. It was a hybrid, using the Alto as a
display server for an Interlisp-10 client running on Maxc, PARC's
PDP-10 clone. I used it, perhaps around 1976-7, but can't remember
what it was called. Warren Teitelman built it, I think.
I think Bobrow and Goldstein's work which was the predecessor of Loops
used this at first.
While we're including attributions, the Alto Lisp effort was directed by
L. Peter Deutsch and the implementation mostly done by Willie Sue Haugeland.
ht
--
Henry Thompson, Human Communication Research Centre, University of Edinburgh
2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND -- (44) 31 650-4440
Fax: (44) 31 650-4587 ARPA: h...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk JANET: h...@uk.ac.ed.cogsci
UUCP: ...!uunet!mcsun!ukc!cogsci!ht
*start*
08296 00024 USa
From info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu Fri Nov 1 02:45:56 1991
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA06660; Fri, 1 Nov 91 02:43:19 -0500
Errors-To: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: info-110...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Received: by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (5.61-kk/5.911008)
id AA06408; Fri, 1 Nov 91 02:22:06 -0500
Received: from USENET by news.cis.ohio-state.edu with netnews
for info...@cis.ohio-state.edu (info...@cis.ohio-state.edu);
contact use...@news.cis.ohio-state.edu if you have questions.
To: info...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Date: 31 Oct 91 17:14:15
Message-Id: <MASINTER.91...@poplar.parc.xerox.com>
Organization: Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA
From: masi...@parc.xerox.com (Larry Masinter)
Subject: Re: The history of the Interlisp Programming Project
Here is some information and additional references on Interlisp:
Graphical user interfaces:
In the late '70s, the first initial graphical user interface for
Interlisp was built, using Interlisp-10 on the timesharing system
(Maxc, a PDP-10 clone), with the display manager running on an Alto.
While these were published and demonstrated at conferences,
they never made their way out as products. This system was called
DLisp.
* Warren Teitelman. "A Display Oriented Programmer's Assistant". Xerox
PARC report CSL-77-3. "A version of this paper appeared in Proceedings
5th IJCAI, Vol 2, pp 905-915; MIT; Cambridge, MA August 1977".
* Robert F. Sproull. "Raster Graphics for Interactive Programming
Environments". Xerox PARC CSL-79-6.
"A shortened version of this paper appeared in Computer Graphics,
Summer, 1979."
* Mitchel L. Model. "Monitoring System Behavior in a Complex
Computational Environment". Xerox PARC CSL-79-1, January 1979, also
Stanford University Computer Science Department Report CS-79-701.
Alto Lisp:
The Alto Lisp effort Alto Lisp was a separate development, primarily
by Peter Deutsch and Willie Sue Haugland (now Orr). Alto Lisp was an
implementation of the core Interlisp language; it had no graphical
user interface.
* L.P.Deutsch. "A LISP Machine with Very Compact Programs". Third
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Stanford,
CA., August, 1973.
* L.P.Deutsch. "Bytelisp and its Alto Implementation". 1980 LISP
Conference, Stanford, CA, 1980.
* L.Masinter, L.P.Deutsch. "Local Optimization in a Computer for
Stack-based LISP Machines.", 1980 LISP Conference, Stanford, CA.
DoradoLisp, DolphinLisp:
Alto Lisp was later modified, enhanced, and ported to various
microcoded "D" machines of Xerox design: Dorado, Dolphin, Dandelion,
Daybreak. The first port was to the Dorado processor, although the
Dorado was not released as a product until well after the Dolphin
became the Xerox 1100 Scientific Information Processor. (I think there
was some corporate sensitivity to having a product identified as a
'computer'.)
* R.Burton, L.Masinter,W.S.Haugeland,R.Kaplan,B.A.Sheil, "Overview and
implementation status of DoradoLisp", 1980 LISP Conference,
Stanford, CA.
Interlisp-Maxc:
There was a separate 9-bit-byte-coded Lisp instruction set for the
Maxc system. Unfortunately, this didn't result in a significant enough
improvement in performance or space for it to be worth the cost of
maintenance of separate versions of compiled code.
"The Maxc Systems", Edward R. Fiala, IEEE Computer, May 1978.
Interlisp-Jericho:
There was a machine designed and built at Bolt Beranek & Newman called
the 'Jericho'; it had a full Interlisp-D implementation. It was never
released, and I don't remember ever seeing any documentation about
it.) However, we did maintain 'Jericho-compatibility' software in the
Interlisp sources for many years.
Interlisp/360-370:
* Anders Haraldson, "LISP-details. Interlisp/360-370".Uppsala
University, Datalogilaboratoriet, Department of Computer Sciences,
1975.
Interlisp-VAX:
* L.Masinter. "Interlisp-VAX: A Report." Stanford University CS Report
No. STAN-CS-81-879, August 1981.
* R.Bates,et al. "Interlisp-VAX Users Manual, First Edition,
Preliminary Draft." December, 1982.
"Interlisp-VAX is sponsored by DARPA under contract number MDA
903-81-C-0335".
Interlisp-D:
The addition of a 'graphical user interface' to the 'personal
microcoded machine' came in two stages; first the addition of
graphical output contexts (display streams) in 1980, and later the
addition of a real window system in 1981.
Environment:
Programming environment tools evolved along a couple of lines:
Editing:
I think the history of the 'tty' editor thru DEdit and SEdit was
descussed adequately. SEdit was originally done as an editor for
Interlisp only by Mike Dixon, and only ported and modified to deal
with Common Lisp, packages, and other elements later.
The most frequently discussed issue in Lisp environments was the
distinction between "text-based" and "resident" environments. Most
programming environments are 'text-based': you edit files and load
them. Interlisp, from the beginning, took the 'resident' approach, in
the sense that it was always based on the model of editing program
structure in place, and then writing out the appropriate elements of
program structure in order to save state.
Program management:
Since the environment was 'residential', it was important to keep
track of what changed, and evolve strategies for periodically
rewriting source and compiled files to correspond to current program
state. This evolved from simple "prettydef" commands (write out
current program state), to the more complex "File Package" facilities,
which kept track of which program elements belonged with which files,
when they were changed, and the state of the editing process. (The
idea of having the editor notify some global state that some program
element changed was some kind of breakthrough.) Most of this work was
through the '70s, although there was an attempt at some point to
regularize a set of facilities for programmatically manipulating
program elements ("take the definition of X as a macro from file Y and
put it in file Z"). Some typical facilities included auto-time-stamp
and initials for individual functions when edited, writing out the
list of changes between one version and the next at the top of a file,
automatic program formatting with different fonts for user functions,
cross references in program listings.
Error correction:
DWIM, "Do What I Mean", has fallen into disrepute. No program system
today would have the audacity to 'guess' what a programmer might have
meant in the face of an error. At the time, it seemed like a good
idea.
Programmer History:
The idea that the environment might keep track of previous events
was novel at the time.
In addition to the Teitelman&Masinter 1981 IEEE Computer article and
the "Power Tools" in Datamation:
* Teitelman, W. "Toward a Programming Laboratory," Proceedings of
First International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
(1971?).
* Teitelman, W. "Automatic Programming- The Programmer's Assistant."
Proc. Fall Joint Computer Conference, December 1972.
* Teitelman, W. "Do What I Mean." Computers and Automation, April 1972.
Other references:
Stephen H. Kaisler. INTERLISP, The Language and Its Usage. John Wiley
& Sons, Inc, ISBN 0-471-81644-2, 1986.
Release names: we decided to name releases out of the Harvard Concise
Dictionary of Music. At first, the names were haphazard, until we
decided to use names in alphabetic order. I don't remember the order
of Allegro, ConBrio, Key, and Wind; these were primarily reworks of
the microcode, instruction set, and low-levels of the system to get
better performance. (Key moved some of the keyboard handling out of
BCPL into interrupt-driven Lisp.)
Michael Denber's post covered release dates & through ConBrio and
beyond.
================================================================
Postscript:
The tools I have now for debugging C are far superior to the tools I
used to have for debugging microcode. Emacs is much better than Teco,
which we used for the PDP-10 assembler code in Interlisp-10.
--
Larry Masinter (masi...@parc.xerox.com)
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
3333 Coyote Hill Road; Palo Alto, CA USA 94304
Phone: (415) 812-4365 Fax: (415) 812-4333
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages