Fwd: Catching up a bit

[Larry Masinter]

For discussion Monday: I have some answers which I will send but I want to hear from you.

On Mon, Sep 4, 2023 at 1:04 PM Blake McBride <blak...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Larry,

I hope you have been feeling well.

Although I haven't been involved much, I keep tabs on what's going on a bit, and my interest remains high.  As it happens, I work nearly 7 days a week, 12 hours a day on my own projects.  There is never enough time to do the things I'd like to do.

I was curious about a few things and thought I'd reach out.

1. It is my understanding that the version of Common Lisp that is included with Medley is somewhere between CLtL1 and CLtL2.  I presume there aren't any real ANSI particulars.  Is that correct?  

2.  Has CLOS been added yet?

3.  It appears that Medley is emphasizing Common Lisp and de-emphasizing InterLisp.  Is that true?

4.  It seems strange to me to emphasize CL over InterLisp when:

    a.  Medley's support of ANSI Common Lisp is not terribly great.

    b.  There are several fine ANSI CL systems freely available already.

    c.  Medley supports InterLisp 100%.  It is the standard.

5.  Has there been any progress in adding the ability to bootstrap the entire system from source (as opposed to requiring an image)?  Is this still a goal?  What is its status?

6.  I seem to remember a move from X11 to SDL.  I think that is a great idea.  What is its status?

Thanks, Larry!

Blake McBride

[John Cowan]

On Sat, Sep 9, 2023 at 2:14 PM Larry Masinter <L...@acm.org> wrote:

 

1. It is my understanding that the version of Common Lisp that is included with Medley is somewhere between CLtL1 and CLtL2.  I presume there aren't any real ANSI particulars.  Is that correct?  

CLtL2 and ANSI are very close:  http://web.archive.org/web/20060111013153/http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/commonlisp.html#AEN10329 explains how to mark up a copy of CLtL2 to make it even closer to ANSI (the remaining differences are minor).  The largest difference between CLtL1 and CLtL2/ANSI is CLOS, for which we do have an implementation.  Someone basically needs to sit down with the CL HyperSpec and the Medley CLOS and CLtL2 packages and integrate them.  Then the test suite at https://github.com/euslisp/ansi-test should be able to discover the remaining discrepancies.

2.  Has CLOS been added yet?

It's available but not yet integrated.

3.  It appears that Medley is emphasizing Common Lisp and de-emphasizing InterLisp.  Is that true?

I don't think so, no.  Each has its own role to play.

4.  It seems strange to me to emphasize CL over InterLisp when:

    a.  Medley's support of ANSI Common Lisp is not terribly great.

    b.  There are several fine ANSI CL systems freely available already.

    c.  Medley supports InterLisp 100%.  It is the standard.

IMO, the most important facilities of Medley are the environment, which blows way past anything available for other Lisps in both its facilities and its degree of integration.  With a working Medley ANSI CL, it becomes practical to develop in CL on Medley and then deliver on a fast compiler like SBCL.  Development in Interlisp can only be delivered in Medley (or in principle Interlisp-10 etc.), which is not a performant Lisp.

[Paolo Amoroso]

What gives the impression Medley is emphasizing Common Lisp and de-emphasizing Interlisp?

--

Paolo Amoroso | Blog | Mastodon

[Paolo Amoroso]

On Sunday, September 10, 2023 at 7:17:43 AM UTC+2 co...@ccil.org wrote:

On Sat, Sep 9, 2023 at 2:14 PM Larry Masinter <L...@acm.org> wrote:

2.  Has CLOS been added yet?

It's available but not yet integrated.

Isn't CLOS already in the default Medley images? They ship with the CLOS browser and I can find the usual CLOS symbols there.