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[eurolisp] [ANN] Closer Project: new software versions
by Pascal Costanza 03 Aug '05

03 Aug '05

Hi, New versions of MOP Feature Tests and Closer to MOP are available. MOP Feature Tests checks whether CLOS MOP features, as specified in "The Art of the Metaobject Protocol", are available in a given Common Lisp implementation. Closer to MOP provides a compatibility layer that irons out some of the incompatibilities across various CLOS MOP implementations. Highlights of the new versions: - A number of new implementations are now supported, including Allegro Common Lisp 7.0, CLisp 2.34, CMU CL 19b, LispWorks Professional 4.4.5, Macintosh Common Lisp 5.1, OpenMCL 0.14.3 and SBCL 0.9.3. - The software is now available as a set of darcs repositories. - Various fixes in Closer to MOP. - Added a convenience method ensure-method. - Switched to an MIT/BSD-style license. I am using the Closer to MOP compatibility layer for my own software, which consists of non-trivial extensions of CLOS. This has led to overall improvements of stability. See the project website at http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/ for further details. Cheers, Pascal -- Tyler: "How's that working out for you?" Jack: "Great." Tyler: "Keep it up, then."

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[eurolisp] Fwd: Lisp (and Prolog, and a bit of KR) job, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
by Arthur Lemmens 08 Jul '05

08 Jul '05

Some of you may be interested in the following Lisp job announcement (forwarded from comp.lang.lisp). Arthur ---- Doorgestuurd Usenet-bericht ---- Van: Hamish Harvey <hamish(a)hamishharvey.com> Newsgroepen: comp.lang.lisp Onderwerp: Lisp (and Prolog, and a bit of KR) job, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK Datum: Fri, 08 Jul 2005 12:44:37 +0100 URL: news://<dalov5$kmp$1(a)ucsnew1.ncl.ac.uk> > I imagine that, regardless of the resurgent status of Lisp, jobs are still > thin enough on the ground for job notices to be welcomed here! > > The School: http://www.ceg.ncl.ac.uk/ > The University: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ > The job: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/vacancies/vacancy.phtml?ref=D528R > > The Earth Systems Engineering group in the School of Civil Engineering and > Geosciences at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, are developing > software to support flood risk management. The core of this software is a > computation engine capable of taking definitions of rather complex, > multi-dimensional calculations and enacting them. The computation engine > will implement a domain specific language (DSL) designed to support the > expression of these computations in a declarative way. This language and > computation engine are being designed to provide the core of a wide range > of decision support systems from tools to support interactive analysis of > ill-specified problems to flood forecasting systems which depend on the > continuous, unattended assimilation of incoming data. > > The calculations involved in flood risk management involve embedding > numerical simulation of (parts of) the flooding system within layers of > higher level calculations to derive measures of flood risk (e.g. in > expected annual damage), or change in flood risk resulting from particular > interventions, or the sensitivity of particular outputs to uncertainty, > or .... The goal, in general, is to maximise the value of investment in > measures to address flood risk. Aspirations in the flood risk management > community far exceed what is feasible using current technology. To the > extent that such calculations are currently possible, they are achieved > using combinations of software packages and a great deal of munging of data > files. This approach is tedious and error-prone. It almost completely > obscures the structure and meaning of the underlying calcualtions, imposing > huge cognitive load on those undertaking them. It will not scale much > beyond the complexity of problem currently being tackled. > > The DSL under development by contrast allows these calculations, in their > full multi-dimensional glory, to be expressed succinctly in a form which is > amenable to human understanding but which can be compiled into an > executable form. Humans are more involved in defining calculations than > doing them. The language is declarative, based around a formalisation of > the concept of a "reference frame", which allows the structure of a > calculation (and of data sets) to be expressed explicitly (in imperative > implementations this structure is implicit in the control structure of the > code). > > The design of the semantics of the language is well progressed, but subject > to refinement as implementation proceeds. A limited prototype computation > engine exists which implements basic aspects of this language. The position > available is for a software developer to join me in working on this > prototype, which is written in Common Lisp (making extensive use of Lisp's > code-which-writes-code-which-writes-code capabilities). The work will > involve significant creative input at the abstract, conceptual level as > well as in translating from this abstract level into working code. It will > also involve applying the developing prototype to realistic flood risk > analysis case studies. > > Initial prototyping is using an ad hoc, s-expression-based concrete syntax > for the language. A further thread of development is to express the > language in a full knowledge representation language (which may dictate > changes to the abstract syntax). Part of the purpose of developing the > language is to support the expression of complex calculations succinctly in > a knowledge representation language. This language will then provide a > point of integration of a wide range of tools which operate in terms of the > structure of the calculation definitions, of which the computation engine > is but one. > > A draft report on the software is available. This has been written for an > audience of flood risk management professionals, not computer scientists or > software developers. It still needs a great deal of polishing, but > nonetheless sets out the breadth of the vision behind this project. The > draft is temporarily available at > > http://www.floodrisknet.org.uk/Members/hamish/draft-framework-report.pdf > > Funding is initially available for two years, and the appointment is fixed > term. The intention is to obtain additional funds to continue this work for > some time, though this is subject to the vagaries of academic funding. My > own position is also dependent on obtaining this funding, so I am highly > motivated in this regard! > > The software will be released under an open source license in due course. > > Please feel free to ask questions (about the job or the software). I will be > away for the first half of next week, so a failure to respond immediately > should not be taken as a lack of interest! > > Cheers, > Hamish >

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[eurolisp] beer/rome/saturday 16th
by Luke Gorrie 08 Jul '05

08 Jul '05

Howdy, Anyone fancy a beer in Rome on saturday next week (16th)?

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[eurolisp] [CfP] 2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
by Pascal Costanza 02 Jun '05

02 Jun '05

Call for Participation 2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop ===================================== July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005 Supported by ALU For more information visit http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net or contact pc(a)p-cos.net. News (June 2, 2005) =================== Important Dates + Abstract submission deadline: June 10, 2005 + Notification of acceptance: June 17, 2005 + ECOOP early registration deadline: June 24, 2005 + Final paper submission deadline: July 15, 2005 Other News ========== + Richard P. Gabriel has agreed to give a keynote talk at the workshop: "On the Interaction of Life and Machines in Self-Sustaining Systems" Software systems today are produced according to a manufacturing model: A finished product is constructed at the factory and shipped to its final destinationwhere it is expected to act like any other machine-reliably but oblivious to its surroundings and its own welfare. Software needs to grow up and become responsible for itself and its own future. A promising approach seems to be to separate software that does the work from software that keeps the system alive. + The submission deadline has been extended to June 10, 2005. Due to the late publication of the fee structure for the ECOOP conference, we have split submission into two phases: You can submit an abstract of your paper or breakout group proposal before June 10 and we will notify you of acceptance or rejection on June 17. The final paper / breakout group proposal should be submitted by July 15. + The early registration deadline for ECOOP 2005 is June 24, 2005. Participating is cheaper than you may think: If you only participate at the workshop, the fee is 180 pounds (ca. 260 Euros or 320 US-Dollars) or 90 pounds (ca. 130 Euros or 160 US-Dollars) for students. This includes coffee breaks and lunches on the two workshop days, the main reception on the first workshop day and access to BoFs and the poster display on the two workshop days. See http://2005.ecoop.org/fees.html for full details. Overview ======== "...Please don't assume Lisp is only useful for Animation and Graphics, AI, Bioinformatics, B2B and E-Commerce, Data Mining, EDA/Semiconductor applications, Expert Systems, Finance, Intelligent Agents, Knowledge Management, Mechanical CAD, Modeling and Simulation, Natural Language, Optimization, Research, Risk Analysis, Scheduling, Telecom, and Web Authoring just because these are the only things they happened to list." -- Kent Pitman Lisp is one of the oldest computer languages still in use today. In the decades of its existence, Lisp has been a fruitful basis for language design experiments as well as the preferred implementation language for applications in diverse fields. The structure of Lisp, including Common Lisp and Scheme as its major dialects of today, makes it easy to extend the language or even to implement entirely new dialects without starting from scratch. Common Lisp, with the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS), was the first object-oriented programming language to receive an ANSI standard at the beginning of the 1990's. It is, arguably, the most complete and advanced object system of any programming language, and has influenced many other object-oriented programming languages that were to follow. Despite having somewhat disappeared from the radar of popular computer science, Common Lisp and Scheme are still alive and have just started to gain momentum again. There is a steadily growing interest in Lisp as such, with numerous user groups having formed recently worldwide, and Lisp's metaprogramming notions that are being transferred to other languages to different extents, as for example in AOP, MDA, DSL, and so on. This two-day workshop will address the near-future role of Lisp-based languages in research, industry and education. We want to solicit papers and suggestions for breakout groups that discuss the opportunities Lisp provides to capture and enhance the possibilities in software engineering. We also want to promote lively discussion between researchers proposing new approaches and practitioners reporting on their experience with the strengths and limitations of current Lisp technologies. The workshop will be split into two parts: The first part is for talks with a more classroom-like atmosphere, the second will consist of a number of sessions for breakout groups discussing or working on particular topics. Papers ====== Presentations on the workshop can take anything between 5 minutes and an hour. Additional time will be given for questions and answers. Papers may be published on the website in order to provide background information in advance. Suggested topics for presented papers + Macro programming + Metaprogramming + Reflection + New language features / abstractions + Persistence Systems + Hardware support for Lisp systems + Case studies + Experience reports + Industrial applications + Object-Oriented Programming + Declarative Programming + Aspect-Oriented Programming + Domain-Oriented Programming + Generative Programming + Ambient Intelligence + Unanticipated Software Evolution + Design Patterns + Educational Perspectives Breakout Groups =============== The workshop will provide for the opportunity to meet face to face and work on focused topics. We will organize these breakout groups and provide for rooms and infrastructure. Suggested topics for breakout groups + Discuss the feature set of the next version of Slime + Work on details of the CLRFI process + Exchange experiences with various macro systems for Scheme + Detail a wishlist for R6RS + Environments for creating web applications + Persistence systems + Compiler technology + Lisp on bare metal / Lisp hardware / Lisp operating systems + Compare and enhance curricula for computer science education In order to have effective discussions at those breakout groups, we are negotiating meeting rooms for an extra day in addition to the actual workshop with the ECOOP organizers. Submission Guidelines ===================== Potential attendants are expected to submit + either a long paper (10 pages) presenting scientific and/or empirical results about Lisp- and Scheme-based uses or new approaches for software engineering purposes + or a short essay (5 pages) defending a position about where research and practice based on Lisp and Scheme should be heading in the near future + a proposal for a breakout group (1-2 pages) describing the theme, an agenda and/or expected results Abstract submissions should be mailed as PDF or text to Pascal Costanza (pc(a)p-cos.net) before the submission deadline. Please indicate whether you need an earlier notification of acceptance than the official date. The final paper should be mailed before the respective submission deadline - afterwards, we cannot guarantee timely publication at the website anymore. Registration ============ This workshop is co-located with ECOOP 2005, and this time it is one of the official workshops at that conference. Therefore, registration, fee and accomodation are all handled through the conference organization. See the conference website and especially http://2005.ecoop.org/fees.html and http://2005.ecoop.org/travel.html for further information. Advance registration to the workshop is handled through the primary contact person of the Workshop, Pascal Costanza (pc(a)p-cos.net) Please contact him by regular email with your submission or input to the workshop in order to receive your login to the workshop website. Include your preferred login name for the workshop website with your application. Further information for participants will be provided on the workshop website. Organizing Committee ==================== The organizing comitee consists of the following people: + Pascal Costanza, http://www.pascalcostanza.de, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium (contact organizer) + Theo D'Hondt, http://prog.vub.ac.be/~tjdhondt, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium + Arthur Lemmens, Independent Consultant, Amsterdam, The Netherlands + Manuel Serrano, http://www-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/Manuel.Serrano/, INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, France -- Pascal Costanza Vrije Universiteit Brussel mailto:Pascal.Costanza@vub.ac.be Programming Technology Lab http://www.pascalcostanza.de Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel (Belgium)

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[eurolisp] [ANN] European Lisp & Scheme Workshop - NEWS
by Pascal Costanza 01 Jun '05

01 Jun '05

Here are some news with regard to the 2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop in Glasgow, Scotland on July 26, 2005. - Richard Gabriel (http://www.dreamsongs.com) has agreed to give a keynote talk at the workshop. Title and abstract will be announced at the workshop website soon. - The submission deadline for papers and breakout group proposals has been extended to June 5, 2005. - The early registration deadline for ECOOP 2005 is June 13, 2005. Before that date, the fees for participating at the workshop should be considerably lower. However, the fee structure hasn't been announced yet. This will (hopefully) happen during the next few days at http://2005.ecoop.org/fees.html Please watch the workshop website at http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net during the next one or two weeks for more updates. Cheers, Pascal -- 2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005 http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/

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[eurolisp] Helsinki lispers' pub night this Thursday
by Nikodemus Siivola 31 May '05

31 May '05

Helsinki lispers' pub night[1] time: first Thursday of each month (2nd of June), 19:00- place: Annankadun William K.[2] Cheers, Helsinki Lispers 1. http://www.s2.org/~chery/events/helsinki-lispers-pub-night 2. http://www.oluthuone.com/ravintolat/w_anna.php

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[eurolisp] International Lisp Conference, June 2005
by Nick Levine 31 May '05

31 May '05

Please distribute this message to your constituents! Note well: The advance registration deadline is June, 1! ANNOUNCEMENT International Lisp Conference, Stanford University, June 19-22 2005 http://international-lisp-conference.org The Association of Lisp Users is pleased to announce that Stanford University will host the next International Lisp Conference between June 19 and 22. ILC 2005 marks the 25th anniversary of the seminal 1980 Lisp conference held at Stanford in August of 1980. This year, technical presentations cover a broad range of subjects woven together with the common thread of Lisp technology. Topics include: functional language design and implementation, mathematical and scientific computing, artificial intelligence, data mining, business intelligence, bio-informatics, telecommunications and networking, the semantic web, music, and entertainment technologies. A complete speakers list and schedule is available on-line. http://international-lisp-conference.org/speakers.html http://international-lisp-conference.org/schedule.html The International Lisp Conference also includes a comprehensive tutorial program including an all-day Common Lisp tutorial. http://international-lisp-conference.org/tutorials.html We look forward to seeing you at Stanford! Registration: REGISTER ON-LINE! REGISTER ON-LINE! REGISTER ON-LINE! REGISTER ON-LINE! REGISTER ON-LINE! REGISTER ON-LINE! Credit cards and PayPal are accepted. Simply visit http://international-lisp-conference.org/registration.html The advance registration deadline is June, 1 2005. http://international-lisp-conference.org/deadline.html General Information: In-Cooperation with: ACM SIGPLAN Sponsored by: The Association of Lisp Users Symbolic Systems Program, Stanford University Organizing Committee: Chair: Carl Shapiro (SRI International) Members: Rusty Johnson (ALU) Peter Lindahl (ALU) Contact: ilc05-organizing-committee (at) alu.org Program Committee: Chair: JonL White (ALU) Members: Jans Aasman (Franz, Inc.) John Adams (Space Telescope Science Institute) John Amuedo (Signal Inference Corporation) Kazuyuki Hashimoto (Electronic Arts) Larry Hunter (UCHSC) Nick Levine (Ravenbrook Limited) Christian Queinnec (Universite Paris 6) Nancy Reed (University of Hawaii) Jeff Shrager (Stanford University) Mark Stickel (SRI International) Michael Travers (Hyperphor) Taiichi Yuasa (Kyoto University) David Wilkins (SRI International) Contact: ilc05-program-committee (at) alu.org

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[eurolisp] Student internship
by Thomas F. Burdick 24 May '05

24 May '05

If you know anybody who would be interested in this, please pass it along. thanks! The Cadence Design Systems VCAD group in Munich, Germany, is looking for a University student intern for a period of two to six months. You would be working on one of the following projects, depending on our needs and your strengths: * Project planning and scheduling software. This will be used to track our utilization of our developers, and to aid in planning for on-going and future projects. * Package configuration management software. We deliver to our customers custom configurations built out of a large number of pieces of software and other intellectual property. We are rewriting the system we use to specify, track, and build these deliveries. * Common Lisp bindings to a large C++ library. We are working on a system to automatically generate the low-level bindings, as well as designing a higher-level interface meant for direct use by application programmers. The implementation language for all of the above will most likely be Common Lisp, although lesser languages such as Java, Perl, and Tcl may play a role as well. We are looking for someone who either has experience programming in a Lisp language, or is interested in learning Lisp in a production environment, and is comfortable in several mutually unrelated programming languages (eg, C, Smalltalk, and PostScript; or Java, Prolog, and SPARC assembly language). Our environment is Unix-based (Solaris and Linux), so you should have a basic familiarity with Unix. Other things that would be nice, but are not required: some theoretical familiarity with relational databases (eg, you took a database class or read the textbook from one); Windows programming experience; Oracle experience; experience with C++, SQL, and Prolog. Virtual CAD (VCAD) is a group within Cadence providing EDA (Electronic Design Automation) related services. The internship is with the software development group within VCAD. Cadence's software products are scripted with the SKILL language, a Lisp language with two dialects: one Franz Lisp-like dialect, and one Scheme-like dialect. The VCAD software group also uses Common Lisp where appropriate. If you are interested, please contact Thomas F. Burdick (tfb(a)cadence.com) and Jim Newton (jimka(a)cadence.com) For more information about VCAD, see: http://www.cadence-europe.com/solutions/vpage.cfm?pID=1 http://www.cadence-europe.com/eEuronews/mar_05/features.html

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[eurolisp] International Lisp Conference, June 2005
by Nick Levine 09 May '05

09 May '05

ANNOUNCEMENT International Lisp Conference, Stanford University, June 19-22 2005 http://international-lisp-conference.org The Association of Lisp Users is pleased to announce that Stanford University will host the next International Lisp Conference between June 19 and 22. ILC 2005 marks the 25th anniversary of the seminal 1980 Lisp conference held at Stanford in August of 1980. This year, technical presentations cover a broad range of subjects woven together with the common thread of Lisp technology. Topics include: functional language design and implementation, mathematical and scientific computing, artificial intelligence, data mining, business intelligence, bio-informatics, telecommunications and networking, the semantic web, music, and entertainment technologies. A complete speakers list is now available on-line. http://international-lisp-conference.org/speakers.html The International Lisp Conference also includes a comprehensive tutorial program including an all-day Common Lisp tutorial. http://international-lisp-conference.org/tutorials.html We look forward to seeing you at Stanford! Registration: REGISTER ON-LINE! REGISTER ON-LINE! REGISTER ON-LINE! REGISTER ON-LINE! REGISTER ON-LINE! REGISTER ON-LINE! Credit cards and PayPal are accepted. Simply visit http://international-lisp-conference.org/registration.html The advance registration deadline is June, 1 2005. http://international-lisp-conference.org/deadline.html General Information: In-Cooperation with: ACM SIGPLAN Sponsored by: The Association of Lisp Users Symbolic Systems Program, Stanford University Organizing Committee: Chair: Carl Shapiro (SRI International) Members: Rusty Johnson (ALU) Peter Lindahl (ALU) Contact: ilc05-organizing-committee (at) alu.org Program Committee: Chair: JonL White (ALU) Members: Jans Aasman (Franz, Inc.) John Adams (Space Telescope Science Institute) John Amuedo (Signal Inference Corporation) Kazuyuki Hashimoto (Electronic Arts) Larry Hunter (UCHSC) Nick Levine (Ravenbrook Limited) Christian Queinnec (Universite Paris 6) Nancy Reed (University of Hawaii) Jeff Shrager (Stanford University) Mark Stickel (SRI International) Taiichi Yuasa (Kyoto University) David Wilkins (SRI International) Contact: ilc05-program-committee (at) alu.org

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[eurolisp] Amsterdam videos, photos, etc.
by Edi Weitz 29 Apr '05

29 Apr '05

Hi! We've started to assemble presentations, photos, and other stuff from the European Common Lisp Meeting 2005 at <http://weitz.de/eclm2005/>. If you also have photos you'd like to see there send us a link. (You can also send the photos themselves but please contact me before sending them so I can give you an alternate email address.) Pending clearance from the speakers we can also offer "bootleg quality" videos of some of the talks (thanks to James Anderson) - Peter Seibel's talk is already online. If you can provide a mirror for these large files (approx. 600MB per talk) please contact me. Cheers, Edi.

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