pro March 2011

pro@common-lisp.net

23 participants
9 discussions

Re: [pro] definitional home
by Bob Kerns 30 Mar '11

30 Mar '11

I don't mean to discourage innovative thinking here, but for reference, consider that the editor and/or separate source indexer can locate defXXX forms, and record the location of (define-widget cool-widget ...) as (:definition (:name cool-widget :type define-widget) :location (:file "file.lisp" :line 28)), and make it available to meta-dot. While I can see advantages to having a form record where it came from, as you guys are describing, there's also a huge disadvantage -- the need to actually expand (and possibly evaluate) that macro, before being able to use meta-dot. You'd *like* to be able to edit code which is only conditionally loaded, or intended for some other platform or environment, or not yet working. Let's say, you just modified (and broke) the define-widget macro,and now you want to look at its usage -- but you can't, because you can't load it, because the file define-widget itself is in is broken and won't load. You'd even like to be able to index forms which are read by neither the compiler nor the interpreter. You may have definitional data which you want to constrain to certain definitional types, and NOT allow arbitrary evaluation (for example, it may be from an untrusted source). That said, it's typical for compilers and interpreters, in many languages, to record source locations. This has advantages when no source is available -- for example, reporting stack traces. Sometimes you can even detect version-mismatches between source and binary as a result. But I don't think it's ever the optimal solution for a development environment. Eclipse sort of does both for Java -- if you have a jar file with binaries, you can associate it with a directory or jar with sources; otherwise, it indexes the sources as it parses them, collects cross-reference data, etc. (It also constructs cross-reference data for the .jar files, so you can find usages within methods within classes in compiled jar files). So I'd say, what you really want here is, not a run-time or read-time action, but rather a declarative hint to both compiler and editor, that a particular form is definitional. The simplest, and traditional way to do that, is to simply declare that forms beginning with 'def' are definitional. It's arbitrary -- but it's simple.

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[pro] DEFVARs combined service
by Kazimir Majorinc 28 Mar '11

28 Mar '11

"DEFVAR and DEFPARAMETER do the combined service of - in some implementations, recording the "definitional home" of the variable - declaring the indicated variable special in compiler and runtime - assigning the variable (either conditionally, as in DEFVAR, which assigns only in the case that the variable is unbound, or unconditionally, as in DEFPARAMETER). " K. Pitman, comp.lang.lisp, 26. April 2001. What "recording the definitional home" means? Why "in some implementations?"

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[pro] Common Lisp replacement for noweb
by William Halliburton 28 Mar '11

28 Mar '11

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: daly <daly(a)axiom-developer.org> Date: Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 12:18 PM Subject: Common Lisp replacement for noweb To: thomas.m.hermann(a)odonata-research.com, pro(a)common-lisp.net I have moved from using noweb to a pure Common Lisp version of literate programming. (The source is also at: http://literatesoftware.com/tangle.lisp ) The noweb program uses two functions, weave -- takes a file and extracts latex tangle - takes a file and extracts running code The noweb syntax is: <<thechunk>>= your source code @ where your code is defined in the block delimited by the <<...>>= and the @ symbol. To use the delimited chunk somewhere you write the name of the chunk as: <<thechunk>> It would be better to use a valid latex environment. That would mean that there is no need for a "weave" function since the original file is valid latex. \begin{chunk}{thechunk} your code here \end{chunk} \getchunk{thechunk} All that would be left is to make Common Lisp understand the latex environment syntax which is trivial to do. So I wrote a tangle.lisp program. It accepts and processes both the old noweb syntax and the new latex syntax. The idea is simple. Read the file, hash the chunks, and expand them when a getchunk is found. The code is attached. Send questions to daly(a)literatesoftware.com Tim Daly daly(a)axiom-developer.org daly(a)literatesoftware.com

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[pro] Matrix operations...
by Pascal Costanza 28 Mar '11

28 Mar '11

Hi, I am looking for a Common Lisp library that provides some essential mathematical matrix/vector operations. There seem to be a couple of offerings, but it seems hard to determine in what kind of state they are (without essentially trying them all one by one). If anybody could share his/her experience, I would be very grateful. Some (soft) requirements: - It should be implemented in "pure" Common Lisp. Preferably no wrappers for libraries implemented in other languages. - Preferably sequential, but parallel implementations may also be fine. - Focus on performance (incl. low-level type declarations, for example). - Preferred platform is LispWorks, but other Common Lisp implementations are also fine. Portability is not a high priority. Thanks a lot in advance, Pascal -- Pascal Costanza, ExaScience Lab, Intel Belgium

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[pro] Bottom-up, top-down or both ?
by Didier Verna 11 Mar '11

11 Mar '11

It is well known that a functional approach to programming helps thinking in a top-down fashion. Idioms made available by first-class functions (e.g. mapping and folding) help you write down the general ideas first, and worry about the details later. Paul Graham has nice examples of that in On Lisp IIRC. In fact, it seems that being able to think in a top-down fashion is not specifically tied to functional programming, but perhaps more generally to the level of expressiveness that your language provides. For example, I find that the very existence of a REPL helps a lot: you can test a function on manually-provided data, that would normally be constructed by a lower-level, yet-to-be-written function. You can pre-define stuff to do nothing but print "I'm here", just to check if the bigger thing works. In Lisp, with half-defined generic functions, you can even have your program half-working, some details remaining to be sorted out later. So obviously, Lisp being as expressive as it is, is of great help in thinking top-down. Even in Lisp, however, some things need to be defined before they can be used. So I recently discovered, to my greatest astonishment, that even if my thought process is top-down 99% of the time, my /code/ is *always* written down in a bottom-up fashion. Occasionally, I might have one of those quasi-hysterical crisis in which I would spend hours re-organizing my code until the I get the overall expression of the program as close as possible to the ultimate upside-down pyramid of dependencies. And then, we I need to immerse myself again into something I wrote a long time ago, I usually read my files backwards... or not! So I was wondering, how's your code organized? How's your thought process organized? Top-down? Bottom-up? Both? -- Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated. Scientific site: http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier Music (Jazz) site: http://www.didierverna.com

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[pro] slime help
by Alexandre Rademaker 11 Mar '11

11 Mar '11

Hello, Sorry if this list is not the best place to ask this question... Maybe we should create a newbie lisp list! What is the easy way to copy/paste a form from a source code buffer to slime prompt? Is there any keyboard shortcut emacs/slime-mode to copy the whole body of a form from anywhere within it?? Cheers, Alexandre Rademaker http://web.me.com/arademaker/

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[pro] [Final CfPart] European Lisp Symposium, Hamburg, March 31 - April 1
by Didier Verna 09 Mar '11

09 Mar '11

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 4th European Lisp Symposium Special Focus on Parallelism & Efficiency March 31 - April 1st, 2011 TUHH, Hamburg University of Technology Hamburg, Germany http://www.european-lisp-symposium.org/ Sponsors: EPITA, TUHH, Lispworks, Franz Inc., NovaSparks and Freiheit ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ News: ~~~~~ * The final program is now online. * The early registration deadline is in 3 days, so hurry! Registration will still be possible afterwards. Invited Speakers: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Craig Zilles -- Compiling for the common case Marc Battyani -- Reconfigurable computing on steroids Apostolos Syropoulos -- Scala: an OO surprise Scope ~~~~~~ The purpose of the European Lisp Symposium is to provide a forum for the discussion and dissemination of all aspects of design, implementation and application of any of the Lisp dialects, including Common Lisp, Scheme, Emacs Lisp, AutoLisp, ISLISP, Dylan, Clojure, ACL2, ECMAScript, Racket, SKILL and so on. We encourage everyone interested in Lisp to participate. The European Lisp Symposium 2011 invites high quality papers about novel research results, insights and lessons learned from practical applications, and educational perspectives. We also encourage submissions about known ideas as long as they are presented in a new setting and/or in a highly elegant way. This year's focus will be directed towards "Parallelism & Efficiency". Programme Chair ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Didier Verna - EPITA Research and Development Laboratory, France Local Chair ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ralf Moeller - Hamburg University of Technology, Germany Programme Committee ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Antonio Leitao - Instituto Superior Tecnico/INESC-ID, Portugal Christophe Rhodes - Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK David Edgar Liebke - Relevance Inc., USA Didier Verna - EPITA Research and Development Laboratory, France Henry Lieberman - MIT Media Laboratory, USA Jay McCarthy - Brigham Young University, USA Jose Luis Ruiz Reina - Universidad de Sevilla, Spain Marco Antoniotti - Universita Milano Bicocca, Italy Manuel Serrano - INRIA, France Michael Sperber - DeinProgramm, Germany Pascal Costanza - Vrije Universiteit of Brussel, Belgium Scott McKay - ITA Software, USA -- Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated. Scientific site: http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier Music (Jazz) site: http://www.didierverna.com

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[pro] Reader macro definition in CLHS
by Kazimir Majorinc 02 Mar '11

02 Mar '11

------------------- reader macro n. 1. a textual notation introduced by dispatch on one or two characters that defines special-purpose syntax for use by the Lisp reader, and that is implemented by a reader macro function. See Section 2.2 (Reader Algorithm). 2. the character or characters that introduce a reader macro[1]; that is, a macro character or the conceptual pairing of a dispatching macro character and the character that follows it. (A reader macro is not a kind of macro.) ------------------- I do not understand item 1. In code ... (set-macro-character #\G (lambda(s c) 9.81)) (setf s (* (/ G 2) (* tt tt))) #\G is the reader-macro in a sense 2. What is the reader-macro in a sense 1.? Kazimir Majorinc

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[pro] Common Lisp Library for MS Word files (.doc or .docx)?
by Mark H. David 01 Mar '11

01 Mar '11

Does anyone know of any CL libraries for dealing with Microsoft Word files? Tools for creating them, reading from them, parsing them, converting them to plain text or other formats, things like that? Thanks, -Mark

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pro March 2011