Luke Gorrie <luke@bluetail.com> writes:

Bill Clementson <bill_clementson@yahoo.com> writes:

...

Even if the eventual goal is to replace all the functionality that is provided by ILM/ILISP, ILISP would provide more "short-term" benefits for the SLIME CL developer than ILM would.

That would have been one way, but we went the clean-room approach. We only use ILM to start Lisp and compile our server, and *inferior-lisp* as a debugging fallback. We've covered all the major features now, although there's plenty of hacking left to do to get all the details right and support everyone's favourite add-ons.

Starting from scratch means more work/fun, but it also gives us a fresh codebase. To an outsider, some of the code in ILISP is slightly terrifying :-), as in any program with such a long

history. We also wanted to do most things differently and to have an environment more like the elisp one, so it would only give us a

short-term.

ELI really doesn't appeal to my hackstincts. From

Actually, to an insider, some of the code in ILISP is a bit terrifying too ;-) head-start in the the web I can't even

tell who wrote it,

Steve Haflich (of Franz) was the author of the very first version of ELI back around 1987. Since then, a number of different Franz hackers have contributed to it.

and most questions on groups.google.com seem to go without definitive answers.

I downloaded my copy from Neil van Dyke's website, which says "Please do not pester Franz to support this packaging, lest they regret GPL'ing."

It looks like Franz did the least necessary to be allowed to link with Emacs under the GPL, and would be unlikely to let a dozen random hackers into their CVS tree :-) so that is a

I'm not sure which group you're referring to. As far as I'm aware, there is no Franz/ELI mailing list on groups.google.com. If you're referring to comp.lang.lisp.franz, I'm not surprised as that newsgroup is just about dead - most Franz-specific issues seem to be either directed to c.l.l. or to the allegro-cl mailing list, both of which are very active and both of which you can generally get a quick reply from. potential dead-end. That is a bit unfair. I have personally worked with both Steve Haflich and Kevin Layer on various ELI enhancements and have worked with a number of other Franz employees on other ACL issues. I have always found the Franz people I've dealt with to be very receptive to suggestions as well as terrific programmers. I doubt that you would get better responses to requests or suggestions for improvements at many open source projects. I should also mention that I am not a licensed ACL user either.

So I think our approach is pretty reasonable. We'll see how it goes. I'm even hoping we can tempt some of you fine hackers to have a play around on the dark side ;-)

And of course my views do not necessarily reflect

I already mentioned that I use MS Windows - doesn't that qualify me as playing on the dark side already ;-) those of the other

SLIME hackers,

Aha, now come all the caveats: don't remove the label, not valid with other offers, use before expiration date, etc, etc :-)

but I hope this answers this thread's main question. Note however that this is almost entirely after-the-fact rationalization. Really, it was just too addictive to stop. ;-)

Sorta like having a pint, eh - you can't just have one :-) -- Bill Clementson __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/