- toronto-lisp - mailman3.common-lisp.net

[toronto-lisp] Interesting video of a new visual programming tool
by Vishvajit Singh 18 Oct '09

18 Oct '09

Hello, Today I watched this interesting video created by a researcher at MIT CSAIL. It describes a new programming language and environment called "Subtext": http://subtextual.org/subtext2.html It appears to be a sort of Lisp structure editor, mixed with the idea of pattern-matching on the arguments using truth tables. You have to watch until near the end to see a really complex application of the tool. He develops a function that determines the "attack damage" in a role-playing game, and it's really nice the way you can literally see how the data flows through your program. I really wanted to get my hands on it, so I downloaded the ZIP file on his website (http://subtextual.org/subtext2.zip) but it appears to be a Windows app so I'm not able to play with it right now. It's interesting to see that even 50 years after Lisp was invented, people are still trying to figure out how to get visual programming right. It seems that there are still many possibilities to be explored in this space. Vish

1 0

[toronto-lisp] SGML, Scheme and a historical anecdote
by David Penton 10 Oct '09

10 Oct '09

This is a reminiscence that may be a bit over-long. You may wish to spend your time wisely and just skip reading it ;-) At the Oct. 6 meeting I made a vague reference to having heard about Scheme for the first time in connection with SGML. I was not altogether sure that my memory was correct, but a quick check in wikipedia confirms the connection. The sgml stylesheet language DSSSL is said to be "based on a subset of Scheme." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSSSL ) Moreover, its connection with my own history now reminds me that, like Brian Connoy, I too missed an earlier chance to dive into learning lisp/lisp-like languages. This is where I first heard about Scheme. In the early 2000's I was heavily involved in a project whose main objective was to put Canadian federal legislation online. XML was the big deal back then, so we planned to use it to mark up, store, print and search Canadian statutes and regulations. One of the biggest problems encountered was how to print legislation marked up as XML. The legacy system used legislation created in WordPerfect, which was then converted to the input format of custom implementation of one of the phototypesetting engines of the day (I forget which one.) The legacy printing system was becoming unsupportable due to its age, the large quantity of cruft in the code and the gradual disappearance (through death, insanity etc.) of most people who knew how to use it. The jackass whose responsibility it was to replace the legacy printing system had absolutely no clue about XML. He had spent years at the Canada Gazette, and had done everything in MS Word plus a bunch of crap he had kluged up in VB or some other horror. He absolutely could NOT grasp the idea of hierarchical data structures, trees etc. When I tried to explain recursion and tree structures to him he just lost his temper. The project bogged down almost to the point of cancellation over this issue. The House of Commons techical staff were in a total panic. I "tactfully" informed the project manager that the guy in charge of printing was a total fucking idiot. Eventually I began investigating methods of printing XML and SGML on my own. I discovered Jade (a DSSSL engine) and also JadeTex. I had used TeX heavily for some time, so I proposed that we go that direction. As it turned out, DSSSL was in fairly bad repute with a lot of people who had considerable influence on the project. This was almost entirely because (to paraphrase these people) "DSSSL = Scheme and Scheme is *weird* and NOBODY uses Scheme for anything useful." This same bunch also had a lot of prejudice against TeX. The desktop publishing, or rather word processing paradigm ruled supreme in their world. And anyway, in the structured markup world at the time many people thought that SGML was too complex, and hence so was anything related to it. (That's why we have XML, I guess.) (For a contrary view check out some of the recently deceased Erik Naggum's rants about XML.) At that point I began to investigate XSLT and XSL-FO. XSLT engines were reasonably advanced at the time (XSLT 1.0 I think). XSL-FO was pretty new. Only a rather half-baked open source version (FOP, an apache project) was readily available. Hardly anyone was all that worried about printing out XML, because the focus was all on its use for web site content, or SOAP, and that kind of stuff. So transforming XML to HTML and styling with CSS was about all anyone seemed to care about. So, one April easter weekend I worked for four days straight (with about two hours of sleep per day) to do a 'proof of concept' print engine. I bashed together something using the project's XML for legislation and XSLT outputting to XSL-FO. This worked fairly well. It also gave me a quick introductory lesson in (more or less) functional style, or at least without being able to rely on side-effects. As it all turned out, I had so offended the people in charge of the print engine project that they persuaded management to (a) take my proof of concept stuff (b)hire consultants to produce a production-quality system based on it (c) acquire a commercial XSL-FO engine (Antenna House), and (d) banish me to some remote part of the project for having insulted the dimwit whose job I had largely done. I became the official project pariah for a time. So much for being technically right, but tactlessly, vociferously, and impolitically so. It would not surprise me to find out that the almost-functional nature of XSLT is based on the same rationale for basing DSSSL on Scheme. I have read some explanations of the advantages the designers thought might result from making XSLT side-effectless, but I did not understand them at the time. Perhaps learning Scheme some day might clarify the matter for me. I seems that the prevailing prejudice against DSSSL and Scheme caused me to miss my chance to dive into the lisp/scheme world seven or eight years ago. - Dave -

5 6

[toronto-lisp] OpenMCL / Clozure CL
by David Penton 10 Oct '09

10 Oct '09

Does anyone use openmcl / ccl? I am looking for some hints on debugging.

1 0

[toronto-lisp] meeting Tuesday Oct. 6
by Paul Tarvydas 07 Oct '09

07 Oct '09

Are we meeting tomorrow (Oct. 6)? pt

4 8

[toronto-lisp] Scheme to be split into two languages
by Brian Connoy 02 Oct '09

02 Oct '09

Some links about the future of Scheme that may be of interest: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3582 http://scheme-reports.org/2009/position-statement.html http://scheme-reports.org/2009/working-group-1-charter.html http://scheme-reports.org/2009/working-group-2-charter.html

1 0

[toronto-lisp] Definition of "System"
by David Penton 27 Sep '09

27 Sep '09

Here comes my first stranger-in-a-stange-land question. I am busy learning to use asdf. The asdf manual refers to defining "systems." It is not clear to me whether the term "system" has a formal definition in lisp, or rather is used loosely. I see that the CL ansi spec has a chapter (ch. 24) on System Construction, but this does not elucidate much (for me). For asdf purposes, does "system" mean something specific, or does it just mean a bunch of lisp bits that make up a useful chunk of software?

3 2

Re: [toronto-lisp] Learning Lisp
by David Penton 26 Sep '09

26 Sep '09

I find the responses to my post very encouraging. I shall ask questions here when I need to do so. I have found recently that my questions tend to be about definitions - sometimes the reference material is not all that clear to me (may just be me, or the fact that I am at an early stage of learning.) Thanks everybody.

1 0

Re: [toronto-lisp] Learning Lisp
by David Penton 26 Sep '09

26 Sep '09

Ok, great & thx. I am frustrated with a few things as I progress down my learning path. Frustration is, of course, usual and unavoidable when learning a new language. It appears to me that the effect is amplified by the fact that lisp = paradigm shift relative to algol / c languages, which is my background. Anyway, here is my query: Where should one go to ask *dumb* lisp questions? I have looked at comp.lang.lisp but it is sooooo full of spam that I don't know what to do about it. I have tried various news readers, but the spam filtering is either poor, or the documentation on setting up spam filtering is *incomprehensible*. The Google Groups archive is likewise full of spam-shit. Maybe I should ignore the spam and forge ahead? I could give examples of problems I am having, but I don't thing including them in this post is appropriate. Any suggestions? IRC or something? Does the toronto-lisp list deal with simple techical/newbie questions? TIA. - Dave -

4 3

[toronto-lisp] Learning Lisp
by David Penton 25 Sep '09

25 Sep '09

Greetings. I am in the process of learning CL. It is a very enjoyable process. I hope to attend the next meeting in Toronto to connect with other lispers. (I am in Burlington.) How active is the group? I am a true old-timer in software/computing. I have know for years that I should turn to lisp. I am finally getting around to doing so. The experience is something like a religious conversion, I am pleased to admit. While lisp may not be the "one true way" it is starting to look like it to me. My current learning environment is emacs + slime + sblc. This is a great combo, which I use primarily on my macbook but also on my Vista machine and under ubuntu. It seems to work pretty well on all three. Eventually I will purchase a commercial CL product. I hope the group will provide some guidance in that respect. Hoping to hear from y'all.... - Dave -

2 2

[toronto-lisp] Our compatriot Paul has been blogged! ECLM notes
by Abram Hindle 17 Sep '09

17 Sep '09

http://aerique.blogspot.com/2009/09/some-eclm-2009-impressions.html abram

3 2