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[toronto-lisp] Antiweb available on github
by doug＠hcsw.org 25 Oct '09

25 Oct '09

We just pushed our git repository to github: http://github.com/hoytech/antiweb Official releases will still be tarballed and archived on the antiweb website: http://hoytech.com/antiweb/ Doug

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[toronto-lisp] New recruit
by Brian Connoy 24 Oct '09

24 Oct '09

FYI ... we just might have a new recruit at the next meetup. Yesterday, while seated on the bus with my nose buried (as usual) in a Lisp book, a young woman seated to my left asked excitedly "Is that Scheme!?" It was indeed; the fourth edition of "The Scheme Programming Language". Her name is Laura.

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[toronto-lisp] Smalltalk TV and Toronto Smalltalk Group
by Rudolf Olah 20 Oct '09

20 Oct '09

Apparently the Toronto Smalltalk Group has put together something called Smalltalk TV. I just spotted the article in Dr Dobb's Journal http://www.ddj.com/architect/220100617 And the website itself: http://www.smalltalktelevision.com/

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[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

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[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 -

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[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.

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

07 Oct '09

Are we meeting tomorrow (Oct. 6)? pt

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[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

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[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?

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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.

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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 -

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[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 -

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[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

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[toronto-lisp] ECLM
by Brian Connoy 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

Just want to extend our associate, some words of support at ECLM. http://weitz.de/eclm2009/ "Knock 'em dead, Paul !"

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[toronto-lisp] GitHub repo is online + meeting Tuesday Sep 1 @ Linux Caffe
by Vishvajit Singh 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

As promised, I've created a repository on GitHub for our club. http://github.com/vishsingh/lisp-toronto/ This will be a centralized location for us to share: - Code and slides from presentations given at meetings - Code for projects we are currently working on - Scraps of code you wish to share with the group - etc. If you are a member of the group and you've been to at least one meeting, contact me personally and I will add you as a collaborator, and you'll be able to push to the repository. (You have to have a GitHub account -- they're free.) (Note: I'm new to GitHub so let me know if I'm doing anything wrong.) Our next step will be to start working on a project. But what should it be? For now, I'll create a project-ideas.txt on the repo.. ----------- Our next meeting is coming up soon. Toronto Lisp Users Group, September Meeting: Tuesday September 1st, 6pm, at the Linux Caffe Directions: walk south of Bloor from Christie Station, until you hit Harbord Street. Here's a map to the Linux Caffe from Christie Station: http://tinyurl.com/linuxcafe-lisp-meet We're looking for volunteers for talks, discussion, and tutorials. We'd love to hear about your current projects, proposals for projects, libraries you like, issues relevant to Lisp, etc. http://www.lisptoronto.org/ Come on out! Vish

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[toronto-lisp] Concurrency
by Brian Connoy 04 Sep '09

04 Sep '09

Just stumbled across this ... http://common-lisp.net/project/eager-future/ Reckon I'd post it, considering that concurrency often gets mention at our meets. BC

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[toronto-lisp] Away on vacation. Catch you at the next meeting.
by Mark Bolusmjak 31 Aug '09

31 Aug '09

Hello all, I wish I could attend the next meet, but I'm away on vacation. Hopefully I'll see you all at the next one. Cheers. -mark

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[toronto-lisp] Notes from the Metalevel, An Introduction to Computer Composition (with lisp!)
by Abram Hindle 25 Aug '09

25 Aug '09

http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~ferguson/Notes%20from%20the%20Metalevel/nm/inde… More on lisp and computer music/composition. abram

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Re: [toronto-lisp] toronto-lisp Digest, Vol 20, Issue 4
by Patrick Jones 23 Aug '09

23 Aug '09

I'm currently reviewing Clojure for some business analytics tools I've been tasked to develop. Mainly it's a case of getting up to speed with the Halloway book before I can make any recommendations. On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 1:00 PM, <toronto-lisp-request(a)common-lisp.net>wrote: > Send toronto-lisp mailing list submissions to > toronto-lisp(a)common-lisp.net > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/toronto-lisp > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > toronto-lisp-request(a)common-lisp.net > > You can reach the person managing the list at > toronto-lisp-owner(a)common-lisp.net > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of toronto-lisp digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Clojure success story (Vishvajit Singh) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:40:24 -0400 > From: Vishvajit Singh <vishvajitsingh(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [toronto-lisp] Clojure success story > To: toronto-lisp(a)common-lisp.net > Message-ID: > <520868e80908221340u7f8e1bd9ybc30e041154ec68(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > > http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/4e2b193812c59bd… > http://www.infoq.com/articles/flightcaster-clojure-rails > > This is an inspiring story of the use of Clojure along with many other > technologies to build a flight delay prediction tool > (flightcaster.com) > > Read it through.. it's quite the hacker's dream: > > Hadoop + Cascading + Amazon EC2/S3 + Ruby on Rails (Heroku) + Clojure > > Who wouldn't love to work on something like this? > > I wonder if Clojure is superseding Common Lisp as the "handyman's > Lisp". I've been using it recently to toy around with various AI ideas > I've had for a while, and I'm rather enjoying the elegance and clarity > of the language. > > Has anyone else been working with Clojure this month? > > Regards, > Vish > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > toronto-lisp mailing list > toronto-lisp(a)common-lisp.net > http://common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/toronto-lisp > > > End of toronto-lisp Digest, Vol 20, Issue 4 > ******************************************* > -- Seamos Los Exilios Desde La Soledad [my financial commentary] http://www.ibankcoin.com/peanut_gallery/index.php/author/cuervoslaugh [my rails blog] http://patrickonrails.blogspot.com [my software] http://github.com/cuervoslaugh

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[toronto-lisp] Clojure success story
by Vishvajit Singh 22 Aug '09

22 Aug '09

http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/4e2b193812c59bd… http://www.infoq.com/articles/flightcaster-clojure-rails This is an inspiring story of the use of Clojure along with many other technologies to build a flight delay prediction tool (flightcaster.com) Read it through.. it's quite the hacker's dream: Hadoop + Cascading + Amazon EC2/S3 + Ruby on Rails (Heroku) + Clojure Who wouldn't love to work on something like this? I wonder if Clojure is superseding Common Lisp as the "handyman's Lisp". I've been using it recently to toy around with various AI ideas I've had for a while, and I'm rather enjoying the elegance and clarity of the language. Has anyone else been working with Clojure this month? Regards, Vish

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[toronto-lisp] Meeting minutes added to website (lisptoronto.org)
by Vishvajit Singh 10 Aug '09

10 Aug '09

Fellow Toronto Lispers, I've cleaned up our website a little bit, and put up summaries of the last 4 meetings. I tend to braindump these things into a text file when I get home, but I haven't had the time to put them up until now. I hope you find them useful. If you attended a meeting, and your name is not there (or we only got your first name), feel free to correct it. Either contact Telman Yusupov to obtain permission to edit the site, or send me a quick e-mail. The next thing I'd like to do (soon) is set up a repository for our club on GitHub. Right now I mainly envision it as a place to play around with fun projects as a means of learning about Clojure. But we'll see how it goes. In the long term, it would be great if parts of it evolve into something worth contributing to clojure-contrib. With best regards, Vish Singh

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[toronto-lisp] Toronto Lisp Users Group Meeting Tuesday August 4th @ Linux Caffe
by Vishvajit Singh 04 Aug '09

04 Aug '09

Hello everyone! Our next meeting is coming up soon. Toronto Lisp Users Group, August Meeting: Tuesday August 4th, 6pm, at the Linux Caffe Directions: walk south of Bloor from Christie Station, until you hit Harbord Street. Here's a map to the Linux Caffe from Christie Station: http://tinyurl.com/linuxcafe-lisp-meet We're looking for volunteers for talks, discussion, and tutorials. We'd love to hear about your current projects, proposals for projects, libraries you like, tutorials or related LISPy languages, issues relevant to Lisp, etc. Work is very busy, so I may not be able to show up. I will do my best, however. http://www.lisptoronto.org/ Come on out! Vish

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[toronto-lisp] Code Retreat Toronto 2009 (August 8th)
by Michael DiBernardo 13 Jul '09

13 Jul '09

Code Retreat Toronto Hosted by J.B. Rainsberger and Novell/PlateSpin Canada August 8, 2009 J.B. Rainsberger and Novell/PlateSpin Canada will be hosting a code retreat on August 8th, 2009. What is a code retreat? - It is an event where we "[bring coders together to code], and then discuss only the things that emerge from that code." [1] - For more details, see http://tinyurl.com/lr395d Where is it? - The event is at the Novell/PlateSpin office in Toronto. - The address is 340 King Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, ON. - See the map at http://tinyurl.com/platespin When is it? - We'll start with breakfast at 8:30am. - We expect to go until around 5pm, at which point we'll head over to a local pub to unwind a little. How much does it cost? - Nothing but your time. What do we bring? - We can't supply machines, so please bring your laptop. That's about all you'll need. What do we get? - Breakfast and lunch will be supplied. - There will also be free coffee, soft drinks, and snacks available. Do I need to RSVP? - YES. If you are going to attend PLEASE EMAIL MIKE DIBERNARDO at mikedebo(a)gmail.com. - Use the subject "Code Retreat 2009". - We may be overbooked, so the RSVP is required to determine headcount. Who is the host, exactly? - J. B. (Joe) Rainsberger is a Canadian software development consultant and technology writer. [2] - He is the author of JUnit Recipes : Practical Methods for Programmer Testing, and was the recipient of the Gordon Pask Award in 2005. Anything else? - You can view J.B.'s video invite at http://www.vimeo.com/5429547 I have a question! - Please send any questions you might have to mikedebo(a)gmail.com. We'll see you on August 8th! [1] http://coderetreat.ning.com/profiles/blogs/what-the-heck-is-coderetreat [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._Rainsberger

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[toronto-lisp] Event that you guys might be interested in
by Michael DiBernardo 13 Jul '09

13 Jul '09

Hey all, I've only attended one meetup of this user group, sometime last summer. I remember we talked a bit about Let over Lambda, and some reasoning engine that had been written in CLISP or something. Anyhow, despite my lack of attendance, I'd still like to invite you guys to this event that I'm running on August 8th over at Novell/PlateSpin. It's a code retreat, hosted by J.B. Rainsberger (http://jbrains.ca) where you pair up with another developer and work on some problems together, basically. I think it would be great to have a few Lispy 'representatives' in attendance, because I think you guys have a lot of ideas that you could present in such an venue that would be really new to the other folks, but at the same time would probably be well-received. (So far the people who've agreed to come are pretty open-minded, knowledge-hungry folks.) I'm going to forward the invite to the list in a subsequent email. Hopefully I'll see some of you there! Thanks, -Mike

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[toronto-lisp] Transactional Programming with Antiweb
by doug＠hcsw.org 08 Jul '09

08 Jul '09

Hey all, Good meeting yesterday, as usual. Like I said, here's a "paper" I've been writing over the past few weeks that explains Antiweb's Berkeley DB interface: http://hoytech.com/transactional-programming.html It's still a draft so please send along any comments or suggestions. Best, Doug

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