Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
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Dr. Edmund Wei #1 / 73
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 Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
I think most of you will agree that once you're hooked on Common Lisp you realize that you've found a language which has things to offer that no competitor has, so I won't discuss this any further. Nevertheless, CL is also a language that is somewhat hard for newcomers, especially for those who've used other, more widespread languages before: I come from the Perl/C/Java camp (and this is how I pay my rent) and there are myriads of _simple_ tasks that I could implement in these languages without thinking while I would have to work hard to get them done in CL. This is what this posting is about: I now that many c.l.l regulars despise Perl, but I hope you'll agree that the Perl community has a couple of things that we can learn from. The one thing that I'm going to talk about here is the famous (?) Perl Cookbook (see < http://www.*-*-*.com/ ;), a nice little book that provides concise, elegant and instructive answers to seemingly simple questions like "You need to find the number of days between two dates or times" or "You want to get a list of filenames similar to MS-DOS's *.* and Unix's *.h", or "You want to access or modify just a portion of a string, not the whole thing". If you've been using Lisp since the day you were born this might seem trivial to you, but judging from my experience - and from many questions I've read in this newsgroup - many of these simple tasks seem to be harder than they should be in CL (and they are usually not dealt with in the standard literature, i.e. Graham, Norvig, Winston/Horn, and so on). This posting is a proposal for a community effort to provide a "Common Lisp Cookbook" that will mimick the Perl Cookbook (or similar sources for Java, python and other languages). It'll provide 'recipes' that'll help you in implementing mundane stuff and thus enabling you to get more comfortable with the language as well as giving you more time to think about the stuff that's really hard (and would probably be a pain to do in other languages). I hereby volunteer to organize/maintain this project if enough people are willing to help. I will also be able to host the project (see below) if this will be the agreed-upon way to do it. Following are a couple of thoughts about the Cookbook project. I hope many people will have something to say about it - additions, corrections, improvements, suggestions, comments are welcome (and should be directed to the newsgroup and not to my email address). [Disclaimers: 1. I'm rather new to CL. I'm lightyears away from being the Tom Christiansen of Common Lisp, so I will need the help of as many people as possible. (A newbie might be able to ask the right questions but somebody has to answer them...) 2. I have a family to feed, so I can't guarantee to keep any terms.] Having said that, here comes the main stuff: 0. What it is and what it isn't. - This'll be about ANSI Common Lisp, not about Scheme, Emacs Lisp, AutoLisp, or whatever. - The target audience are people who are new to (Common) Lisp - people who have just discovered the language and are willing to learn it. - The Cookbook will provide small code snippets as answers to frequently asked questions usually beginning with "How do I..." (see above for examples). The code should ideally be accompanied with a discussion of how it works and what has to be paid attention to plus pointers to relevant chapters in books, online articles or the CLHS. (The standard article in the Perl Cookbook has four parts: "Problem", "Solution", "Discussion", "See also". An example can be found at < http://www.*-*-*.com/ ;.) - The project does not aim to supplant introductory books or the HyperSpec. People who use the Cookbook are expected to know the language basics and to consult the CLHS if necessary. - The Cookbook should be agnostic to operating systems and implementations if possible. It will surely be necessary to provide information that is specific to a certain OS or vendor (especially if we're talking about non-ANSI stuff) but it would be nice if readers had a choice between different versions. - Contributions to the Cookbook aren't expected to be exhaustive or worthy a Pulitzer Price. On the contrary - I am convinced that at least thirty percent of the typical newbie questions can be answered by pointing them to a specific function entry in the CLHS (or - even better - by providing a one-line solution). - Due to the nature of this there will be some intersection with the c.l.l FAQ (recently revived by Christophe Rhodes at < http://www.*-*-*.com/ ~csr21/lispfaq.html>), but I think these projects are different enough to warrant two distinct documents. - This'll be an ongoing collaborative effort and it will be perfectly OK to just post a good question. Let someone else take care of the answer. 1. Content Here's a quick sketch of the content in very rough form. It's assembled from the O'Reilly Books, the CLHS, and from postings to this newsgroup. - Basics: Installation, Loading and Compiling - Numbers: BIGNUMS, rationals, complex numbers - Strings / Regular Expressions - Dates and Times - Arrays - Hash Tables - Lists/Conses - Structures - CLOS - Other data structures: Btrees, Queues, Linked Lists - Iteration: LOOP, SERIES, MAP functions - Searching and Sorting - Input and Output, Streams, FORMAT, the Lisp Reader - Conditions, Error Handling - File Access, File Contents, Directories - Packages - Defsystem - Debugging, Profiling, Advice - Database Access - Sockets - Internet Protocols, Web Serving - Multi-Processing, Multi-Threading - FFI, Extending and Embedding CL - Communicating with other processes - GUI - I18N - XML - MOP This is of course open to discussion. I'm sure I've missed something. Also, I'm not sure about the correct order and I'm aware of the fact that I've mixed rather basic stuff with advanced topics. Let me repeat that I think the basic stuff is important and this'll be what the Cookbook is about. Many Lisp newcomers have an idea how to implement something in their preferred programming language but they tend to feel lost if they're to choose from the wealth of built-in functions and data types that CL has to offer. 2. Infrastructure / How to do it 2.1. The first thing that comes to mind (and has been mentioned here already) is CLiki. The good thing about it is that it's already there and we can simply start hacking in questions and answers. But I think it might be better if we had some means to organize the whole project - providing for ways to easily re-structure the whole document and for automatic generation of different formats like HTML, TeX, PDF... 2.2. That's why I think a custom-tailored database-backed website would be the best solution. As with CLiki, everybody should be able to add content or change what's there already (maybe after registering once with his name and email address). I would volunteer to set up such a thing (although I'd currently write it in mod_perl/DBI - shame on me - rather than in CL/USQL) and provide a server to host it. [This could be somewhat similar to the Python Cookbook at < http://www.*-*-*.com/ ;. I haven't looked at every detail but it seems to be OK.] 2.3. As an alternative one could start a Sourceforge project to host a couple of Texinfo files. Contributors would have to use CVS. 3. License This will be a collaborative effort, so we'll have to find a license that seems fair to everyone who contributes code and advice. I'm not familiar with Open Source Documentation Licenses. What do you think would be the best one and why? 4. "Prior Art" I'm pretty sure that most of the stuff that would go into this Cookbook has already been posted to c.l.l at least once by very knowledgeable people, it's just a matter of finding and organizing it. Would you think it'll be OK to take a code snippet from groups.google.com, put it into the Cookbook and add a reference like "posted to comp.lang.lisp by Donald Duck at Dec 12, 1996 as
restrictions? OK, I hope this is enough to start a discussion and to solicit more input. I'm really willing to do this - not only because I'm a good guy (ahem) but mainly because I think it'll be a very good way to improve my own knowledge of Common Lisp. It'd be great if many others would join this project for whatever reasons they might have. Thanks for your time, Edi.
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Mon, 12 Jul 2004 17:52:13 GMT |
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Dr. Edmund Wei #2 / 73
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 Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
Quote: > 3. License > This will be a collaborative effort, so we'll have to find a license > that seems fair to everyone who contributes code and advice. I'm not > familiar with Open Source Documentation Licenses. What do you think > would be the best one and why?
Sorry for answering to myself but this might be interesting: <http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/23/2022235&mode=thread&thres...> Edi.
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Mon, 12 Jul 2004 21:09:26 GMT |
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Marc Battyan #3 / 73
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 Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
[snip...] Quote: > Having said that, here comes the main stuff: > 0. What it is and what it isn't. > - This'll be about ANSI Common Lisp, not about Scheme, Emacs Lisp, > AutoLisp, or whatever. > - The target audience are people who are new to (Common) Lisp - people > who have just discovered the language and are willing to learn it.
Don't forget those who learned Lisp in some recent (or distant) past but are coming back to it. [snip...] Quote: > - Due to the nature of this there will be some intersection with the > c.l.l FAQ (recently revived by Christophe Rhodes at > <http://www-jcsu.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~csr21/lispfaq.html>), but I think > these projects are different enough to warrant two distinct > documents.
If they end up having too much intersection it will be possible to merge them anyway. [snip...] Quote: > 2.1. The first thing that comes to mind (and has been mentioned here > already) is CLiki. The good thing about it is that it's already > there and we can simply start hacking in questions and > answers. But I think it might be better if we had some means to > organize the whole project - providing for ways to easily > re-structure the whole document and for automatic generation of > different formats like HTML, TeX, PDF...
sexpr ? Quote: > 2.2. That's why I think a custom-tailored database-backed website > would be the best solution. As with CLiki, everybody should be > able to add content or change what's there already (maybe after > registering once with his name and email address). I would > volunteer to set up such a thing (although I'd currently write it > in mod_perl/DBI - shame on me - rather than in CL/USQL) and > provide a server to host it.
Argh! mod_perl.... Please use mod_lisp or any CL web server ;-) Marc
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Mon, 12 Jul 2004 21:55:42 GMT |
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Dr. Edmund Wei #4 / 73
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 Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
Quote:
> Argh! mod_perl.... Please use mod_lisp or any CL web server ;-)
One of my servers has mod_lisp installed and I'm experimenting with CMUCL there. However, if I would write the application with mod_lisp and CL I'd need _much_ more time for it (while mod_perl is my bread-and-butter currently). Installing UncommonSQL alone might take me a couple of hours... :( [This is a FreeBSD machine, no CCLAN and apt-get install available.] Once the Cookbook is finished all this will be much easier of course. Version 2.0 will be hosted by a CL web server... :) Cheers, Edi.
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Mon, 12 Jul 2004 22:26:08 GMT |
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Marc Battyan #5 / 73
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 Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
Quote:
> > Argh! mod_perl.... Please use mod_lisp or any CL web server ;-) > One of my servers has mod_lisp installed and I'm experimenting with > CMUCL there. However, if I would write the application with mod_lisp > and CL I'd need _much_ more time for it (while mod_perl is my > bread-and-butter currently). Installing UncommonSQL alone might take > me a couple of hours... :(
Why do you want a SQL database ? For now you have 0 article so you don't need an SQL database. Even when you have lots of articles, you won't need an SQL database. As I wrote in the previous post, you can use sexprs to store the data. Or some CLOS objects in a hash table or in a list. There are lots of quick start solutions. To start you just need a server, apache, mod_lisp and an HTML generation macro and that's it. Start with an in memory database saved as an ascii file (remember Lisp has a nice reader). It's better to have a working solution in a few days and then to refine it when it is a huge success. Then you can put in it the first article : How to write a successful web application in Lisp in 3 days... Marc
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Mon, 12 Jul 2004 23:10:25 GMT |
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Pierre R. Ma #6 / 73
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 Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
Quote: > This posting is a proposal for a community effort to provide a "Common > Lisp Cookbook" that will mimick the Perl Cookbook (or similar sources > for Java, Python and other languages). It'll provide 'recipes' that'll > help you in implementing mundane stuff and thus enabling you to get > more comfortable with the language as well as giving you more time to > think about the stuff that's really hard (and would probably be a pain > to do in other languages).
I think this is a very good proposal indeed, and highly refreshing, after all the constant whining that has been posted here during the last couple of weeks. I'll add a couple of comments below: Quote: > - The target audience are people who are new to (Common) Lisp - people > who have just discovered the language and are willing to learn it.
I think it wouldn't hurt to let the focus expand as needed, to include not quite so new people, who are still willing to learn common idioms, etc. There are quite a number of known idioms for slightly advanced/specialized stuff, which would profit from being presented in a cookbook/recipe like style, like MOP-stuff, etc. Quote: > 2.1. The first thing that comes to mind (and has been mentioned here > already) is CLiki. The good thing about it is that it's already > there and we can simply start hacking in questions and > answers. But I think it might be better if we had some means to > organize the whole project - providing for ways to easily > re-structure the whole document and for automatic generation of > different formats like HTML, TeX, PDF...
It might be useful to start off with CLiki (possibly on a separate site), and expand the mark-up stuff, and reorganization facilities... Quote: > 4. "Prior Art" > I'm pretty sure that most of the stuff that would go into this > Cookbook has already been posted to c.l.l at least once by very > knowledgeable people, it's just a matter of finding and organizing > it. Would you think it'll be OK to take a code snippet from > groups.google.com, put it into the Cookbook and add a reference like > "posted to comp.lang.lisp by Donald Duck at Dec 12, 1996 as
> restrictions?
Legally, the stuff posted to newsgroups is covered by copyright laws, although the application of copyright law to Usenet is probably not very well understood. I.e. one would presume that certain rights are implicitly granted by posting, like e.g. the right to redistribute and copy for the purposes of dissemination on Usenet servers. There are also the obvious rights granted under fair-use, but one of the problems with this is that the relation of quoted and unquoted amounts are taken into consideration, and it is easy to fall afoul of this requirement with Usenet postings, which are already quite small. On the whole I'd advise that you get the permission of the poster (either for an individual posting, or for all postings on c.l.l by the given poster) prior to inclusion, since this is the best way to cover yourself, and it might also lead to further interesting input from the poster, e.g. by pointing out better, or more relevant code in another posting/source, or by informing the poster of the existence of your project, which might lead to the poster participating more directly, or giving you pointers to other interesting articles in the past or the future. You might want to contact Paolo Amoroso, who has been doing excellent work as the editor/creator of the EncyCMUCLopedia, and who will probably be able to give you more advice on this, and related matters. Including pointers to the original article is also very important from the POV of the user, since it gives him the ability to read relevant parts of the whole thread that give him more context and background on the why of that particular solution. This prevents the cookbook approach from degenerating into a simple clipboard to copy from without understanding, but as a valuable starting point for a journey that results in deeper insight into the language, and the problem and solution spaces surrounding a particular question. Regs, Pierre. --
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents. -- Nathaniel Borenstein
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Mon, 12 Jul 2004 23:27:11 GMT |
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Marc Spitz #7 / 73
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 Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
Quote:
>> > Argh! mod_perl.... Please use mod_lisp or any CL web server ;-) >> One of my servers has mod_lisp installed and I'm experimenting with >> CMUCL there. However, if I would write the application with mod_lisp >> and CL I'd need _much_ more time for it (while mod_perl is my >> bread-and-butter currently). Installing UncommonSQL alone might take >> me a couple of hours... :(
If you are looking for a caned app type of solution, take a look at openacs.org. It looks like what you want in the first draft of the site is already there: sql back end(postgres and oracle) message boards administrative interface, create/modify/delete message boards ... full text search I have installed it a few times to play with and have gotten it running on freebsd. I would be willing to help install/manage it. A couple of possible issues: it uses aolserver not apache tcl is the scripting language marc Quote: > Why do you want a SQL database ? For now you have 0 article so you don't > need an SQL database. Even when you have lots of articles, you won't need an > SQL database. > As I wrote in the previous post, you can use sexprs to store the data. Or > some CLOS objects in a hash table or in a list. There are lots of quick > start solutions. > To start you just need a server, apache, mod_lisp and an HTML generation > macro and that's it. > Start with an in memory database saved as an ascii file (remember Lisp has a > nice reader). It's better to have a working solution in a few days and then > to refine it when it is a huge success. > Then you can put in it the first article : How to write a successful web > application in Lisp in 3 days... > Marc
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Tue, 13 Jul 2004 00:28:14 GMT |
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Christophe Rhode #8 / 73
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 Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
Quote:
> > - Due to the nature of this there will be some intersection with the > > c.l.l FAQ (recently revived by Christophe Rhodes at > > <http://www-jcsu.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~csr21/lispfaq.html>), but I think > > these projects are different enough to warrant two distinct > > documents. > If they end up having too much intersection it will be possible to merge > them anyway.
Absolutely -- I'd welcome contributors over here too; time is limited... :) I do want to get the FAQ up to postable state, but, alas, the real world is intervening at the moment. Christophe -- Jesus College, Cambridge, CB5 8BL +44 1223 510 299 http://www-jcsu.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~csr21/ (defun pling-dollar (str schar arg) (first (last +))) (make-dispatch-macro-character #\! t) (set-dispatch-macro-character #\! #\$ #'pling-dollar)
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Tue, 13 Jul 2004 00:37:32 GMT |
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Paolo Amoros #9 / 73
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 Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
Quote:
> > This posting is a proposal for a community effort to provide a "Common > > Lisp Cookbook" that will mimick the Perl Cookbook (or similar sources [...] > > it. Would you think it'll be OK to take a code snippet from > > groups.google.com, put it into the Cookbook and add a reference like > > "posted to comp.lang.lisp by Donald Duck at Dec 12, 1996 as
> > restrictions? [...] > You might want to contact Paolo Amoroso, who has been doing excellent > work as the editor/creator of the EncyCMUCLopedia, and who will > probably be able to give you more advice on this, and related matters.
Quite simple. For each batch of newsgroup or mailing list postings from a same author that I plan to include in a version of the EncyCMUCLopedia, I contact the author asking for permission, and including all material for his reference and convenience. Then I include in the EncyCMUCLopedia distribution a copy of each posting with full headers as received by my mail/newsreader, adding a blurb such as "included with permission" in each index entry. As Pierre suggests, I have found that contacting authors provides valuable additional feedback on the material I am interested in. As for useful tools with which to maintain the Cookbook, I suggest Edmund to have a look at the SBCL Internals Documentation project, which has similar technical requirements and is based on CLiki technology: http://ww.telent.net/sbcl-internals/index Paolo -- EncyCMUCLopedia * Extensive collection of CMU Common Lisp documentation http://web.mclink.it/amoroso/ency/README [http://cvs2.cons.org:8000/cmucl/doc/EncyCMUCLopedia/]
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Tue, 13 Jul 2004 01:06:16 GMT |
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novice10 #10 / 73
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 Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
[...] Quote: > OK, I hope this is enough to start a discussion and to solicit more > input. I'm really willing to do this - not only because I'm a good guy > (ahem) but mainly because I think it'll be a very good way to improve > my own knowledge of Common Lisp. It'd be great if many others would > join this project for whatever reasons they might have.
This will be extremely useful for people like me who know something of the Lisp language but have little experience using it for daily work. I currently use CMUCL for experimenting with ideas in an Emacs/ILISP buffer, but I'd like to go beyond that. I think one of the first hurdles is understanding the package system and installing new 'modules' (for want of correct terminology). People quite often complain that the free Lisp implementations lack GUI toolkit support, database access and so on. It's obviously not true. The packages are out there, but the installation instructions, if present, often assume prior knowledge of how Lisp packages work, how they're loaded, how they're used, etc. I confess with some embarrassment that I don't know anything about this, and have not found any idiot-proof instructions. Whilst I could probably install any package through trial and error, I do think that Common Lisp's way of handling packages and installing/loading of extensions is sufficiently different from other languages to merit some basic explanation. Even simple concepts like "saving an image", which experienced Lisp users naturally take for granted, are alien to most people who come to Lisp from other languages. In my opinion, this would be a good place to start. If we had a page with detailed step-by-step instructions on how to set up, say, Clisp or CMUCL with a commonly requested configuration, eg. complete with bindings to GTK+ and MaiSQL, it would give the user the background s/he needs to install other packages when the time comes. I think your project is an excellent idea. I will certainly be willing to contribute when I can.
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Tue, 13 Jul 2004 02:50:05 GMT |
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Christophe Rhode #11 / 73
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 Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
Quote:
> [...] > > OK, I hope this is enough to start a discussion and to solicit more > > input. I'm really willing to do this - not only because I'm a good guy > > (ahem) but mainly because I think it'll be a very good way to improve > > my own knowledge of Common Lisp. It'd be great if many others would > > join this project for whatever reasons they might have. > If we had a page with detailed step-by-step instructions on how to set up, > say, Clisp or CMUCL with a commonly requested configuration, eg. complete > with bindings to GTK+ and MaiSQL, it would give the user the background s/he > needs to install other packages when the time comes.
Well, we sort of do, but currently it starts with "1. Install Debian..." because that is the only "Operating Environment" that common-lisp-controller, or any equivalent to my knowledge, runs on. Counterexamples are welcome :) Christophe -- Jesus College, Cambridge, CB5 8BL +44 1223 510 299 http://www-jcsu.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~csr21/ (defun pling-dollar (str schar arg) (first (last +))) (make-dispatch-macro-character #\! t) (set-dispatch-macro-character #\! #\$ #'pling-dollar)
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Tue, 13 Jul 2004 02:23:56 GMT |
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Thaddeus L Olcz #12 / 73
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 Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
On Fri, 25 Jan 2002 05:50:05 +1100, "novice106" Quote:
>I think one of the first hurdles is understanding the package system and >installing new 'modules' (for want of correct terminology). People quite >often complain that the free Lisp implementations lack GUI toolkit support, >database access and so on. It's obviously not true. The packages are out >there, but the installation instructions, if present, often assume prior >knowledge of how Lisp packages work, how they're loaded, how they're used, >etc.
Last weekend I tried to install lispdebug for CLisp. Apparently the maintainer of lispdebug stopped maintaining the CLisp version ( this is a guess ) and the package system changed so that CLisp no longer installs. I've gone over to the CLisp mail-list and been trying to get some help, but things have started to get testy over there. ( I'm try to not let the tone get to hot. )
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Tue, 13 Jul 2004 07:58:23 GMT |
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dj special #13 / 73
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 Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
Excellent! I these are all topics that we would love to see addressed from the "pragmatic" programmer's perspective--especially those topics that are never formally addressed. -dj Quote: > - Basics: Installation, Loading and Compiling > - Strings / Regular Expressions > - Dates and Times > - File Access, File Contents, Directories > - Other data structures: Btrees, Queues, Linked Lists > - CLOS > - Iteration: LOOP, SERIES, MAP functions > - Input and Output, Streams, FORMAT, the Lisp Reader > - Conditions, Error Handling > - Packages > - Defsystem > - Debugging, Profiling, Advice > - Database Access > - Sockets > - Internet Protocols, Web Serving > - Multi-Processing, Multi-Threading > - FFI, Extending and Embedding CL > - Communicating with other processes > - GUI > - XML > - Lists/Conses > - Searching and Sorting > - Hash Tables > - Structures > - Arrays > - MOP > - I18N > - Numbers: BIGNUMS, rationals, complex numbers
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Tue, 13 Jul 2004 12:53:10 GMT |
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Alberto Riv #14 / 73
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 Common Lisp Cookbook - proposal and request for comments
> > This posting is a proposal for a community effort to provide a "Common > Lisp Cookbook" that will mimick the Perl Cookbook (or similar sources > for Java, Python and other languages). It'll provide 'recipes' that'll > help you in implementing mundane stuff and thus enabling you to get > more comfortable with the language as well as giving you more time to > think about the stuff that's really hard (and would probably be a pain > to do in other languages). I too think that this is a great project, and I'll be glad to contribute if (as I hope) it gets off the ground. Just a few comments: > - This'll be about ANSI Common Lisp, not about Scheme, Emacs Lisp, > AutoLisp, or whatever. Agreed. > - Due to the nature of this there will be some intersection with the > c.l.l FAQ (recently revived by Christophe Rhodes at > <http://www-jcsu.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~csr21/lispfaq.html>), but I think > these projects are different enough to warrant two distinct > documents. It's good to see that the FAQ is being revived, first of all. I agree on the "two documents" strategy, but I also think that the two projects should be coordinated. The FAQ could act as an "entry level" document, pointing to the relevant sections of the Cookbook when necessary for people who want more detail. The Cookbook would in turn point to the CLHS, newsgroup messages, online resources, etc. for even more detailed info. I also think the FAQ could benefit from a little restructuring: for example, the first entry in section 4 (Programming Questions) is about how to write a 'Hello World' program, and the second one deals with FLET. Quite a big conceptual gap, I'd say... > 2. Infrastructure / How to do it > > 2.1. The first thing that comes to mind (and has been mentioned here > already) is CLiki. The good thing about it is that it's already > there and we can simply start hacking in questions and > answers. But I think it might be better if we had some means to > organize the whole project - providing for ways to easily > re-structure the whole document and for automatic generation of > different formats like HTML, TeX, PDF... > > 2.2. That's why I think a custom-tailored database-backed website > would be the best solution. As with CLiki, everybody should be > able to add content or change what's there already (maybe after > registering once with his name and email address). I would > volunteer to set up such a thing (although I'd currently write it > in mod_perl/DBI - shame on me - rather than in CL/USQL) and > provide a server to host it. > > 2.3. As an alternative one could start a Sourceforge project to host a > couple of Texinfo files. Contributors would have to use CVS. Being one of the many people who use Lisp for database-backed web applications, I like solutions 1 and 2, but I'm concerned that the time to design and set up such an environment might be too long, causing the project to lose momentum. I'd rather see it start in a simple way (solution 3, or HTML, or even plain text files) than not start at all. Anyway, thanks for doing this, and let us know when and how we can start contributing! -- Alberto Riva Children's Hospital Informatics Program
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Tue, 13 Jul 2004 14:08:35 GMT |
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