common lisp?

[masinter]

Bob said he last worked on common lisp and had a marked-up copy of CLTL2 at his office with all the problems.

So if we can, fixing 'up common lisp support is a good long-term goal, but just knowing what we have will be helpful.

[Anzus]

If Bob doesn't have it anymore I have an on-disk copy of a tape he sent me of his work to make Medley CLTL2 compliant. A big issue was the CL package nickname changed from LISP to COMMON-LISP.

[Anzus]

Oh, also this predates ANSI. So one question is whether we release CLTL1, CLTL2, or ANSI...

[masinter]

We release what we have. I’m just thinking about release notes

[Kirtai]

Re #47, I found more information int the Medley release notes (not in any manual I could find) and have added it here so it doesn't get lost.

CL is CLtL1.
The CL interactor uses the LISP readtable and the USER package.
The XCL interactor uses the XCL readtable and the XCL-USER package.
The LISP readtable is pure CLtL1
For XCL:

"This readtable is the same as LISP, except that the characters with ASCII codes 1 thru 26 have white-space (SEPRCHAR) syntax . This readtable is intended for use in File Manager files, so that font information can be encoded on the file"

They both accept commands like "undo" which doesn't quite match with the above.

[masinter]

What we have is called "Medley 3.5". we're not sure what changes were made while Venue was active (prior to 2009).
The Envos files we have are from 1993 and contains releases for Medley 1.0 and Medly 2.0 (and maybe a few in between).
Medley 3.5 wasn't officially 'released', though, so that's why we don't know what we have exactly and the "restore" part of the project is important. 1993-2009 seems like a long time, and a long time ago.

Can we build a Medley 3.5 Release with proper release notes?

[masinter]

If Bob doesn't have it anymore I have an on-disk copy of a tape he sent me of his work to make Medley CLTL2 compliant. A big issue was the CL package nickname changed from LISP to COMMON-LISP.

That would be quite useful; if we can link up the dates on his notes to the dates of the common lisp implementation files.

[pamoroso]

I'm putting together this list of missing features and differences of Medley Common Lisp with ANSI X3J13.

The entries are grouped by category in sections with the same headings of the corresponding HyperSpec chapters. Unless otherwise noted the listed features are missing from Medley.

The list, which I'll expand and revise, is based on my own experimentation and other sources such as discussions #5 and #1473 and issue #609. Should it be span off into its own issue for easier reference and maintenance?

2. Syntax

• #| |#

3. Evaluation and Compilation

• declaim
• load-time-value
• symbol-macrolet
• values is not supported as a location specifier for setf

6. Iteration

• loop doesn't support iterating over packages

7. Objects

Docstrings of generic functions are ignored.

9. Conditions

• handler-case is in package CONDITIONS (used by XCL) instead of CL
• use-value doesn't allow to enter a value interactively

11. Packages

I'm not sure what issue @Anzus pointed out about the nicknames of package CL. In Medley the COMMON-LISP package seems to have the nickname CL as the HyperSpec requires in section 11.1.2.1 The COMMON-LISP Package.

• the COMMON-LISP and COMMON-LISP-USER packages are missing but their Medley equivalents are LISP (nick: CL) and USER
• defpackage declarations like (defpackage :pkgname (:use ...) (:export :symbol1 :symbol2)) must be rewritten by splitting them like this:

(defpackage :pkgname
  (:use ...))

(defpackage :pkgname
  (:use ...)
  (:export pkgname::symbol1
           pkgname::symbol2))

• defpackage Keyword arguments :import-from and :shadowing-import-from are missing but :import and :shadowing-import are available

12. Numbers

• short-float

19. Filenames

• :absolute and :relative directory components

21. Streams

• broadcast-stream
• broadcast-stream-streams
• make-broadcast-stream
• read-sequence
• write-sequence

22. Printer

• print-unreadable-object
• some pretty-printing functionality

25. Environment

• describe doesn't accept the optional argument

[masinter]

ultimately the survey of missing features could turn into a set of issues in the https://github.com/orgs/Interlisp/projects/11

There are Issues already -- #609 "Evaluate Compatibility"
#572 Want ANSI Common Lisp

#785 Survey CLTL2 files

[Anzus]

The current PCL in the release is not Gregor's final one but the penultimate one, due to the final one needing at least one function that was CLtL2. The final one was working with Bob's CLtL2 build. I need to learn more about how to build a sysout from source to try and do a build with the CLtL2 sources.On Dec 23, 2023 10:25 PM, Larry Masinter ***@***.***> wrote: ultimately the survey of missing features could turn into a set of issues in the https://github.com/orgs/Interlisp/projects/11 There are Issues already -- #609 "Evaluate Compatibility" #572 Want ANSI Common Lisp #785 Survey CLTL2 files —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[pamoroso]

@masinter Do you mean creating a separate issue in the common lisp project for every item in the list?

By the way, I added to the list an entry for describe which doesn't accept the optional argument.

[masinter]

@pamoroso short answer: No, leave them in one file for now.

Longer anser:
I don't think we have the resources to complete the task of bringing Medley to ANSI Common Lisp standard....
but I really don't know. I think the chart of things-not-implemented yet would be essential in evaluating feasibility. #609 seems like it would the smallest set of differences to overcome.

[pamoroso]

My focus right now is more on documenting what's different in Medley so users like me who want to write Common Lisp code know what isn't available or doesn't work.

[pamoroso]

The #p reader macro and the :absolute and :relative directory components are apparently not supported as reported in issue #609.