mdgrover@trw-unix.UUCP (06/27/83)
An "Interlisp Primer" is (possibly) available from Madeleine Bates of BBN (50 Moulton St.; Cambridge, MA 02138). I reviewed a copy a year ago and thought it a good effort, although it omits significant stuff like the record package and needed additional discussion of the file package. The version I saw was an unfinished draft, so the usual reservations on my opinions should apply. Perhaps it is now complete. Hope this helps. Mark
darrelj@sdcrdcf.UUCP (06/28/83)
There is a good chance the Interlisp primer is not in a better state than a year ago as the support for work on it was the now abandoned Jerico project (BBN's effort at building an Interlisp machine). On MACLISP => Interlisp: The manual documents (and I have heavily used at times) TRANSOR, a subsystem for translating between Lisp dialects. There have been few users in recent years, so the files of translation notes are not too current. The virgin code from Xerox PARC has one function which doesn't compile on non-Interlisp-10, PRESCAN. This function mostly does a character translation to deal with that level of incompatibility. I had written a version which was machine independent (at considerable cost in efficiency) but I don't know it has been reflected at PARC yet. The source files needed are: TRANSOR the translation system TSET the interactive system for building transformation rules MIT.XFORMS Rules for MACLISP to INTERLISP UCI.XFORMS " " UCI lisp " " SRI.XFORMS " " Stanford AI Lisp to Interlisp Only UCI.XFORMS has been updated and/or enhanced in the last few years (mostly by me). I also have a set of incomplete rules for Interlisp to Franz lisp. I don't know if ISI is including Transor in their latest distribution, but they were not in early releases (they didn't want to take the time to explore the PRESCAN problem). If you have access to Arpanet, you can get the sources from <LISP> at PARC-MAXC (using ANONYMOUS FTP login) and compile it yourself. You need both TRANSOR and TSET to compile because a single compiled file is generated containing both subsystems. (by the way, the transform rules are in the form of Interlisp editor commands needed to modify each function call, with a couple of hacks to control the overall scan). Dr. Darrel J. Van Buer, SDC. (213)820-4111 x5449