ian@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk (The Best is Yet to Come) (01/25/89)
Dear All,
I am looking for a public domain / free implementation of (common-ish) lisp
which runs on a microvax (running VMS). Does anyone know of such a beast ?
Thanks in advance,
Ian
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+---------------------------------------------+--------------------------------+gjc@bu-cs.BU.EDU (George J. Carrette) (01/27/89)
The only free implementations of common-lisp-like Lisp for VAX/VMS that I know of continues to be NIL from MIT. You used to be able to write to the Laboratory of Computer Science at MIT to obtain NIL for a distribution change of something like $100. However, I doubt that this is still the case. There is a circa-1983 release of NIL which can be obtained from the National Energy Software Center. It will not run under VMS 4 or 5 as-is, but there are a couple trivial patches included in the release notes that do make it work. The NESC distributes this to support the older release of DOE-MACSYMA for the VAX. (The newer release uses DEC COMMON LISP). If you ask the right questions you should be able to obtain *just* the VAX-NIL tape without the Macsyma. There are newer versions of NIL around, circa 1986/1987, but none in the hands of any distribution centers I know of. I continue to use one of these newer versions as a prototyping tool and for its built-in Emacs editor, but I do not have a complete distribution kit to offer. Even the circa-1983 version of NIL has significant efficiency and language completeness advantages over the DEC COMMON LISP product, although it does have storage management limitations (no gc!) that would keep it from being a viable commercial product. If you have a copy of the "Programmers Guide to Common Lisp" (or something) by Tatar, published by DIGITAL PRESS, you will notice that the author used NIL (while working for DEC), and aknowledges Glenn Burke! NATIONAL ENERGY SOFTWARE CENTER 9700 SOUTH CASS AVE ARGONNE, IL 60439 ORDERING INFO: 312-972-7250 Hope this helps. Maybe NIL will get sent to DECUS some day. -gjc
welch@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Arun Welch) (01/27/89)
In article <27509@bu-cs.BU.EDU>, gjc@bu-cs.BU.EDU (George J. Carrette) writes: > The only free implementations of common-lisp-like Lisp for VAX/VMS that > I know of continues to be NIL from MIT. You used to be able to write > to the Laboratory of Computer Science at MIT to obtain NIL for a > distribution change of something like $100. However, I doubt that this > is still the case. > Nope, it isn't any more, I'm afraid. I tried to get a newer copy than the one I had, and discovered that I couldn't. I *might* be able to dig up a tape for version 0.259, but I've since moved off Vaxen and have probably recycled the tape. I'd agree with the advantages of it over DEC CL, though. I also liked the fact that it came with an emacs-clone, which I much preffered to use over EDT. One wierd thing was, the manual came on the tape, but was written in bolio, a text processing language that looked like a cross between lisp and Runoff, if I remember right. Unfortunately, there was no bolio-processor included.... ...arun ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Arun Welch Lisp Systems Programmer, Lab for AI Research, Ohio State University welch@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu