[comp.sys.xerox] AAAI report

welch@CIS.OHIO-STATE.EDU (Arun Welch) (08/08/90)

OK, I've dug myself out from the mail and news that was waiting
for me on my return from Boston, so here goes...

I'll start with the other vendors, then get to Venue.

Symbolics: They had a new machine, the XL1200, 5X the speed of the old
3600s. The also had CLIM, missing the Silica layer, running on both
Genera and CLOE (more on CLIM later).

TI: They weren't there. Yup, gone from the scene.

Sun: Had a demo of the new IPC (4/40), aka personal-pan-pizza-box.
Nifty little machine. Also, SPE 1.2, Sun Common Lisp 4.0 (see the
Lucid section later), and LispView, which is CLOS bindings to SunView.

Franz: Showing off version 4.0, and Composer 2.0. Had CLIM, with the
Silica layer. Composer still uses Common Windows, with no commitment
to port it over to CLIM. CLIM and CW can coexist, though. Net effect
is that if you want to use Composer to program in CLIM, you're talking
an image of about 18Meg. *Sigh*.

Lucid: Showing off version 4.0, CLIM without Silica, and Plexi, and
neural nets tool.

Harlequin: In addition to LispWorks, they also had DataWorks, which is
a data-base access tool.

CLIM: In case you haven't heard, Franz, Lucid and Symbolics joined
together in support of ILA's window system, CLIM. Available Real Soon
Now for beta test sites of the above...

Ibuki: Showing off CONS, a system for generating stand-alone systems
from Lisp code, including linkable modules and shared librarys. I'm
not sure exactly what it is, I'm just reading off the sales
literature.

Venue: Venue had a bunch of stuff to show off, and since this is after
all info-1100, it's where I'm gonna go into the most detail. Some of
the stuff I'm describing isn't release quality yet, so don't expect a
tape tomorrow, or hold me to it.

1) Medley 1.15, running on all the Suns. If you haven't seen, 1.15 has
some performance enhancements over 1.1. It ran on a color workstation,
but I don't think it had full color support yet (John?), though that
is in the works.

2) Also a version that ran under X. Essentially, one
opens up a large X window, and Medley opens up all it's windows within
that window.

3) Emacs support.

4) Announced release on the IBM RS/6000 on October 1, I think it's the
first lisp available on that chunk of iron.

5) NFS client support for the dmachines. This is in early beta right
now.

6) Rumored ports under way to the IBM PS/2, Apple Mac, and Apollo,
depending on time, money and feasability.  In other words, don't hold
me to it if they don't show up, but if you really want one of the
above, letting them know that you'd be willing to buy it would
probably speed up the porting process...:-).


User group dinner: about 10 of us went to the Cactus Club for dinner.
Large drinks, large servings, and a fun time was had by all.

Latest news from Xerox: I talked to Bill Beagle again, and "they're
working on it".  Pointed out that august 31st was fast approaching,
and the results of the support poll (~3-1 for having Venue do it all).

If anyones got corrections/additions to make, feel free.

...arun
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Arun Welch
Lisp Systems Programmer, Lab for AI Research, Ohio State University
welch@cis.ohio-state.edu