cross@uicsl.UUCP (11/11/83)
#N:uicsl:7000032:000:172 uicsl!cross Nov 10 18:17:00 1983 I have an S-100 system (Z80B/128K) running CPM. I am interested in getting a micro-version of LISP and a decent screen editor. Any recommendations? Thanks. Steve Cross
leff@smu.UUCP (11/14/83)
#R:uicsl:7000032:smu:14300001:000:2507
smu!leff Nov 12 11:33:00 1983
The one thing you may have thought of or some other people will
tell you about is the mulisp/mustar Artificial Intelligence Development
System which is written by the Soft Warehouse
P. O. Box 11174
Honolulu, Hawaii 96828
and is being sold by Microsoft
and numerous mailorder suppliers. See some comments about micro
discount retailers floating about this net that I saw recently.
We have been using it on the IBM PC and the TI PC but a version
is available for the CPM environment. The LISP itself is
reasonable. There are two libraries which emulate INTERLISP and
MACLISP. I doubt that they would allow one to take a reasonable
program written in either of those dialects and convert them easily
but they do provide a reasonable amount of syntactic sugar and
facilities for doing frequent things like SOME, MAPCAN, MAPCAR etc.
You probably will find yourself editing these libraries taking the
functions you need. One nice feature of this approach is that you
can read the code and insert debugging statements in these functions
if they seem to be acting up or not acting the way you expect them to.
The thing supports an integrated text edited 'MUSTAR.' It uses some
of the control keys from WORDSTAR which will be helpful if you alread
use WORDSTAR for your word processing. It's main problems are:
a) total lack of error handling.
Many of our users lost files by typing X to exit from DOS instead
of some other command. The machine doesn't catch errors like that
or update a disk file. Also, you can easily do a Read instead
of a write, etc.
b) If you should try and insert enough characters into a line to make
it into a line greater than eighty characters, you get weird
screw-ups instead of a more reasonable response like breaking
the line up, beeping at your or even simply truncating the line.
The computer currently supports a variety of terminals and you can
customize the editor for another terminal by rewriting a few
LISP functions. We have customized our LISP for the TI reasonably
successfully.
The documentation is reasonable. HOwever, note that you can use
the notation ] to close multiple parentheses even though we weren't
able to find a statement to that effect.
The thing will work nicely if you only have one diskette. I don't know
if that is the case.
You also might consider MUSIMP which is the thing there math package
runs in. It is simply a LISP with a nice syntax. The functions
seem to correspond item for item.weamc@pyuxa.UUCP (11/16/83)
editor and text processing package. Does anyone have one they can recommend?
Does anyone have any experience with Spellbinder, which is available
for OASIS and several other systems?
Thanks.
Andy Cohill
Western Electric
Piscatway, NJandree@uokvax.UUCP (11/19/83)
#R:uicsl:7000032:uokvax:3400015:000:2000 uokvax!andree Nov 17 18:16:00 1983 Let me recommend the Stiff Upper Lisp from Tennant & Tennant Computing. Last time I looked, it was available from Lifeboat for about $150. It is also available from Tennant and Tennant Computing [3537 Ridgemoor Drive, Garland TX, 75042, 214/530-0575], but I don't know the price. The package comes with the usual collection of things (animal, doctor), plus an on-line help system and a LISP editor (not screen-oriented, unfortunately). There are a couple (currently two, with one announced) of other disks available for nominal cost. Software Package 1 ($20) includes an object oriented package for LISP, a (very small) relational data base managger, a screen twiddling package (no editor - but the tools to write one are there), demo sorting programs and tower of hanoi programs that use the screen code (watch the disks move...). This system also include better debugging features (stepper, tracer, etc.). Software Package 2 (just announced) should include a library manager + library of 75 someod usefull functions, a dribble system (session catcher), a record package, and `small masterscope'! The Expert Systems Package ($40) includes three different expert systems. One just does inferences, the second adds certainty factors & executable LISP expressions, and the last one has rules with parameters. In the issue of the newsletter where this came from, there is a quote from Microsystems (August 1983) stating that the Stiff Upper Lisp is better than muLISP (true from what I've heard of muLISP) and Supersoft LISP (no contest). Didn't mention TLC LISP (no longer available - it go bought by DRI and they haven't released it yet). I think as a LISP system & toy for playing with AI concepts (you don't honestly expect to do real work on a z80, do you?), you can't get a better buy. The major lack is that there isn't a screen editor for it. I have patches to Mince to do paren matching (they are someone elses modified to work with my Mince command set) that you're welcome to. <mike