mikel@Apple.COM (Mikel Evins) (04/17/91)
I have uploaded Zen 1.0 to the submissions directories of cs.orst.edu and nova.cc.purdue.edu. Zen is a simple Scheme programming environment that incorporates Oliver Laumann's ELK Scheme interpreter. The application includes a built-in NextStep editor and a Listener window that communicates with the Scheme evaluator. ELK is a very nice Scheme implementation, and I can't take credit for it at all; the only modifications I have made to it so far are to integrate it better with the Zen application. It's much better than the interpreter that I wrote myself. This first release is mostly devoid of whizzy features; it's just an editor and a Listener, with some handy menu items thrown in. It is distributed as a file package, and includes a brief Release Notes file, and a somewhat lengthy WriteNow documentation file. Zen is free, but copyrighted. The sources are not yet available because I don't yet like them well enough. If you use it, send me mail to let me know. If you want features added, send me mail. If it fails to work for any reason, send me mail.
mikel@Apple.COM (Mikel Evins) (04/18/91)
Charles L. Perkins sent me mail asking whether I had tested Zen on the 68040. He suggested that there might be a problem with the ELK interpreter because of caching. I did not examine the ELK internals to check for this problem, however, I have so far used it *only* on the 68040. It has owrked fine so far. However, I have not written any large Scheme programs with it yet. If anyone has any difficulties with it, please let me know. I understand that Marc Feeley is working on a version of Gambit that will work on the 68040; I am inclined to use his compiler anyway, because it comes highly recommended. By the way, I neglected to mention that Zen is a 2.0 binary.