Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!nih-csl!lhc!ncifcrf!haven!aplcen!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!crdgw1!betelgeuse!halvers
From: halvers@betelgeuse.crd.ge.com (Pete Halverson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Lucid Lisp
Message-ID: <13281@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 31 Oct 90 14:04:29 GMT
References: <993@ai.cs.utexas.edu>
Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com
Reply-To: halverson@crd.ge.com (Pete Halverson)
Distribution: comp.lang.lisp
Organization: General Electric Corporate R&D Center
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In article <993@ai.cs.utexas.edu> eilerts@cs.utexas.edu (Erik Eilerts) writes:
>I'm getting ready to port some code from an Explorer to the Sun.
>Unfortunately, I just noticed that the lisp I'm using, Lucid 3.0, doesn't
>support flavors or methods.  Since my code relies on flavors pretty
>heavily, this is a problem.  

Since (at least) v2.0, Lucid has provided an object-oriented programming
system based on so-called "Old" Flavors (as distinguished from Symbolics
New Flavors).  Since I'm pretty sure this is also what the Exploder flavors
are based on, porting should be pretty straightforward.

Note that while Flavors support is provided in the standard Lucid
distribution, it's supplied as an optional package to be loaded into
a pre-built lisp image.  Its quite likely that the image you're running
didn't have Flavors included when it was built.  Go bug your system
administrator. 

>I recently heard that Sun's new version of Lucid lisp now supports
>flavors, but I cannot verify this because I don't have a manual.

Sun (Lucid) Common Lisp 4.0 provides an initial implementation of the
Common Lisp Object System (CLOS), which is a part of the proposed
ANSI-standard Common Lisp.  It's not Flavors, but most of the concepts from
Flavors have showed up in CLOS (occasionally in a somewhat different syntax
or form), and you probably wouldn't find it too difficult to port an Old
Flavors application to CLOS.  Since CLOS looks to be The Approved Way to do
OOP in Lisp, and various CL vendors are starting to provide pretty good
implementations, it would probably be worth the effort to port now.

>Also, I heard that Lucid Lisp doesn't work on SunOs 4.0.3.

I've been working with Sun (aka Lucid) Common Lisp versions 3.0.1 and 4.0.1
under release 4.0.3c without problems for some time now.


--
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Pete Halverson                        		    INET: halverson@crd.ge.com 
GE Corporate R&D Center	                      UUCP: uunet!crd.ge.com!halverson
Schenectady, NY                     "Money for nuthin' and your MIPS for free"