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From: freeman@argosy.UUCP (Jay R. Freeman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.wanted,comp.sys.mac.misc,comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Scheme (Lisp compiler)
Keywords: Lisp, Scheme and Shareware/Freeware
Message-ID: <769@argosy.UUCP>
Date: 30 Nov 90 21:52:18 GMT
References: <289@cnam.UUCP>
Sender: news@argosy.UUCP
Reply-To: freeman@cleo.UUCP (Jay R. Freeman)
Distribution: comp
Organization: MasPar Computer Corporation, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 55

In article <289@cnam.UUCP> manuel@cnam.cnam.fr (Manuel Bouyssou) writes:

>Few months ago Jay Reynolds Freeman, wrote a shareware Scheme implementation
>for our beloved Apple Macintosh. He has send to anyone who asked for, a free  
>copy of his Scheme 'till the end of July 1990. Unfortunately I've send to
>him 2 letters with 2 blank disks and enough postage to get it back with no
>reply. 

Manuel, I do not recall whether I received any of your letters, but I
certainly sent distribution discs in reply to all the requests I got.
My records of where I sent them are at home; I will check and see if
either of your letters reached me.

Possibly there is a customs problem, but until I check my records I
cannot guess in which direction: I did receive several discs from
outside the US, and there are some that I sent overseas that I know
made it to their destinations (confirmed by follow-up letter or
EMail).  I never had anything returned by US customs as unexportable.

Alternatively, could there have been a problem with how you packaged
your discs?  The square corners tend to eat through envelopes pretty
quickly, particularly if they are put in loose.  I received several in
envelopes which were about to disintegrate.  In the US one can buy
stiff cardboard mailers into which a disc fits tightly, so it won't
shuck around.

I will report on what I got from and sent to France; I am sure I sent
at least one disc there, but your name does not offhand look familiar.
Depending on what I find one of us might try another mailing; let's
wait and see.  If there is some problem getting discs into France it
obviously won't do much good for me simply to mail you another copy.

Failing all else, I have sent copies of my implementation (which is
called "Pixie Scheme") to the US user groups BMUG and Boston Computer
Society Macintosh Users' Group, and I believe it is archived on the US
ftp-access site "rascal" at the University of Texas.  I know of no
non-US user groups, BBSes or archival sites that have it (possibly
excepting an unknown BBS in New Zealand -- one requestor said she was
going to post it there -- but that doesn't help you much.)

The distribution is a little large to EMail (the distribution disc has
700+ KBytes on it).

Are any other non-US readers missing discs they requested from me?

Can any French user of Pixie Scheme help Manuel?

					-- Jay Freeman


PS: By the way, I hope to release an update soon; but the current version
    of MPW C (3.1) has too many floating-point bugs for me to work around.
    The current rumor is that a fixed MPW C will be out before the end of
    the year, in which case there might well be a revision of Pixie Scheme
    sometime in the first quarter of 1991.