Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!aero-c!gumby.dsd.trw.com!deneva!scott From: scott@coyote.trw.com (Scott Simpson) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Flavours of Lisp Keywords: n Message-ID: <281747A1.43EB@deneva.sdd.trw.com> Date: 25 Apr 91 21:18:24 GMT References: <1991Apr24.123457.24123@cns.umist.ac.uk> Sender: news@deneva.sdd.trw.com Organization: MASDR Project, Redondo Beach, CA Lines: 98 In article <1991Apr24.123457.24123@cns.umist.ac.uk> me@cns.umist.ac.uk (Martin Earl) writes: >Apologies is this is a FAQ but I'm new to this group. No problem. >I'm getting a bit confused about different types of lisp and their >availability, particularly the common lisp variants. Please correct me >if my beliefs are incorrect and educate me on the gaps. OK. >KCL is Kyoto common lisp and is PD/generally available? Yes. It converts lisp to C so it is somewhat slow. >AKCL is KCL with extras from Austin ? What's the availability on this >one? Purchase? Ftp from somewhere? or what? I believe that is where the name came from. You can ftp it free from rascal.ics.utexas.edu. I just checked. This is from the README in ~ftp/pub: akcl-xx.tar.Z is Austin Kyoto Common Lisp, which contains Bill Schelter's improvments to Kyoto Common Lisp. (xx is a version number). It requires kcl.tar, which requires a license. It includes a convenient change mechanism by which you can distribute changes for KCL (or other systems). Currently the version of Macsyma running in KCL uses some of these changes. There is no license required to take or use this file, though there is a copyright on merge.c (see the head of the file). >Lucid seems to be tied up with Sun Micro in some way which I don't quite >understand. Is Lucid a variant of common lisp of which sun do a version >for suns or is lucid Sun's version of common lisp? If the former, where >can one get other versions of Lucid from? Sun Microsystems markets Lucid Common Lisp under the Sun name ``Sun Common Lisp''. >Then there's also a common lisp from Franz (Allegro?) and ... and... Franz is another vendor that makes a Common Lisp. They call their Common Lisp ``Allegro Common Lisp''. It used to come for free on the NeXT machine. I don't think it does any more. >The hardware I have is Sun3 and Sun4 and OS version 4.1 and 4.1.1 at the >moment. Any pointers/info gratefully received. You forgot one more Common Lisp vendor (and this one may be the one you are most interested in because you are in the UK), Harlequin. Here is the info I have on all three: Harlequin Limited Barrington Hall Barrington Cambridge CB2 5RG Phone 0223 872522 (or 44223 872522 outside UK) Fax 0223 872519 Telex 818440 harlqn g ai@uk.co.harlqn (or ai@harlqn.co.uk for US people) Franz, Inc. 1995 University Ave. Berkeley, CA 94704 Phone +1 415 548 3600 Fax +1 415 548 8253 Telex 340179 WUPUBTLXSFO bugs@franz.com (don't know any other aliases) Lucid. See your local friendly Sun Microsystems rep. customer-support@lucid.com We are evaluating all three and we currently have Lucid and Harlequin. We want to get Franz too though. I just got Harlequin up today and it looks like it has a nice Emacs like editor, browser for classes and such, inspector debugger and window interface all using CLUE under X. I believe Sun's Symbolic Programming Environment (SPE) is similar but we don't have a copy so I can't say for sure. I can't comment on Franz yet because we don't have a copy but I'm sure they put out fine stuff like this too. >Thanks in advance, You're welcome. >Martin Scott >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Martin Earl, martin@uk.ac.umist.ccl >Centre for Computational Linguistics, ..!mcsun!ukc!uk.ac.umist.ccl!martin >UMIST, Manchester M60 1QD, UK Tel: +44 61 200 3111 TRW, Sunny Southern California, USA. -- Scott Simpson TRW scott@coyote.trw.com