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From: pollack@uicsl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Lisps on 68000's - (nf)
Message-ID: <2626@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Aug-83 22:47:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.2626
Posted: Wed Aug 24 22:47:17 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Aug-83 06:55:43 EDT
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#R:allegra:-176000:uicsl:15500003:000:1393
uicsl!pollack    Aug 24 17:55:00 1983

I played with a version of PSL on a HP 9845 for several hours one day.
The environment was just like running FranzLisp under Emacs in
"electric-lisp" mode. (However, the editor is written in PSL itself, so
it is potentially much more powerful than the emacs on our VAX, with
its screwy c/mock-lisp implementation.) The language is in the style of
Maclisp (rather than INTERLISP) and uses standard scoping (rather than
the lexical scoping of T). The machine has 512 by 512 graphics and a
2.5 dimensional window system, but neither are as fully integrated into
the programming environment as on a Xerox Dolphin. Although I have no
detailed benchmarks, I did port a context-free chart parser to it. The
interpreter speed was not impressive, but was comparable with
interpreted Franz on a  VAX.  However,  the speed of compiled code was
very impressive. The compiler is incremental, and built-in to the lisp
system (like in INTERLISP), and caused about a 10-20 times speedup over
interpreted code (my estimate is that both the Franz and INTERLISP-d
compilers only net 2-5 times speedup).  As a result, the compiled
parser ran much faster on the 68000 than the same compiled program on a
Dolphin.

I think PSL is definitely a superior lisp for the 68000, but I have no
idea whether is will be available for non-HP machines...


Jordan Pollack
University of Illinois
...pur-ee!uiucdcs!uicsl!pollack