Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Ada,Lisp,Flames
Message-ID: <588@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 28 Jan 88 03:50:21 GMT
References: <5084@well.UUCP>
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 41

In article <5084@well.UUCP>, jjacobs@well.UUCP (Jeffrey Jacobs) writes:
> Commercial:
> 
> 1  There are only two CL vendors selling CL implementations for multiple standard
> architectures, Lucid and Franz.  Estimated number of copies sold by each
> is ~2,000, for a total of 4,000.
> 
There is a system called PopLog which was produced at the University of
Sussex, in the UK.  This is is Pop11 + Prolog + CL, all intercallable.
I have not seen a recent version, so can't comment on the completeness
of their Common Lisp, but I expect good things from them (for example,
their Prolog was slow, but very close to the de-facto "DEC-10" standard).
PopLog has oodles of on-line help and source-code libraries.
Systems Designers Ltd market it commercially in the UK; they have a
US distributor but I don't remember the name.
Last I heard they had sold a couple of hundred copies, but that was
a few years ago.
There were VAX/VMS, VAX/Unix, various M680x0, and SUN versions
being distributed, and other versions were in the works.

> 6.  Xerox Common Lisp.  MIA (Missing In Action).  Apparently still
> not ready to release.  **Rumor** has it that Xerox will abandon
> CL running on their own hardware and OEM Sun Sparc architecture
> running one of the above.  (Repeat;  **rumor**).
> 
XCL is not missing in action.  I've got it.  Works fine, as far as I
can tell.  Ask for the Lyric release.  I haven't tried everything in
The Book, but everything I've tried was there, and they provide the
"proposed" error handling system (errors are objects).

The rumour I've heard is that Xerox will port THEIR OWN software to
some standard hardware (which needn't entail abandoning their own hardware)
I have not heard this myself from anyone at Xerox, neither have I asked.
I could tell you about some other rumours I've heard, but what's the
point?  They're probably all wrong.

I'm not sure that the number of Common Lisp vendors (whether Mr Jacobs
has the right number or not) tells us much about what Common Lisp has
done to the Lisp market.  How many commercial vendors were there BEFORE?
Surely the troubles of LMI and Symbolics cannot be blamed on Common Lisp;
CL is too similar to ZetaLisp for that!