Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!PT.CS.CMU.EDU!cadre!pitt!cisunx!jasst3
From: jasst3@cisunx.UUCP (Jeffrey A. Sullivan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Beginning Mac Programming - yet again!
Message-ID: <7672@cisunx.UUCP>
Date: 11 Mar 88 08:07:11 GMT
References: <3566@super.upenn.edu>
Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Sys
Lines: 38
Summary: Lessee, Coral, Expertelligence, Semantic, ...

In article <3566@super.upenn.edu>, frank@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Bob Frank) writes:
> We have had lots of discussion about Pascal and C, but none 
> about what is available for symbolic processing, 
> particularly in LISP.  I would really like something that
> could produce stand alone code.  I am a grad student
> so I don't have a great deal of money - any tips about less 
> expensive, but still functional packages would be enormously 
> appreciated!!!!!

Okay.  There are three major players in the lisp war (hah) on the mac.  In my
very stilted opinion, you have only two real choices: Coral Allegro CL, or
Semantic Microsystem's MacScheme+Toolsmith.  Both offer full language support
(ACL of CL, MS+T of Scheme, of course, and CL is much bigger than Scheme.) and
have a highlevel object system which implements user interface controls such
as Windoing menus, and quickdraw.

I use Allegro CL, and am perfectly happy with it for my AI work.  However, it
can not generate standalones now (though will - sort of - in the near future).
MacScheme+Toolsmith does.  I do not use MacScheme, but it has come highly
recommended by many people, and has been poo-poo'ed by some researchers here.
In all, however, they remarks have been positive.  Coral Allegro CL will soon
have a standalone generator which creates files as big or bigger than the CL 
core and no faster (the CL core is 750+K!!) but in about a year (sigh) they 
hope to have a compilation environment out that will be competetive with those
C compilers we are all so fond of.

ExperCommon Lisp is (I have heard) a non-full implentation of CL, and I have
heard many bad things about it, like crashes galore.  Some of my classmates
have used it and curse the day it was spawned, so I'd stay away.  However, it
can generate standalone applications.  Sheesh.

Hope this helps.


-- 
..........................................................................
Jeffrey Sullivan			  | University of Pittsburgh
jas@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu		  | Intelligent Systems Studies Program
jasper@PittVMS.BITNET, jasst3@cisunx.UUCP | Graduate Student