From mb at bese.it Thu Sep 1 06:26:05 2005 From: mb at bese.it (Marco Baringer) Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2005 08:26:05 +0200 Subject: [Bese-devel] small patch suggestion In-Reply-To: <87psrurw4l.fsf@flarge.here> (Friedrich Dominicus's message of "Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:58:34 +0200") References: <87psrurw4l.fsf@flarge.here> Message-ID: Friedrich Dominicus writes: > After Drew has put me in the ground (to some extend he's right) here's > a small addition to form.lisp. I'm not sure if it's good idea, or if > it would be better to derive another component, but I feel if things > are available in standard HTML they should be easy accessible to > Common Lisp also i agree. > I guess it's clear what the patch is supposed to do. It should limit > the entry field length, I replaces the nil :initform to size because I > do not think that size could be anything else but a number. I tried > this patch here and it "seems" to be ok. So feel free to ignore or > apply this patch Marco. The numbers are arbitrary, I do not know if > there is a useful default for it. applied. thanks. maybe the default should just be nil (so the attribute won't get shown) and we let the browesr chose? > BTW. I'm quite happy that UCW exists, but I feld and sometimes feel > lost in it's usage. for what it's worth, me too :) -- -Marco Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget the perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. -Leonard Cohen From frido at q-software-solutions.de Thu Sep 1 08:09:12 2005 From: frido at q-software-solutions.de (Friedrich Dominicus) Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2005 10:09:12 +0200 Subject: [Bese-devel] another extension Message-ID: <87ll2hyztj.fsf@flarge.here> Well kind of and not addition without another question. here's an addition to form.lisp (defclass attributed-text-field (text-field) ((css-class :accessor css-class :initarg :css-class :initform "ucw-text-field") (editable :accessor editable :initarg :editable :initform t)) (:metaclass standard-component-class)) (defmethod render-on ((res response) (field attributed-text-field)) (if (editable field) (

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References: <20050830055905.GA15494@fractaldragon.net> Message-ID: <8f835a8e05090204333f327cab@mail.gmail.com> 2005/8/30, Tim Lavoie : > Hi all, > > I've got a window component defined, where there are pieces which I > would like to use to control other components, or the top-level > window. [note: having written this, i realize most of this issue have already been answered and it may just seem obvious : please consider this more like a "is this the right way to do it ?" question :) ] Hi, I think i will soon share Tim Lavoie's need here and i thought i would just take this opportunity to ask for your opinion :) Just let me explain first what i want to achieve to make sure we're speaking of the same kind of problem. My main window component is a tabbed pane. Among the panes it holds, the first one of interest is just rendering a list of "actions" (my terminology here, not ucw's), some of which being "project actions" with an associated project. "project actions" each are rendered as two links. Roughly, it looks like this : (loop for project in (all-projects) for action (project.next-action project) (<:li ( Hi All, I'm fairly new to both Lisp and Smalltalk (less than 6 months experience in each). The reason for my interest in these is because I feel, from what I have been reading, that both Seaside and UCW offer more practical solutions to the real-life problems I need to solve for developing web-based custom apps. I have to say I have spent more time learning about Smalltalk/Seaside than I have invested in Lisp/UCW. However, somehow it feels Lisp/UCW seem to provide a better roadmap and more stable platform. Then, after googling a bit more, I came across certain articles that point out some differences between Lisp and Scheme. Particularly on the topic of continuations and the fact that these are native to Scheme vs to both Smalltalk and Lisp. Then I wondered, if what I'm looking for is better support for continuation-based development, should I be looking into Scheme? Before I spent much time looking into Scheme, I decided to quickly glance at Scheme's support for some of the minimum requirements I have for web app development. For example, I need to access MySQL and/ or Postgres databases as well as the easy manipulation (mainly generation) of PDF and CSV files. Also, I would like to start using object databases more than relational databases. I didn't find much support for these in Scheme. However, I did come across some projects for both Lisp and Smalltalk to support my needs, which brought me back to wanting to learn more about UCW and Seaside. At this point, I'm wondering if there is anyone in this list that can shed some light into clearing up where I should be going. I've always been fascinated with Lisp, but never spent enough time to learn it. Now that I have some time, I'd like to know where I should be investing my time more wisely (Lisp, Smalltalk, Scheme). I don't know if I should really rule out Scheme and may be someone could also comment on it. Any information you can provide will really help, even if you can just point me to where I can read more and learn more to make a more informed decision. Thank you in advance, Waldo From sketerpot at gmail.com Sat Sep 3 15:21:02 2005 From: sketerpot at gmail.com (Peter Scott) Date: Sat, 3 Sep 2005 10:21:02 -0500 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme) In-Reply-To: <44873E11-C741-452B-AD11-2EFAA5AE7570@trianet.net> References: <44873E11-C741-452B-AD11-2EFAA5AE7570@trianet.net> Message-ID: <7e267a9205090308213b3060bf@mail.gmail.com> On 9/3/05, Waldo Rubinstein wrote: > I'm fairly new to both Lisp and Smalltalk (less than 6 months > experience in each). The reason for my interest in these is because I > feel, from what I have been reading, that both Seaside and UCW offer > more practical solutions to the real-life problems I need to solve > for developing web-based custom apps. For some types of web apps, continuation-based is definitely the way to go. > I have to say I have spent more time learning about Smalltalk/Seaside > than I have invested in Lisp/UCW. However, somehow it feels Lisp/UCW > seem to provide a better roadmap and more stable platform. UCW is still very unstable, with major parts being ripped out and replaced as we speak. Common Lisp is very stable, with a wide selection of good compilers, both commercial and open-source. UCW is a pleasure to work with, for what it's worth---but I haven't checked out Seaside. > Then, after googling a bit more, I came across certain articles that > point out some differences between Lisp and Scheme. Particularly on > the topic of continuations and the fact that these are native to > Scheme vs to both Smalltalk and Lisp. Then I wondered, if what I'm > looking for is better support for continuation-based development, > should I be looking into Scheme? Scheme does have nice native support for continuations, while Common Lisp has some features that make CPS transformations inherently difficult. UCW's old CPS transformer worked pretty well, but it had a number of nasty and insurmountable problems. Marco is working on (or has added, I'm not sure which) an interpreter for a CL-like language which has proper serializable continuations and has removed CL's features that conflict with continuations, like UNWIND-PROTECT. This promises a significant improvement in things Just Working properly, at the cost of one or two orders of magnitude slowdown in the interpreted code. The interpreted code isn't a bottleneck, so don't worry about it. > Before I spent much time looking into Scheme, I decided to quickly > glance at Scheme's support for some of the minimum requirements I > have for web app development. For example, I need to access MySQL and/ > or Postgres databases as well as the easy manipulation (mainly > generation) of PDF and CSV files. Also, I would like to start using > object databases more than relational databases. I didn't find much > support for these in Scheme. However, I did come across some projects > for both Lisp and Smalltalk to support my needs, which brought me > back to wanting to learn more about UCW and Seaside. I can't speak for scheme, but CL has: CLSQL: a good interface to a number of SQL databases. I'm particularly fond of the reader syntax that prevents SQL-injection problems, among other inconveniences. There's also an object-relational mapping, but I haven't used it so I can't opine on it. fare-csv: you can import and export CSV in a straightforward way. I found some of the code in this one to be a little amusing, but it certainly works well enough. CL-PDF and cl-typesetting: make PDF files easily, and do so with nice typesetting. > At this point, I'm wondering if there is anyone in this list that can > shed some light into clearing up where I should be going. I've always > been fascinated with Lisp, but never spent enough time to learn it. > Now that I have some time, I'd like to know where I should be > investing my time more wisely (Lisp, Smalltalk, Scheme). I don't know > if I should really rule out Scheme and may be someone could also > comment on it. Unless you find some big difference in libraries or tools (I'm a big fan of CL's SLIME IDE), the perennial arguments about CL vs. Scheme are relevant. You might also try reading some of the articles linked to in . They aren't directly related to your question, but they may be useful. -Peter From mb at bese.it Sat Sep 3 16:03:09 2005 From: mb at bese.it (Marco Baringer) Date: Sat, 03 Sep 2005 18:03:09 +0200 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme) In-Reply-To: <7e267a9205090308213b3060bf@mail.gmail.com> (Peter Scott's message of "Sat, 3 Sep 2005 10:21:02 -0500") References: <44873E11-C741-452B-AD11-2EFAA5AE7570@trianet.net> <7e267a9205090308213b3060bf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Peter Scott writes: >> I have to say I have spent more time learning about Smalltalk/Seaside >> than I have invested in Lisp/UCW. However, somehow it feels Lisp/UCW >> seem to provide a better roadmap and more stable platform. [replying to waldo] where did you get the impression that ucw is a more stable platform than seaside? (this is just idle curiosity on my part). if nothing else seaside has a much larger and more active user community (its also been around a lot longer). > UCW is still very unstable, with major parts being ripped out and > replaced as we speak. Common Lisp is very stable, with a wide > selection of good compilers, both commercial and open-source. UCW is a > pleasure to work with, for what it's worth---but I haven't checked out > Seaside. just to clarify: i agree the ucw's api is unstable, and i do rip out and rewrite major parts whenever i feel the need, but it does work and is being used in production environments. > Marco is working on (or has added, I'm not sure which) an interpreter > for a CL-like language which has proper serializable continuations and > has removed CL's features that conflict with continuations, like > UNWIND-PROTECT. This promises a significant improvement in things Just > Working properly, at the cost of one or two orders of magnitude > slowdown in the interpreted code. The interpreted code isn't a > bottleneck, so don't worry about it. the interpreter is in and does everything the old cps transformer did and then some. support for serializable continuations is in the works. > I can't speak for scheme, but CL has: > > CLSQL: a good interface to a number of SQL databases. I'm particularly > fond of the reader syntax that prevents SQL-injection problems, among > other inconveniences. There's also an object-relational mapping, but I > haven't used it so I can't opine on it. > > fare-csv: you can import and export CSV in a straightforward way. I > found some of the code in this one to be a little amusing, but it > certainly works well enough. for what it's worth arnesi also contains a trivial csv reader/writer. > CL-PDF and cl-typesetting: make PDF files easily, and do so with nice > typesetting. i'd be very surpsied if plt or bigloo scheme did not offer equivalent libraries. >> At this point, I'm wondering if there is anyone in this list that can >> shed some light into clearing up where I should be going. I've always >> been fascinated with Lisp, but never spent enough time to learn it. >> Now that I have some time, I'd like to know where I should be >> investing my time more wisely (Lisp, Smalltalk, Scheme). I don't know >> if I should really rule out Scheme and may be someone could also >> comment on it. there's a huge difference between scheme, smalltalk and common lisp. if you have the time i'd suggest becoming proficent in all three, i don't feel like suggesting one over the other. personally i'm a big fan of smalltalk, but (obviously) i'm a far bigger fan of common lisp. -- -Marco Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget the perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. -Leonard Cohen From a_bakic at yahoo.com Sat Sep 3 18:28:15 2005 From: a_bakic at yahoo.com (Aleksandar Bakic) Date: Sat, 3 Sep 2005 11:28:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20050903182815.29721.qmail@web40628.mail.yahoo.com> > > Working properly, at the cost of one or two orders of magnitude > > slowdown in the interpreted code. The interpreted code isn't a > > bottleneck, so don't worry about it. I suppose not everything is interpreted. Is it just code wrapped by with-call/cc, defaction and defmethod/cc, or is there more? Any suggestions on how to structure code to know easily which chunks of code are interpreted and which ones are compiled? Thanks, Alex ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From a_bakic at yahoo.com Sat Sep 3 19:14:07 2005 From: a_bakic at yahoo.com (Aleksandar Bakic) Date: Sat, 3 Sep 2005 12:14:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme) In-Reply-To: <20050903182815.29721.qmail@web40628.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20050903191407.35635.qmail@web40628.mail.yahoo.com> > Is it just code wrapped by... I meant to say, I suppose the CPS transformer knows what code should be transformed and what code is 'simple' so as to be called directly (and compiled), so it closes over code wrapped by arnesi macros. I know you've been using sucla to rewrite some of CL so that, I suppose, it can be used with continuations (and interpreted). Is there more to this than my by-the-book understanding? (I hope to find time to read the arnesi code eventually...) Thanks, Alex ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From pjscott at iastate.edu Sat Sep 3 20:04:04 2005 From: pjscott at iastate.edu (Peter Scott) Date: Sat, 3 Sep 2005 15:04:04 -0500 Subject: [Bese-devel] darcs patch: Made file-system-generator a subclass of tal-generator. Message-ID: <200509032004.j83K447C019474@co1331-8.ece.iastate.edu> Sat Sep 3 14:15:26 CDT 2005 Peter Scott * Made file-system-generator a subclass of tal-generator. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/x-darcs-patch Size: 1587 bytes Desc: A darcs patch for your repository! URL: From sketerpot at gmail.com Sat Sep 3 20:37:11 2005 From: sketerpot at gmail.com (Peter Scott) Date: Sat, 3 Sep 2005 15:37:11 -0500 Subject: [Bese-devel] darcs patch: Made file-system-generator a subclass of tal-generator. In-Reply-To: <200509032004.j83K447C019474@co1331-8.ece.iastate.edu> References: <200509032004.j83K447C019474@co1331-8.ece.iastate.edu> Message-ID: <7e267a92050903133751926847@mail.gmail.com> On 9/3/05, Peter Scott wrote: > Sat Sep 3 14:15:26 CDT 2005 Peter Scott > * Made file-system-generator a subclass of tal-generator. Just a note to elaborate: I think that file-system-generator was supposed to be a subclass of tal-generator, but you forgot and it was never an issue. If I have this wrong, and you just have an abstract base class there for some reason I have been unable to divine, forget this patch. -Peter From bobstopper at bobturf.org Sun Sep 4 02:08:54 2005 From: bobstopper at bobturf.org (Robert Marlow) Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2005 10:08:54 +0800 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme) In-Reply-To: <44873E11-C741-452B-AD11-2EFAA5AE7570@trianet.net> References: <44873E11-C741-452B-AD11-2EFAA5AE7570@trianet.net> Message-ID: <87psrpd1op.wl%bobstopper@bobturf.org> Just adding to what's already been said to expand on Scheme's native support for continuations. Scheme's interesting not just for its native support for continuations but also for its tail-call optimisation. This can mean considerable time and space savings during heavy continuation use compared to a language lacking tail-call optimisation since it recognises that many of the extra function calls of continuation passing style need never return. Quite a number of common lisp implementations do support tail-call optimisation (usually after you've made some declaims) so it may not even be an issue with UCW with these implementations, assuming UCW's rewrite rules take advantage of tail-calls. Furthermore, for most web applications the time and space loss is small enough to be negligible compared to getting all the other benefits of common lisp. It may be more of a problem for web applications needing many, many calls and answers but such web applications would be rather uncommon on the web (pardon the pun). I'm just talking from my general understanding of continuations though, so Marco or someone can probably correct me on some points. At Sat, 3 Sep 2005 04:21:47 -0400, Waldo Rubinstein wrote: > > Hi All, > > I'm fairly new to both Lisp and Smalltalk (less than 6 months > experience in each). The reason for my interest in these is because I > feel, from what I have been reading, that both Seaside and UCW offer > more practical solutions to the real-life problems I need to solve > for developing web-based custom apps. > > I have to say I have spent more time learning about Smalltalk/Seaside > than I have invested in Lisp/UCW. However, somehow it feels Lisp/UCW > seem to provide a better roadmap and more stable platform. > > Then, after googling a bit more, I came across certain articles that > point out some differences between Lisp and Scheme. Particularly on > the topic of continuations and the fact that these are native to > Scheme vs to both Smalltalk and Lisp. Then I wondered, if what I'm > looking for is better support for continuation-based development, > should I be looking into Scheme? > > Before I spent much time looking into Scheme, I decided to quickly > glance at Scheme's support for some of the minimum requirements I > have for web app development. For example, I need to access MySQL and/ > or Postgres databases as well as the easy manipulation (mainly > generation) of PDF and CSV files. Also, I would like to start using > object databases more than relational databases. I didn't find much > support for these in Scheme. However, I did come across some projects > for both Lisp and Smalltalk to support my needs, which brought me > back to wanting to learn more about UCW and Seaside. > > At this point, I'm wondering if there is anyone in this list that can > shed some light into clearing up where I should be going. I've always > been fascinated with Lisp, but never spent enough time to learn it. > Now that I have some time, I'd like to know where I should be > investing my time more wisely (Lisp, Smalltalk, Scheme). I don't know > if I should really rule out Scheme and may be someone could also > comment on it. > > Any information you can provide will really help, even if you can > just point me to where I can read more and learn more to make a more > informed decision. > > Thank you in advance, > Waldo > _______________________________________________ > bese-devel mailing list > bese-devel at common-lisp.net > http://common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bese-devel > From waldo at trianet.net Sun Sep 4 04:02:16 2005 From: waldo at trianet.net (Waldo Rubinstein) Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2005 00:02:16 -0400 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme) In-Reply-To: <7e267a9205090308213b3060bf@mail.gmail.com> References: <44873E11-C741-452B-AD11-2EFAA5AE7570@trianet.net> <7e267a9205090308213b3060bf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <0FE61F3B-F9A1-46F7-9AAB-14D46B846BF2@trianet.net> On Sep 3, 2005, at 11:21 AM, Peter Scott wrote: > On 9/3/05, Waldo Rubinstein wrote: > >> I'm fairly new to both Lisp and Smalltalk (less than 6 months >> experience in each). The reason for my interest in these is because I >> feel, from what I have been reading, that both Seaside and UCW offer >> more practical solutions to the real-life problems I need to solve >> for developing web-based custom apps. >> > > For some types of web apps, continuation-based is definitely the > way to go. I'm also fairly new to the theory behind continuations and I definitely agree. > > >> I have to say I have spent more time learning about Smalltalk/Seaside >> than I have invested in Lisp/UCW. However, somehow it feels Lisp/UCW >> seem to provide a better roadmap and more stable platform. >> > > UCW is still very unstable, with major parts being ripped out and > replaced as we speak. Common Lisp is very stable, with a wide > selection of good compilers, both commercial and open-source. UCW is a > pleasure to work with, for what it's worth---but I haven't checked out > Seaside. You may have phrased it better than me. CL is indeed very stable. Because I so new to UCW, I haven't had the chance to realize how "unstable" UCW may be. I didn't get the impression it's unstable. It may be that it's going through aggressive changes, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's unstable. I would say that Seaside is also evolving rapidly. However, I believe the combination of List/UCW offers a more solid roadmap. It could be more because of Lisp's "ability" to allowing developers develop better software. >> Before I spent much time looking into Scheme, I decided to quickly >> glance at Scheme's support for some of the minimum requirements I >> have for web app development. For example, I need to access MySQL >> and/ >> or Postgres databases as well as the easy manipulation (mainly >> generation) of PDF and CSV files. Also, I would like to start using >> object databases more than relational databases. I didn't find much >> support for these in Scheme. However, I did come across some projects >> for both Lisp and Smalltalk to support my needs, which brought me >> back to wanting to learn more about UCW and Seaside. >> > > I can't speak for scheme, but CL has: > > CLSQL: a good interface to a number of SQL databases. I'm particularly > fond of the reader syntax that prevents SQL-injection problems, among > other inconveniences. There's also an object-relational mapping, but I > haven't used it so I can't opine on it. > > fare-csv: you can import and export CSV in a straightforward way. I > found some of the code in this one to be a little amusing, but it > certainly works well enough. Wasn't aware of this one, although at first glance it looks like it's more designed for reading than for writing. > > CL-PDF and cl-typesetting: make PDF files easily, and do so with nice > typesetting. > > >> At this point, I'm wondering if there is anyone in this list that can >> shed some light into clearing up where I should be going. I've always >> been fascinated with Lisp, but never spent enough time to learn it. >> Now that I have some time, I'd like to know where I should be >> investing my time more wisely (Lisp, Smalltalk, Scheme). I don't know >> if I should really rule out Scheme and may be someone could also >> comment on it. >> > > Unless you find some big difference in libraries or tools (I'm a big > fan of CL's SLIME IDE), the perennial arguments about CL vs. Scheme > are relevant. > > You might also try reading some of the articles linked to in > . They aren't directly related > to your question, but they may be useful. > > -Peter > Thanks for the pointers. I spent some time reading the articles in that URL and many of its links. I still found no absolute answer. However, it has enlightened me in a way to strengthen my ideas that Lisp may be better suited for me than Scheme. Thanks, Waldo From waldo at trianet.net Sun Sep 4 04:18:50 2005 From: waldo at trianet.net (Waldo Rubinstein) Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2005 00:18:50 -0400 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme) In-Reply-To: References: <44873E11-C741-452B-AD11-2EFAA5AE7570@trianet.net> <7e267a9205090308213b3060bf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2917E516-9A20-4EE0-8BF2-A1A5F2B3385A@trianet.net> On Sep 3, 2005, at 12:03 PM, Marco Baringer wrote: > Peter Scott writes: > > >>> I have to say I have spent more time learning about Smalltalk/ >>> Seaside >>> than I have invested in Lisp/UCW. However, somehow it feels Lisp/UCW >>> seem to provide a better roadmap and more stable platform. >>> > > [replying to waldo] where did you get the impression that ucw is a > more stable platform than seaside? (this is just idle curiosity on my > part). > > if nothing else seaside has a much larger and more active user > community (its also been around a lot longer). I tend to agree with you on this one. I do see more "traffic" on the Seaside list and obviously the higher version numbers. But I was referring to the overall combination of Smalltalk/Seaside and Lisp/ UCW. I enjoyed learning about Smalltalk and definitely learned many new things about programming in general. There are some general philosophies in the Smalltalk world that I'm not so satisfied with. I don't want to turn this into a Lisp vs Smalltalk discussion. I think both languages have a huge amount of merits. It's just that after learning a bit more about Lisp, I think the development lifecycle of production applications is better handled in Lisp. BTW, I loved Paul Graham's article "Lisp in Web-Based Applications". It definitely sold me more to the idea. > > >> UCW is still very unstable, with major parts being ripped out and >> replaced as we speak. Common Lisp is very stable, with a wide >> selection of good compilers, both commercial and open-source. UCW >> is a >> pleasure to work with, for what it's worth---but I haven't checked >> out >> Seaside. >> > > just to clarify: i agree the ucw's api is unstable, and i do rip out > and rewrite major parts whenever i feel the need, but it does work and > is being used in production environments. That's the feeling I got. Like I said before, I didn't get the impression it was stable. BTW, both videos (the UCW Hello World tutorial and the one about SLIME) are great. They simply just motivated me that much more into looking deeper at Lisp, UCW, SLIME, and others. > > >> Marco is working on (or has added, I'm not sure which) an interpreter >> for a CL-like language which has proper serializable continuations >> and >> has removed CL's features that conflict with continuations, like >> UNWIND-PROTECT. This promises a significant improvement in things >> Just >> Working properly, at the cost of one or two orders of magnitude >> slowdown in the interpreted code. The interpreted code isn't a >> bottleneck, so don't worry about it. >> > > the interpreter is in and does everything the old cps transformer did > and then some. support for serializable continuations is in the works. BTW, I couldn't find on the web site release notes or version changes. Is there such a thing posted? > > >> I can't speak for scheme, but CL has: >> >> CLSQL: a good interface to a number of SQL databases. I'm >> particularly >> fond of the reader syntax that prevents SQL-injection problems, among >> other inconveniences. There's also an object-relational mapping, >> but I >> haven't used it so I can't opine on it. >> >> fare-csv: you can import and export CSV in a straightforward way. I >> found some of the code in this one to be a little amusing, but it >> certainly works well enough. >> > > for what it's worth arnesi also contains a trivial csv reader/writer. > > >> CL-PDF and cl-typesetting: make PDF files easily, and do so with nice >> typesetting. >> > > i'd be very surpsied if plt or bigloo scheme did not offer equivalent > libraries. I spent a bit of time in their sites and couldn't find all of my needs. Maybe I didn't spend enough time. Maybe they just don't have that support. > > >>> At this point, I'm wondering if there is anyone in this list that >>> can >>> shed some light into clearing up where I should be going. I've >>> always >>> been fascinated with Lisp, but never spent enough time to learn it. >>> Now that I have some time, I'd like to know where I should be >>> investing my time more wisely (Lisp, Smalltalk, Scheme). I don't >>> know >>> if I should really rule out Scheme and may be someone could also >>> comment on it. >>> > > there's a huge difference between scheme, smalltalk and common > lisp. if you have the time i'd suggest becoming proficent in all > three, i don't feel like suggesting one over the other. > > personally i'm a big fan of smalltalk, but (obviously) i'm a far > bigger fan of common lisp. Well, I do have some time, but not that much time :) I would love to become proficient in all of them, but because I know that's not possible in the immediate future, I want to make the best of my immediate time. I also like Smalltalk alot. I've mostly used Squeak but feel it's a little slow and still get the feeling that it's evolving too much. I would have anticipated (and to some degree this goes to Lisp as well) that after 30 years or so, there would be more mature and stable platforms. > > -- > -Marco > Ring the bells that still can ring. > Forget the perfect offering. > There is a crack in everything. > That's how the light gets in. > -Leonard Cohen > Thanks, Waldo From mb at bese.it Sun Sep 4 09:49:55 2005 From: mb at bese.it (Marco Baringer) Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2005 11:49:55 +0200 Subject: [Bese-devel] darcs patch: Made file-system-generator a subclass of tal-generator. In-Reply-To: <200509032004.j83K447C019474@co1331-8.ece.iastate.edu> (Peter Scott's message of "Sat, 3 Sep 2005 15:04:04 -0500") References: <200509032004.j83K447C019474@co1331-8.ece.iastate.edu> Message-ID: Peter Scott writes: > Sat Sep 3 14:15:26 CDT 2005 Peter Scott > * Made file-system-generator a subclass of tal-generator. applied. thanks. -- -Marco Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget the perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. -Leonard Cohen From mb at bese.it Sun Sep 4 09:53:26 2005 From: mb at bese.it (Marco Baringer) Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2005 11:53:26 +0200 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme) References: <20050903182815.29721.qmail@web40628.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Aleksandar Bakic writes: >> > Working properly, at the cost of one or two orders of magnitude >> > slowdown in the interpreted code. The interpreted code isn't a >> > bottleneck, so don't worry about it. > > I suppose not everything is interpreted. Is it just code wrapped by > with-call/cc, defaction and defmethod/cc, or is there more? Any suggestions on > how to structure code to know easily which chunks of code are interpreted and > which ones are compiled? anything within the body of a with-call/cc is interpreted, this includes any macro which wraps with-call/cc, such as: defun/cc defmethod/cc defaction defentry-point here's a half backed benchmark (note that this stresses the speed of function calls, which in the interpreter are known to be slow): ARNESI> (defun fib (x) (if (< x 2) 1 (+ (fib (- x 1)) (fib (- x 2))))) FIB ARNESI> (time (fib 30)) (FIB 30) took 386 milliseconds (0.386 seconds) to run. Of that, 280 milliseconds (0.280 seconds) were spent in user mode 0 milliseconds (0.000 seconds) were spent in system mode 106 milliseconds (0.106 seconds) were spent executing other OS processes. 1346269 ARNESI> (defun/cc fib/cc (x) (if (< x 2) 1 (+ (fib/cc (- x 1)) (fib/cc (- x 2))))) FIB/CC ARNESI> (time (with-call/cc (fib/cc 30))) (WITH-CALL/CC (FIB/CC 30)) took 510,689 milliseconds (510.689 seconds) to run. Of that, 214,840 milliseconds (214.840 seconds) were spent in user mode 37,720 milliseconds (37.720 seconds) were spent in system mode 258,129 milliseconds (258.129 seconds) were spent executing other OS processes. 90,336 milliseconds (90.336 seconds) was spent in GC. 2,940,249,976 bytes of memory allocated. 1346269 ARNESI> so it took 510 seconds vs 0.386 (~ 1300 times slower). the real cause though is the difference in memory use: 2,940,249,976 bytes (2.73 GB) vs. 0. that said, fib doesn't need call/cc, let's compare our fib with this: ARNESI> (time (with-call/cc (fib 30))) (WITH-CALL/CC (FIB 30)) took 345 milliseconds (0.345 seconds) to run. Of that, 260 milliseconds (0.260 seconds) were spent in user mode 0 milliseconds (0.000 seconds) were spent in system mode 85 milliseconds (0.085 seconds) were spent executing other OS processes. 216 bytes of memory allocated. 1346269 ARNESI> so if you have a piece of code you know to be slow just move it out into a seperate function and call that (technically the intepreter could do this enough, but it's just not worth the effort). -- -Marco Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget the perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. -Leonard Cohen From mb at bese.it Sun Sep 4 09:58:44 2005 From: mb at bese.it (Marco Baringer) Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2005 11:58:44 +0200 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme) In-Reply-To: <20050903191407.35635.qmail@web40628.mail.yahoo.com> (Aleksandar Bakic's message of "Sat, 3 Sep 2005 12:14:07 -0700 (PDT)") References: <20050903191407.35635.qmail@web40628.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Aleksandar Bakic writes: >> Is it just code wrapped by... > > I meant to say, I suppose the CPS transformer knows what code should be > transformed and what code is 'simple' so as to be called directly (and > compiled), so it closes over code wrapped by arnesi macros. I know you've been > using sucla to rewrite some of CL so that, I suppose, it can be used with > continuations (and interpreted). Is there more to this than my by-the-book > understanding? (I hope to find time to read the arnesi code eventually...) the transformer used to do that, it would check if a particular form needed cps transforming and if not just leave it alone. however the interpreter doesn't do that atm (and this would create a few problems with lexicals which i don't want to get into). the reason for using sacla is thta i need (fsvo need) to be able to do this: (mapcar (lambda (object) (call 'check-if-object-required)) objects) and the only way to make this work is to have the interpreter know how mapcar is implemented. once you add mapcar then why not remove-if? onec you add remove-if why not find? ... -- -Marco Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget the perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. -Leonard Cohen From pjscott at iastate.edu Sun Sep 4 19:46:05 2005 From: pjscott at iastate.edu (Peter Scott) Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2005 14:46:05 -0500 Subject: [Bese-devel] darcs patch: Removed "ignore" declaration for two variables which a... Message-ID: <200509041946.j84Jk5jW001063@co1331-8.ece.iastate.edu> Sun Sep 4 14:41:51 CDT 2005 Peter Scott * Removed "ignore" declaration for two variables which are used. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/x-darcs-patch Size: 15532 bytes Desc: A darcs patch for your repository! URL: From mb at bese.it Sun Sep 4 20:46:45 2005 From: mb at bese.it (Marco Baringer) Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2005 22:46:45 +0200 Subject: [Bese-devel] darcs patch: Removed "ignore" declaration for two variables which a... In-Reply-To: <200509041946.j84Jk5jW001063@co1331-8.ece.iastate.edu> (Peter Scott's message of "Sun, 4 Sep 2005 14:46:05 -0500") References: <200509041946.j84Jk5jW001063@co1331-8.ece.iastate.edu> Message-ID: Peter Scott writes: > Sun Sep 4 14:41:51 CDT 2005 Peter Scott > * Removed "ignore" declaration for two variables which are used. applied. thanks. -- -Marco Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget the perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. -Leonard Cohen From frido at q-software-solutions.de Mon Sep 5 07:28:44 2005 From: frido at q-software-solutions.de (Friedrich Dominicus) Date: Mon, 05 Sep 2005 09:28:44 +0200 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme) In-Reply-To: <44873E11-C741-452B-AD11-2EFAA5AE7570@trianet.net> (Waldo Rubinstein's message of "Sat, 3 Sep 2005 04:21:47 -0400") References: <44873E11-C741-452B-AD11-2EFAA5AE7570@trianet.net> Message-ID: <87u0h0t1lf.fsf@flarge.here> Waldo Rubinstein writes: > Before I spent much time looking into Scheme, I decided to quickly > glance at Scheme's support for some of the minimum requirements I > have for web app development. For example, I need to access MySQL and/ > or Postgres databases as well as the easy manipulation (mainly > generation) of PDF and CSV files. Also, I would like to start using > object databases more than relational databases. I didn't find much > support for these in Scheme. However, I did come across some projects > for both Lisp and Smalltalk to support my needs, which brought me > back to wanting to learn more about UCW and Seaside. Well I just can tell you my experience, other will disagree. However here we go. I think Smalltalk/Seaside is easier to understand and apply, have you checked the Squeak Seaside examples? I found them amazing expecially the browser, however I did use CL and UCW for other reasons. I do not more about handling Common Lisp programs and how to run them "without" gui, then I know about Smalltalks. I assume there is a way to run Squeak in a sort of console, but I do not know. The other reason for me to use CL is cl-sql. It gives me persitence nearly for free. That is "a good thing" (TM;-). I just read about ORDB wrappers but did not have used them. Me seems that "generating" code instead of writing code is better supported in Common Lisp, that's another reasoin I choose to go the CL, but I found ruby on rails quite amazing and I found that there is much more in place for "application development", I were in contact with Drew on Lisp-on-lines, but he told me I'm nuts to expect his software to work out-of-the-box. Ruby is a Smalltalk with a "different syntax, but if you know Smalltalk you can learn ruby in no time really. There exists book "Agile web development with rails" or the like which explains rails very well. If I'd start from scratch I probably would choose rails. However there do exist something like a web-development system from the developers of PLT Scheme. I _guess_ that's one base example of applying continuations in web programming. http://download.plt-scheme.org/doc/299.200/html/web-server/ The PLT people do have a lot of documentation and their Scheme is "nearly" a Common Lisp. > > At this point, I'm wondering if there is anyone in this list that can > shed some light into clearing up where I should be going. I've always > been fascinated with Lisp, but never spent enough time to learn it. > Now that I have some time, I'd like to know where I should be > investing my time more wisely (Lisp, Smalltalk, Scheme). I don't know > if I should really rule out Scheme and may be someone could also > comment on it. Well IMHO it's worth using Common Lisp, however you better have some "hacker-mentality". A lot of Lisp Software is available but documentation is often sparse. Counterexamples are stuff from Franz, Edi Weitz and a few others. UCW was and is a lot of trial-and-error-and-asking here for me. There still are a lot of things mysterious for me. Adding or removing slots e.g, changing defactions are hard to understand for me, how to intervene TAL with Lisp is at least a very dark greyhole for me. It seems however that others do not have that trouble, so it may be *me* but UCW.... Regards Friedrich From waldo at trianet.net Mon Sep 5 18:11:30 2005 From: waldo at trianet.net (Waldo Rubinstein) Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 14:11:30 -0400 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme) In-Reply-To: <87u0h0t1lf.fsf@flarge.here> References: <44873E11-C741-452B-AD11-2EFAA5AE7570@trianet.net> <87u0h0t1lf.fsf@flarge.here> Message-ID: <747A9D9B-7FEB-4C31-96AC-D1875A8AAEAC@trianet.net> On Sep 5, 2005, at 3:28 AM, Friedrich Dominicus wrote: > Waldo Rubinstein writes: > > > > > > >> Before I spent much time looking into Scheme, I decided to quickly >> glance at Scheme's support for some of the minimum requirements I >> have for web app development. For example, I need to access MySQL >> and/ >> or Postgres databases as well as the easy manipulation (mainly >> generation) of PDF and CSV files. Also, I would like to start using >> object databases more than relational databases. I didn't find much >> support for these in Scheme. However, I did come across some projects >> for both Lisp and Smalltalk to support my needs, which brought me >> back to wanting to learn more about UCW and Seaside. >> >> >> >> >> > Well I just can tell you my experience, other will disagree. However > here we go. I think Smalltalk/Seaside is easier to understand and > apply, have you checked the Squeak Seaside examples? I found them > amazing expecially the browser, however I did use CL and UCW for other > reasons. I do not more about handling Common Lisp programs and how to > run them "without" gui, then I know about Smalltalks. I assume there > is a way to run Squeak in a sort of console, but I do not know. > > The other reason for me to use CL is cl-sql. It gives me persitence > nearly for free. That is "a good thing" (TM;-). I just read about ORDB > wrappers but did not have used them. Me seems that "generating" code > instead of writing code is better supported in Common Lisp, that's > another reasoin I choose to go the CL, but I found ruby on rails quite > amazing and I found that there is much more in place for "application > development", I were in contact with Drew on Lisp-on-lines, but he > told me I'm nuts to expect his software to work out-of-the-box. > > Ruby is a Smalltalk with a "different syntax, but if you know > Smalltalk you can learn ruby in no time really. There exists book > "Agile web development with rails" or the like which explains rails > very well. If I'd start from scratch I probably would choose > rails. > > However there do exist something like a web-development system from > the developers of PLT Scheme. I _guess_ that's one base example of > applying continuations in web programming. > > http://download.plt-scheme.org/doc/299.200/html/web-server/ > > The PLT people do have a lot of documentation and their Scheme is > "nearly" a Common Lisp. > > > > > I actually started with rails. I developed a few production sites with it. However, during the time I was working with rails, it wasn't as mature as it is now. I can definitely say that their active community is one of the best communities I've ever worked with. They are all very willing to help. Anyway, while reading more about Rub, I learned about its heritage in, among others, Smalltalk. So, I decided to learn Smalltalk mainly because of Seaside. I think Seaside is very nice. Although I felt rails had more features available to programmers as a framework, I think the benefits of continuations provided by Seaside outperformed rails (at least for my needs). I also read about Borges (the Ruby version of Seaside) but never bothered to play with it. I spent a few months stress testing Squeak/Seaside with a few database options. I was basically developing in that environment some of the applications I had developed in the past in either Ruby or Java. Well, although the performance was somewhat better than what I was getting with rails, I didn't feel that the development cycle in that environment was as productive as I would have expected from what I read/heard. So, then I started reading up more about continuations and came across several articles that talked about it and made specific references to both Scheme and Lisp. For some reason, I tend to like Lisp better than Scheme. I haven't study much of Scheme, but there is something that aesthetically just doesn't attract me, even though Scheme seems to have evolved out of Lisp (or something like that). I understand that continuations and tail-call optimization are native to Scheme. However, I like the UCW-way rather than what I have read on Scheme for web development. Granted, UCW is still in its childhood, as some refer, but that doesn't scare me much. When I started with rails, you could say it might have been at the same stage as UCW, but with alot of suggestions from a very active community and a dedicated team of developers, rails evolved very rapidly. Since my original posting, I have been studying more Lisp and reading more white papers and case studies. The more I read, the more I feel Lisp offers a better environment for effective and scaleable development. Even reading some articles from way back when, where Lispers described more or less the development life-cycle in Lisp, it roughly detailed what Xtreme Programming is now, but more than a decade before the term was coined. Like you, I don't necessarily get pulled into something because of a nice GUI IDE. To some degree, I prefer console and Vi/Emacs as well as being in control of the system processes that run my applications. Everything I develop is web based and it runs on remote servers, and there is nothing better than console for remote management. I agree that Seaside's exception handling mechanism via the web browser is magnificent in that it almost brings the Smalltalk environment to the browser for debugging purposes, but, after reading Paul Grahams article about Viaweb, you can do basically the same thing via the console connecting to the Lisp environment remotely. At the same time, I don't develop applications that are accessed by millions of users. My business is more oriented towards business applications that are used within an enterprise of under 500 users. I go out of my way to make sure that I use open-source technologies. I don't believe much in paying license fees. I prefer to spend my moneys or any other resource I have available at supporting open- source efforts. The moment they go fee-based, I simply loose respect because of previous history I've had with license based applications/ tools. So, my typical applications run on Linux with Apache, either MySQL or Postgres, and some "application framework", such as rails, or Squeak/ Seaside. Like I said before, because of the nature of my applications, I have to be able to easily export to CSV and be able to generate PDF documents on the fly, easily. During my testing of Squeak/Seaside, I tested several OODBs and quickly learned about its benefits, particularly for some of the applications I develop. I only came across a couple of efforts in Lisp for OODBs. One was Elephant and the other was PLOB. I haven't had a chance to use either one, but while reading about PLOB, I discovered that it requires a server application managed by U. of St. Andrews, but no one seems to be able to get that going (at least from what I read), and that piece may require license fees. Elephant seems promising, but then again, I haven't stressed tested it (I haven't stress tested anything in Lisp yet for that matter). As for PLT Scheme (the link you referred me to), it feels alot like Struts or something like that but in Scheme rather than Java. I don't know. > > > > > > > > >> >> At this point, I'm wondering if there is anyone in this list that can >> shed some light into clearing up where I should be going. I've always >> been fascinated with Lisp, but never spent enough time to learn it. >> Now that I have some time, I'd like to know where I should be >> investing my time more wisely (Lisp, Smalltalk, Scheme). I don't know >> if I should really rule out Scheme and may be someone could also >> comment on it. >> >> >> >> >> > > Well IMHO it's worth using Common Lisp, however you better have some > "hacker-mentality". A lot of Lisp Software is available but > documentation is often sparse. Counterexamples are stuff from Franz, > Edi Weitz and a few others. UCW was and is a lot of > trial-and-error-and-asking here for me. There still are a lot of > things mysterious for me. Adding or removing slots e.g, changing > defactions are hard to understand for me, how to intervene TAL with > Lisp is at least a very dark greyhole for me. > > It seems however that others do not have that trouble, so it may be > *me* but UCW.... > > Regards > Friedrich > > > > > Well, I can't relate well to the mysteries you seem to have with UCW. I do agree about the "mentality" you need to have and I think that's one of the things that encourage me more. I am productive most when I constantly feel challenged. Overall, as far as UCW is concerned, I don't really know how involved the community is. Also, I don't know how committed the developers are to continually advance UCW. However, if only a fraction of what I saw in the rails community was active in this one, UCW could be at a completely different level within a month. Note to UCW team: I don't mean any disrespect nor do I intend on saying UCW is too infantile at this moment. I honestly haven't played enough with it and I'm only paraphrasing what others have mentioned. As a matter of fact, if there is anything I can contribute, I would gladly do so. It's just that at this moment, my Lisp skills are not at the level I would expect in order to contribute to such a project. However, I can provide plenty of ideas to contribute, as long as there is someone out there willing to listen and formally work on a development roadmap. Sorry for the long post and look forward to reading more comments from this community. Thanks, Waldo From jan at rychter.com Mon Sep 5 19:54:34 2005 From: jan at rychter.com (Jan Rychter) Date: Mon, 05 Sep 2005 21:54:34 +0200 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW guidance In-Reply-To: (Marco Baringer's message of "Tue, 30 Aug 2005 17:35:07 +0200") References: Message-ID: >>>>> "Marco" == Marco Baringer : Marco> Jan Rychter writes: [...] Marco> i hope this helps. the more info (doubts, questions, other Marco> possiblities) the better i can help and the more ideas we can Marco> bounce around. It definitely helps! I am actually amazed by how much one can learn from discussions on this list. The signal to noise ratio is definitely high. More comments coming from me once I actually finish a reasonably sized application. I've encountered the next snag: how do I error-check a form and feed it back to the user if it contains errors? An example to that effect would be very, very helpful -- I couldn't find one in the examples. many thanks, --J. From pjb at informatimago.com Mon Sep 5 20:49:16 2005 From: pjb at informatimago.com (Pascal Bourguignon) Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 22:49:16 +0200 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW guidance In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <17180.44876.153200.918888@thalassa.informatimago.com> Jan Rychter writes: > >>>>> "Marco" == Marco Baringer : > Marco> Jan Rychter writes: > [...] > Marco> i hope this helps. the more info (doubts, questions, other > Marco> possiblities) the better i can help and the more ideas we can > Marco> bounce around. > > It definitely helps! I am actually amazed by how much one can learn from > discussions on this list. The signal to noise ratio is definitely > high. More comments coming from me once I actually finish a reasonably > sized application. > > I've encountered the next snag: how do I error-check a form and feed it > back to the user if it contains errors? > > An example to that effect would be very, very helpful -- I couldn't find > one in the examples. It depends on what you mean by "feed it back to the user". I often use this macro: (defmacro handling-errors (&body body) `(HANDLER-CASE (progn , at body) (simple-condition (ERR) (format *error-output* "~&~A: ~%" (class-name (class-of err))) (apply (function format) *error-output* (simple-condition-format-control err) (simple-condition-format-arguments err)) (format *error-output* "~&")) (condition (ERR) (format *error-output* "~&~A: ~% ~S~%" (class-name (class-of err)) err)))) (handling-errors (some-form)) Of course, you'd have to modify it to report the error via UCW. -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/ Until real software engineering is developed, the next best practice is to develop with a dynamic system that has extreme late binding in all aspects. The first system to really do this in an important way is Lisp. -- Alan Kay From waldo at trianet.net Tue Sep 6 03:27:42 2005 From: waldo at trianet.net (Waldo Rubinstein) Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 23:27:42 -0400 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW Installation Message-ID: <82DA1431-CD9E-4328-88CA-1CB0652FF7FD@trianet.net> Just as an FYI, I tried to install a fresh copy of UCW on a Mac OS machine with SBCL and came across a couple of problems: 1) The copy of UCW I downloaded via darcs (stable version) does not work with stable version of arnesi (darcs). It worked with arnesi_dev 2) After it finally compiled everything, the console shows: WARNING: Can't start slime server due to lack of threads. 2005-09-05T23:21.50 +INFO+ IT.BESE.UCW::UCW-LOGGER: Starting up standard server #. I don't necessarily know what the WARNING means, however, looking at the next line, seems to indicate the server is running. Unfortunately, when I go to http://localhost:8080/ucw/examples/ index.ucw, I get the following error: 2005-09-05T23:22.07 +ERROR+ IT.BESE.UCW::UCW-LOGGER: Error # while serving action. 2005-09-05T23:22.07 +ERROR+ IT.BESE.UCW::UCW-LOGGER: Aborting action. Control stack guard page temporarily disabled: proceed with caution debugger invoked on a SB-KERNEL::CONTROL-STACK-EXHAUSTED: Control stack exhausted (no more space for function call frames). This is probably due to heavily nested or infinitely recursive function calls, or a tail call that SBCL cannot or has not optimized away. Type HELP for debugger help, or (SB-EXT:QUIT) to exit from SBCL. restarts (invokable by number or by possibly-abbreviated name): 0: [RETRY ] Retry rendering the component #. 1: Retry calling RENDER-ON. 2: [SERVER-ERROR] Send the client an internal server error page. 3: [CONTINUE ] Ignore and continue with next --eval option. 4: [ABORT ] Skip rest of --eval options. 5: Skip to toplevel READ/EVAL/PRINT loop. 6: [QUIT ] Quit SBCL (calling #'QUIT, killing the process). (SB-KERNEL::CONTROL-STACK-EXHAUSTED-ERROR) 0] Any help would be appreciated in order to make this run on this Mac. The Mac is running Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) with SBCL 0.9.4 Thanks, Waldo From drewc at tech.coop Tue Sep 6 19:12:59 2005 From: drewc at tech.coop (Drew Crampsie) Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 12:12:59 -0700 Subject: [Fwd: Re: [Bese-devel] UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme)] Message-ID: <431DEA3B.4050405@tech.coop> I always forget to CC the list ... here is my response to Waldo for posterity :) drewc On Sep 6, 2005, at 8:53 AM, Drew Crampsie wrote: > Waldo Rubinstein wrote: > > >> During my testing of Squeak/Seaside, I tested several OODBs and >> quickly learned about its benefits, particularly for some of the >> applications I develop. I only came across a couple of efforts in >> Lisp for OODBs. One was Elephant and the other was PLOB. I >> haven't had a chance to use either one, but while reading about >> PLOB, I discovered that it requires a server application managed >> by U. of St. Andrews, but no one seems to be able to get that >> going (at least from what I read), and that piece may require >> license fees. Elephant seems promising, but then again, I haven't >> stressed tested it (I haven't stress tested anything in Lisp yet >> for that matter). >> > > There is a license problem with elephant as well, as it uses the > Berkeley DB. Not a problem if all your code is Open Source, or if > its in-house only, or you pay for a license. > > I personally use clsql's O-R mapping, but there are a few other > options available. > > http://common-lisp.net/project/cl-prevalence/ > > "CL-PREVALENCE is an implementation of Object Prevalence for Common > Lisp. It was written by and is being maintained by Sven Van > Caekenberghe. CL-PREVALENCE is using S-XML for the XML > serialization protocol (there is also a more Lisp-like s-expression- > based serialization protocol)." > > http://common-lisp.net/project/cl-store/ > > " CL-STORE is a package written by Sean Ross for serializing and > deserializing CL objects from streams > It has been tested and works on - > > * SBCL (0.8.10.12) on Linux x86 > * CMUCL (CVS Head 2003-09-14) on Linux x86 > * CLISP (2.33) on Linux x86 and Windows > * Lispworks Personal Edition 4.3 on Linux x86 and Windows > * Allegro CL Trial Edition 6.2 [Linux (x86)] > * OpenMCL is supported but is largely untested. > * ECL (Embeddable Common-Lisp) 0.9d > > CL-STORE is licensed under the MIT Licence. " > > FWIW, the latter seems to be more active/supported, though i have > not used either for anything serious. > > >> Overall, as far as UCW is concerned, I don't really know how >> involved the community is. Also, I don't know how committed the >> developers are to continually advance UCW. >> > > Very. Marco is constantly evolving UCW and arnesi, and this list > sees many patches sent from users/developers. I personally make my > living with UCW, so i can guarantee that it will have at least one > user for a long time :) > > >> However, if only a fraction of what I saw in the rails community >> was active in this one, UCW could be at a completely different >> level within a month. >> > > I'm not sure comparing Rails with UCW is fair. From the UCW docs : > > "UCW deals with managing user interaction via HTTP and nothing > more, no database layer, no user authentication or security nor any > content management systems. This is an intentional design choice: > there is no way UCW could provide a single implementation of these > features which would well in every setup, so instead of trying to > be everything for everyone UCW will limit itself to help developers > deal with interacting via HTTP." > > and from the Rails page : > > "Rails is a full-stack, open-source web framework in Ruby for > writing real-world applications with joy and less code than most > frameworks spend doing XML sit-ups" > > The two projects have a very different focus, and very different > implementation strategies. UCW is a framework that you could > implement somthing like Rails in, like my own Lisp-on-Lines for > example (watch this list for upcoming 0.1 release), which provides > the "missing" ucw features (an introspective o-r mapping and a > presentation system for CLOS objects). > > >> Note to UCW team: I don't mean any disrespect nor do I intend on >> saying UCW is too infantile at this moment. I honestly haven't >> played enough with it and I'm only paraphrasing what others have >> mentioned. >> > > One of the problems is that UCW is not really for newbies, yet it > attracts a lot of people both new to CL and to CPS frameworks. > FWIW, i learned CL and UCW at the same time, but it was a bit of a > struggle. > > Once one is well versed in CL, and has played with continuations > enough to have a solid grasp on the concept, things get easier. > UCW's component model is very powerful, and i couldn't imagine > doing web-apps any other way, but it is _very_ different from most > other web frameworks. > > The other thing is that CPS based web stuff is new as well, and > we're still discovering things. There is room for improvement in > UCW, but finding out where that room is, is challenging :) > > >> As a matter of fact, if there is anything I can contribute, I >> would gladly do so. It's just that at this moment, my Lisp skills >> are not at the level I would expect in order to contribute to >> such a project. >> > > Both UCW and (especially) Lisp on Lines are a little short in the > documentation dept. The UCW source code is _very_ well documented, > but for some reason some people don't like to read docstrings :) > > I think a high-level overview of how components work would probably > help the n00b crowd a lot. Something like what is a component, and > what the slots PLACE, CONTINUATION, and CALLING-COMPONENT do, and > how it all interacts with call-component etc would be great, and us > 'insiders' are a little too close to the code to be able to explain > it to beginners. > > >> However, I can provide plenty of ideas to contribute, as long as >> there is someone out there willing to listen and formally work on >> a development roadmap. >> > > I'm always interested in good ideas, and i'm a pretty good listener :) > > drewc > From svg at surnet.ru Tue Sep 6 07:51:51 2005 From: svg at surnet.ru (Vladimir Sekissov) Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 13:51:51 +0600 (YEKST) Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW guidance In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20050906.135151.71089764.svg@surnet.ru> Good day, jan> I've encountered the next snag: how do I error-check a form and feed it jan> back to the user if it contains errors? jan> jan> An example to that effect would be very, very helpful -- I couldn't find jan> one in the examples. I'd posted code for `status-bar-mixin' to mailing list which I use for such purposes: http://common-lisp.net/pipermail/bese-devel/2005-June/000396.html I use it in form as: (defun collect-error (condition) (flet ((error-collector (error-tag error) (show-message (format nil "~a" error) :severity error-tag))) (let ((restart (find-restart 'collect-error))) (when restart (invoke-restart restart #'error-collector condition))))) (defmacro with-collect-error (body-form on-error-form &key (error-tag :error)) (let ((error-collector (gensym)) (condition (gensym))) `(restart-case ,body-form (collect-error (,error-collector ,condition) (funcall ,error-collector ,error-tag ,condition) ,on-error-form)))) .... (handler-bind ((error #'collect-error)) (dolist (field (form-fields form)) (with-collect-error (validate-form-field field) nil))) Best Regards, Vladimir Sekissov From mb at bese.it Tue Sep 6 08:02:37 2005 From: mb at bese.it (Marco Baringer) Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 10:02:37 +0200 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW Installation In-Reply-To: <82DA1431-CD9E-4328-88CA-1CB0652FF7FD@trianet.net> (Waldo Rubinstein's message of "Mon, 5 Sep 2005 23:27:42 -0400") References: <82DA1431-CD9E-4328-88CA-1CB0652FF7FD@trianet.net> Message-ID: Waldo Rubinstein writes: > Just as an FYI, I tried to install a fresh copy of UCW on a Mac OS > machine with SBCL and came across a couple of problems: > > 1) The copy of UCW I downloaded via darcs (stable version) does not > work with stable version of arnesi (darcs). It worked with > arnesi_dev hm. that's not very nice is it :( try using ucw_dev and arnesi_dev, except for those times when i'm being really stupid (doing things on the dev branch i should do on other temporary branches) _dev is your best bet (unless you have running code and you don't want to get api changes). > 2) After it finally compiled everything, the console shows: > > WARNING: Can't start slime server due to lack of threads. > 2005-09-05T23:21.50 +INFO+ IT.BESE.UCW::UCW-LOGGER: Starting up > standard server #. > > I don't necessarily know what the WARNING means, however, looking at > the next line, seems to indicate the server is running. this is just a fyi telling the user that they can't slime-connect. you can safely ignore it (or use a lisp which has threads). the 'work around' to this, if you want to use slime's debugger for ucw errors, is to load up bin/start.lisp but comment out the (ucw:startup-server ucw:*default-server*) form and execute (swank:create-server :dont-close t :external-format (external-format-for :slime)). then connect to slime (M-x slime-connect) and from the repl in emacs run (ucw:startup-server ucw:*default-server*). you won't have an active repl you can execute forms in but at least when there's a ucw error you can use slime's debugger/inspector and the mighty slime-eval-in-frame. > Unfortunately, when I go to http://localhost:8080/ucw/examples/ > index.ucw, I get the following error: > > 2005-09-05T23:22.07 +ERROR+ IT.BESE.UCW::UCW-LOGGER: Error # ERROR {10F3F6B9}> while serving action. > 2005-09-05T23:22.07 +ERROR+ IT.BESE.UCW::UCW-LOGGER: Aborting action. > Control stack guard page temporarily disabled: proceed with caution > > debugger invoked on a SB-KERNEL::CONTROL-STACK-EXHAUSTED: Control > stack exhausted (no more space for function call frames). This is > probably due to heavily nested or infinitely recursive function > calls, or a tail call that SBCL cannot or has not optimized away. oh my. this is bad :( would you mind sending a complete backtrace? > The Mac is running Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) with SBCL 0.9.4 i tried with 10.3.9 and sbcl 0.9.3.2, ucw_dev and arnesi_dev and the examples ran fine. -- -Marco Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget the perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. -Leonard Cohen From mb at bese.it Tue Sep 6 08:22:54 2005 From: mb at bese.it (Marco Baringer) Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 10:22:54 +0200 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW Releases [Was: UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme)] References: <44873E11-C741-452B-AD11-2EFAA5AE7570@trianet.net> <7e267a9205090308213b3060bf@mail.gmail.com> <2917E516-9A20-4EE0-8BF2-A1A5F2B3385A@trianet.net> Message-ID: Waldo Rubinstein writes: > BTW, I couldn't find on the web site release notes or version > changes. Is there such a thing posted? no. i used to sit down once every two months and create a 'release'. this was nice since people could see that the project was moving forward and provided an easy way to check in occasionaly and see what'd changed. releases give people the impression that ucw has reached a point of 'stability' and had been tested and that version is known to work. lies. damn lies. the ucw releases took a lot of time to create. thy were rarely tested, ucw runs on a lot of different lisps, on a lot of different os and with 4 different backends, tasting all those combinations is was a big job. they stopped people from grabbing the development versions (which contained fixs for a lot of bugs in the releases and were otherwise the same). then, when i forget to make a release, they made the project seem less active than it actually was. so, after seeing how well slime got along without making any releases, i decided to stop making them. i kept the _stable/_dev distinction for some odd reasen, though the more i think about the less i think that's a good distinction to make. ucw should have a 'main' branch and, when radical changes need to be made, these should be done on a seperate, appropiatly named, branch. hth. -- -Marco Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget the perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. -Leonard Cohen From mb at bese.it Tue Sep 6 08:45:38 2005 From: mb at bese.it (Marco Baringer) Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 10:45:38 +0200 Subject: [Bese-devel] UCW guidance In-Reply-To: <20050906.135151.71089764.svg@surnet.ru> (Vladimir Sekissov's message of "Tue, 06 Sep 2005 13:51:51 +0600 (YEKST)") References: <20050906.135151.71089764.svg@surnet.ru> Message-ID: Vladimir Sekissov
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