[cells-devel] A shocking proposal

[Raistlin Magere]

> Do me a favor, let me know everyone what you think of the text-based
> tutorials on Bill's blog and in my own 01-cell-basics.lisp (and there
> is more if you want to look at the regression tests in the cells-test
> subdirectory or go to my web site and grab some old, obsolete PDFs).

I liked your 01-cell-basics.lisp as it gave a first feeling of what cells is
about also I liked Bill's one as it introduced the idea of filtering the
values before using them (something that obviously needs doing in a
real world problem but that I had no idea, nor I would have expected,
you had implemented).

However as side problem with Bill's example I never got to see the
status of the pump on closed from a def-c-echo call until when at the
end I called (status *motor1*) and everything updated. It wasn't clear
if the reason was the filtering or something else.

The problem with 01-cell-basic is that it is indeed quite basic so things
like drifters are not introduced, nor filtering, nor any other goodies you
are currently hiding in your source code.

So yeah they are good but only to get a first inkling of the potential of
your system. However I haven't looked at your test directory in detail
yet nor at the other pdfs on your site.

Side Note: in your most recent release you still have a `while' that is
incompatible with acl (I replaced it with acl:while although you mentioned
that changing it to a do will make it portable) which is present in the
data-flow source file.

Regarding linking cells to LW, well I have got a copy of LW Personal
installed on my computer as I wanted to give it a look however after
having started it I was already missing my acl (although older version).
So I don't know it might be a good chance for me too look back at LW
then again it might not.

> One unspoken issue here is that, if I base the more elaborate examples
> on Cello, well, Cello is so far just win32 ACL and LW, tho it is in
> principle portable to Linux and Mac OS X. A small voice tells me I
> will have to do all the porting myself, and even then I would only do
> OS X to get ready for my next entrepreneuial effort. Unless someone
> or ones step up to port Cello to Linux (unlikely) suddenly the more
> advanced tutorials are win32/OSX-only. (And I do think a GUI is
> necessary, tho I know the Linux crowd feels differently.)

Well linking Cells tutorial to Cello (and ACL and LW) I would like that
though I appreciate that not using Linux I am not entirely impartial ;)
However I was just wondering is there not a demo of ACL running on
Linux? and if so is the GUI linkages so different that Cello would not run
on it?

rmagere