From vrrm00 at gmail.com  Mon Jan  7 13:28:42 2013
From: vrrm00 at gmail.com (Vr Rm)
Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2013 05:28:42 -0800
Subject: [Lisp-machine] MIT Lisp Machine documentation
Message-ID: <CAC2an7qhNvvn_9yaAHQR=9VDXmS22daSaLr-i5n=Yunkjx6LWw@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

(I guess this gets to be the first post on the list!)

Lately, I've been reading through Brad Parker's excellent Lisp Machine site:

http://www.unlambda.com

I even got the MIT CADR simulator working. *whew* In addition to the
runnable CADR code, I also noticed that all the source for the
original MIT Lisp system documentation was available.  One peculiar
thing about Lisp is that there're really no free comprehensive
documentation of the standard.  There are a number of excellent
programming books (arguably a few of them are the best programming
books ever written) available for download at no cost, but the
copyrights are withheld on those and they're not not up-to-date.  The
Lisp Works hyperspec is the most up-to-date, freely available
reference document I know of, but to be honest I find it extremely
cumbersome to use and often quit confusing. And again, it's not free
so it's not available in different formats and integration is
difficult in existing Lisp system.  None of the free Common Lisp
implementations I know of document the language itself only quirks of
the given implementation and platform specific extensions.

So, while it documents an extremely early version of Common Lisp, the
MIT Lisp Machine manual (called the Chinual) is the only free
reference work of Common Lisp I know of.  Like all of the subsequent
Symbolics documentation, it is a model of clarity and organisation, so
I don't think it's that far-fetched to think of using it as a basis
for a comprehensive, free Common Lisp reference work.

The extracted files can be found here on BitBucket:

https://bitbucket.org/vrrm/xoanon-doc (under the orig-mit-extract branch)



From hans.huebner at gmail.com  Mon Jan  7 14:03:09 2013
From: hans.huebner at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Hans_H=FCbner?=)
Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2013 15:03:09 +0100
Subject: [Lisp-machine] MIT Lisp Machine documentation
In-Reply-To: <CAC2an7qhNvvn_9yaAHQR=9VDXmS22daSaLr-i5n=Yunkjx6LWw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAC2an7qhNvvn_9yaAHQR=9VDXmS22daSaLr-i5n=Yunkjx6LWw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CABj0bwKLG8o9-2AiUEHxE-t+KuczNArFDOn1ew4g0RK_KZeM1Q@mail.gmail.com>

I have converted the Bolio sources for the Chinual to an (I think) more
useful XML format that would be a good basis for either editing or
conversion to another authoring format that could then be edited.  Find it
here:  https://github.com/hanshuebner/lmman

-Hans


On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 2:28 PM, Vr Rm <vrrm00 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> (I guess this gets to be the first post on the list!)
>
> Lately, I've been reading through Brad Parker's excellent Lisp Machine
> site:
>
> http://www.unlambda.com
>
> I even got the MIT CADR simulator working. *whew* In addition to the
> runnable CADR code, I also noticed that all the source for the
> original MIT Lisp system documentation was available.  One peculiar
> thing about Lisp is that there're really no free comprehensive
> documentation of the standard.  There are a number of excellent
> programming books (arguably a few of them are the best programming
> books ever written) available for download at no cost, but the
> copyrights are withheld on those and they're not not up-to-date.  The
> Lisp Works hyperspec is the most up-to-date, freely available
> reference document I know of, but to be honest I find it extremely
> cumbersome to use and often quit confusing. And again, it's not free
> so it's not available in different formats and integration is
> difficult in existing Lisp system.  None of the free Common Lisp
> implementations I know of document the language itself only quirks of
> the given implementation and platform specific extensions.
>
> So, while it documents an extremely early version of Common Lisp, the
> MIT Lisp Machine manual (called the Chinual) is the only free
> reference work of Common Lisp I know of.  Like all of the subsequent
> Symbolics documentation, it is a model of clarity and organisation, so
> I don't think it's that far-fetched to think of using it as a basis
> for a comprehensive, free Common Lisp reference work.
>
> The extracted files can be found here on BitBucket:
>
> https://bitbucket.org/vrrm/xoanon-doc (under the orig-mit-extract branch)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lisp-machine mailing list
> Lisp-machine at common-lisp.net
> http://lists.common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lisp-machine
>
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