[Lisp-machine] MIT Lisp Machine documentation

[Vr Rm]

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)