Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has

PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last version
of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my Macintosh
Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which compound to make
usage very very painful:
- No way to abort from a loop except by pressing the COLD RESTART
button on the machine.
- Any program that writes too much text to the IDE window triggers
a bug that freezes the machine, which can be remedied only by
pressing the COLD RESTART button on the machine.
- Clover-S (shortcut for File > Save) to save your edit to the disk
FUCKING DOESN'T WORK!!! I lost several hours work when I used
clover-S to save my edit about every five minutes, then
encountered one of the conditions requiring COLD RESTART of the
system, whereupon I discovered that the "saved" file was still
in the same state it had been when I first started PowerLisp
hours before. Fortunately I was developing a very difficult
piece of code during that time, at a time I was just starting to
make good use of PowerLisp, so in all those hours I had only
finished writing one new function, which I had thought and
rethought many times to try to find a way it would work with
PowerLisp, so I was able to quickly re-create what had been lost
in about another half hour.
But anyway, not one of those times that I "saved my edit" did any
of my new code actually end up on the disk. Perhaps it saved it
to a buffer or something, intending to actually write to
physical disk upon exit from the program, but due to condition
requiring COLD RESTART the program was never exited normally so
the file never really got written.

So over a week or so I desperately needed *some* version of LIsp on
my Macintosh Performa 600 (System 7.5.5) to be of practical use,
switching back and forth between XLISP and PowerLisp to try to find
either usable, I finally made some progress with PowerLisp, and
abandoned XLISP forever. Then after losing hours of work several
times, I adopted a new strategy: It's just not worth using clover-S
to save PowerLisp's worksheet. Instead, copy everything I have
so-far over to a McSink edit and save *that* to disk, which really
and truly does write to disk immediately before returning control
to the user. Then when COLD RESTART is needed, all I've lost is
anything newer than the last McSink save. And in addition I've
managed (most of the time) to avoid anything that crashes PowerLisp
or hangs the system etc. requiring COLD RESTART in the first place.
Thursday I think I needed COLD RESTART just once or twice, and
Friday I didn't need it once all day.

So anyway what have I been doing useful with PowerLisp?
- Wrote a patch file that defined three important functions missing
from PowerLisp: REDUCE SLEEP and BREAK
- Converted 2005-7-ranpri-gp.lisp (formerly usable with CMUCL) to
PowerLisp. That's a module to deal with small prime numbers that
can be enumerated in an explicit list to make usage more
efficiently than large numbers that won't all fit in memory thus
must be re-generated on demand and discared when finished with
use.
- Converted 2005-8-readers.lisp (formerly usable with CMUCL) to
work in PowerLisp. That's a module to load five formats of file
into memory as a single "object": Whole file to one big US-ASCII
string, lines of file to list of US-ASCII strings, whole file
one big s-expression, file contains multiple s-expressions that
are loaded to a list, whole file as binary bytes loaded to list
which is then converted to array if desired.
- Wrote 2008-8-cols.lisp, which parses multi-column tabular layout
such as directory listing from FileList.
- Wrote 2008-8-fill.lisp which fills paragraph with prefix copied
to start of each line, essentially what the original EMACS at
MIT used to do.
- One standard usage copies the prefix from the first line. This is
useful for quoting what somebody said before you in a
discussion forum or e-mail. You may have seen me start using
this for newsgroup postings such as where I liberally used it
here:
<http://groups.google.com/group/alt.gossip.celebrities/msg/3c914c5b6ce449ab?hl=en&dmode=source>
= Message-ID: <rem-2008aug07-004@yahoo.com>
- Another standard usage copies the whitespace indentation from
the second line. This is useful for emulating the indentation
of HTML list items (bullet points) in lynx, or prettyprinting
text inside parenthesized expressions. I used it to format all
the bullet points in *this* article, and to prettyprint a
parenthetical expression elsewhere. I used to manually
prettyprint parenthesised expressions, but it's so much easier
and faster with this new tool!

So is anybody curious to see the paragraph-fill with prefix as a CGI demo?

For example, with this as input:

(input-find-prefix-refill-output 42)
Pascal> For example, the soviets didn't line [typo for "like"?] binary
because it was invented by capitalist dogs. So they built a
computer that worked in ternary. +12V, ~0V, -12V.

the output would be:

Pascal> For example, the soviets didn't
Pascal> line [typo for "like"?] binary
Pascal> because it was invented by
Pascal> capitalist dogs. So they built a
Pascal> computer that worked in ternary.
Pascal> +12V, ~0V, -12V.

And with this as input:

(input-find-second-line-indent-refill-output 78)
SENDER AGREEMENT - By clicking the "VERIFY" button above, and in
consideration for Spam Arrest,
LLC forwarding your e-mail (and any
e-mails you may send in the future) to the intended recipient (the
"Recipient"), you agree to be bound by the following Sender Agreement:
You represent and warrant to Spam Arrest and the Recipient that any
e-mail you desire to send to the Recipient is not "unsolicited
commercial e-mail" i.e., the e-mail does not primarily contain an
advertisement or promotion of a commercial product, service or Web
site; unless the Recipient expressly consented to receive the message,
either in response to a clear and conspicuous request for such consent
or at the Recipient's own initiative.

the output would be:

SENDER AGREEMENT - By clicking the "VERIFY" button above, and in consideration
for Spam Arrest, LLC forwarding your e-mail (and any
e-mails you may send in the future) to the intended
recipient (the "Recipient"), you agree to be bound by the
following Sender Agreement: You represent and warrant to
Spam Arrest and the Recipient that any e-mail you desire to
send to the Recipient is not "unsolicited commercial
e-mail" i.e., the e-mail does not primarily contain an
advertisement or promotion of a commercial product, service
or Web site; unless the Recipient expressly consented to
receive the message, either in response to a clear and
conspicuous request for such consent or at the Recipient's
own initiative.

Or maybe you'd like to play with a CGI demo of any of the other
software modules I've written in recent years?
<http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/WAP/SeekJobAccom.html>

On Aug 9, 12:33*pm, jaycx2.3.calrob...@spamgourmet.com.remove (Robert
Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last version
> of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my Macintosh
> Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which compound to make
> usage very very painful:

You continue to surprise and amaze us with your choice of tools.
Bravo! Engineering this is not ... but art!

REM> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last
REM> version of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my
REM> Macintosh Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which
REM> compound to make usage very very painful:

TFB> You continue to surprise and amaze us with your choice of
TFB> tools. Bravo! Engineering this is not ... but art!

Is that supposed to be satirical or something like that? Most of
the time it's just fine to have to upload everything to my Unix
shell account, have CMUCL process the data, then download it back
to my Macintosh. But for some tasks I really would prefer to be
able to run the data-processing application directly on my
Macintosh. I have only the following software development systems
available here on the Mac:
- HyperCard (with HyperTalk scripting)
- Pocket Forth
- Sesame C (doesn't support arrays or structs or malloc or floats)
- XLISP 2.1g (doesn't support bignums, missing most of CLtL,
application unexpectedly quit with error number <n> very frequently)
- PowerLisp 2.01 68k (includes most of CLtL, has those bugs I mentionned)
Would you recommend that I choose something different from
PowerLisp for applications that require lots of nested-list
management? Really I tried in XLISP to implement BIGNUMs as lists
of bytes with my own algorithms for addition and multiplication,
but it was horribly slow, and still it'd unexpectedly quit about
every half hour.

Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t wrote:
> REM> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last
> REM> version of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my
> REM> Macintosh Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which
> REM> compound to make usage very very painful:
>
> TFB> You continue to surprise and amaze us with your choice of
> TFB> tools. Bravo! Engineering this is not ... but art!
>
> Is that supposed to be satirical or something like that? Most of
> the time it's just fine to have to upload everything to my Unix
> shell account, have CMUCL process the data, then download it back
> to my Macintosh. But for some tasks I really would prefer to be
> able to run the data-processing application directly on my
> Macintosh. I have only the following software development systems
> available here on the Mac:
> - HyperCard (with HyperTalk scripting)
> - Pocket Forth
> - Sesame C (doesn't support arrays or structs or malloc or floats)
> - XLISP 2.1g (doesn't support bignums, missing most of CLtL,
> application unexpectedly quit with error number <n> very frequently)
> - PowerLisp 2.01 68k (includes most of CLtL, has those bugs I mentionned)
> Would you recommend that I choose something different from
> PowerLisp for applications that require lots of nested-list
> management? Really I tried in XLISP to implement BIGNUMs as lists
> of bytes with my own algorithms for addition and multiplication,
> but it was horribly slow, and still it'd unexpectedly quit about
> every half hour.

I would recommend picking up a free as in on the sidewalk PC and
installing Linux and CLisp and SBCL and yadda yadda. Lots of us have old
systems just sitting around that would have to be pretty old to lose out
to a Performa.

kt


--

$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/

On Aug 10, 1:00*am, jaycx2.3.calrob...@spamgourmet.com.remove (Robert
Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
> REM> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last
> REM> version of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my
> REM> Macintosh Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which
> REM> compound to make usage very very painful:
>
> TFB> You continue to surprise and amaze us with your choice of
> TFB> tools. Bravo! Engineering this is not ... but art!
>
> Is that supposed to be satirical or something like that?

Sarcastic, yes. You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
why it Cannot Possibly Work.

You live in the Bay Area. You can get a junker computer that is 1000x
better than your current for free, or the cost/trouble of taking
public transit. If you have anything at all to barter you can get an
even better one thanks to the wonder that is Craigslist. If you wanted
to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL. I'm sure you
won't, and no I don't want to hear the why.

(Okay, I admit to a perverse curiosity, but I won't help)

Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t a man with no life wrote:

a lot of stupid things.

Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
> about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
> you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
> why it Cannot Possibly Work.

Yes, it is almost like a video game, but in classroom discipline one of
the tricks is to catch the chronic troublemaker doing something good and
reinforce. My theory is that the long days have energized our Eeyore
as they have me, and we must build whatever momentum we can in the man
before the long winter nights return.

Just yesterday evening I noticed it was dark and my heart sank, for I
remember 8:45pm as about the last pitch of the nightly pickup softball
games of my first youth and that we knew it was time to go home when a
fly ball to the outfielder went unseen. I digress.

If we have lost almost an hour, given the rule of twelve things will
unravel degrade quickly now...it is time to act!


" the wonder that is Craigslist."

That is the second recommendation of CL I heard this week. I should
loiter there, it seems.



> If you wanted
> to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL.

I believe I have three licensed MCL4.3 CDs I do not need.

kt


--

$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/

scholz.lothar@gmail.com wrote:
> Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t a man with no life wrote:
>
> a lot of stupid things.

The self-reference objection prevents me from responding.

(Yes, this has been a responsive non-response.)



kenny

--

$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/

Kenny wrote:
> Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
>> You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
>> about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
>> you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
>> why it Cannot Possibly Work.
>
> Yes, it is almost like a video game, but in classroom discipline one of
> the tricks is to catch the chronic troublemaker doing something good and
> reinforce. My theory is that the long days have energized our Eeyore as
> they have me, and we must build whatever momentum we can in the man
> before the long winter nights return.
>
> Just yesterday evening I noticed it was dark ...

oops. insert "at 8pm".

> ...and my heart sank, for I
> remember 8:45pm as about the last pitch of the nightly pickup softball
> games of my first youth and that we knew it was time to go home when a
> fly ball to the outfielder went unseen. I digress.
>
> If we have lost almost an hour, given the rule of twelve things will
> unravel degrade quickly now...it is time to act!
>
>
> " the wonder that is Craigslist."
>
> That is the second recommendation of CL I heard this week. I should
> loiter there, it seems.
>
>
>
>> If you wanted
>> to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL.
>
> I believe I have three licensed MCL4.3 CDs I do not need.
>
> kt
>
>


--

$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/

I remember I managed to start PowerLisp inside the BasiliskII ( a Mac
emulator for Linux), which will give you many more CPU clock cycles
than a real Mac inspite the emulation overhead.
WARNING: I remember there is a more severe bug in PowerLisp, in that
it treats all variables as dynamic. So beware: not standard-compliant.
I would like to have your code for sleep, tec. Is it free softw.?
Could you email it to me?