two co-existing projects

[Andreas Eder]

Alexey Goldin <goldin@spot.uchicago.edu> writes:
>Forgive me my ignorance. I am watching this discussion with
>fascination but there are a lot of thing I do not understand. I am not
>a computer scientist but just a physics graduate student. In relation
>to Lisp --- I am just a satisfied customer. Could anyone explain me
>what VM is good for? Is it just a tribute to Java hype? 

I guess that is just so!

>What I would like is the Lisp enviroment, compilation to native code
>(fast code! ), persistent object storage, consistent and simple
>graphics. I would like to be able to use existing emacs

Right, mee too. Except that we could use hemlock which comes with
CMUCL. Maybe we could write a translator from elisp to Common Lisp;
that would give us the big elisp library in Common Lisp.

>but I would need to be able to call libraries written in Fortran/C/C++
>(unless someone rewrites LAPACK in LISP --- I doubt it will happen).

I opt for rewriting LAPACK (and other libs like QUADPACK) in
Lisp. Let's show them how powerful and fast Lisp can be. This would
make it possible to integrate that numerical libraries and symbolic
libraries like mma (from R. Fateman) into a powerful scientific
workstation. Throw in a TeX in Lisp system - what else do you want?
I certainly would be glad to work in a port of LAPACK to Lisp. That's
just what I pondered over last week, before this thread about a LispOS
started.

> Running existing Unix stuff would be useful --- there is a lot of good stuff
>that will be difficult to rewrite from the scratch.

If we support X, then at least we can use that stuff running on a
different server in the net. That would at least be a start, before we
come around to a port of all that.

-- 
Andreas Eder			NetWorker (ReliantUnix)
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Is "Windows for Dummies" another case of "this sentence no verb?"