Mailing list problems?

[Jordan Henderson]

kelly edward murray writes:
> Let me suggest this:  For a LispOS to actually be created and used,
> lots of applications written in C today will have to be written in Lisp.
> Therefore, people can help a whole lot by simply picking just about any
> application that isn't written in Lisp today, and write a version
> of it in Lisp.
> About the only thing that must be decided is which base
> language to use, and it seems most agree Common Lisp is best,
> however, something written in Scheme instead would be better
> than nothing, or something written in C.
> 
> This work is mostly independent of which kernel, which hardware,
> which persistent store, etc, is ultimately used.
> Just try to modularize the code as much as possible.
> 
> Given these apps exist, they can be "ported" to whatever ends
> up getting created.  It will certainly be helpful for my SilkMachine.
> 
> So let's change the subject from all the kernel-level issues,
> and let's produce a list of applications that
> would be useful to have, and we can discuss if they are useful,
> and once we get a list of them, people can pick out one they
> will be responsible for implementing.
> 
> Is this a good idea?
> 

I think this is a great idea.

I hope I don't open up a big can of worms here, but if people 
pick the typical Unix-like fileutils to work on I recommend
recasting them in a functional style.  This would be helped by
having a standard set of conventions for generators.  Is the
work done for scsh pertinent here?   I'm on shakey ground here,
but I understand that the scsh people did a lot of good work
mapping the Unix environment into a functional style.  Even
if we eventually reject many Unix paradigms, doing something
like (or just using) scsh might be a good place to start.

I would hate to have a set of ported Unix utilities that are
just written in Lisp rather than C.

OK, what _are_ some utilities needed to support development?  
Source code control?  Make?  An editor (Hemlock?).

Some productivity tools?  A calendar, calculator, spreadsheet?

I could keep track of who is working on what at 
http://www.neosoft.com/~jordan/LispersAnonymous.

> -kelly edward murray
> 

-Jordan Henderson
jordan@neosoft.com