[Axiom-developer] XGCL

[Gordon Shaw Novak]

Camm,

I have updated the XGCL files.  You should take the files you have
in xgcl-2/ and then get all the files in ftp.cs.utexas.edu
/pub/novak/xgcl-4/ which will over-ride some files and add others.

I looked at the code that includes X10.h; ultimately it looks like
this was never used, so I deleted it.  This is done in new versions
of gcl_general.lsp and general-c.c .

I think you know a lot more than I do about the issues of how to
include XGCL within GCL and compile it.  The way it is done now was
set up by William Schelter.  Anything that is reasonable and works
is okay with me.

As for autoloading, you could use your judgment there.  I don't mind
explicitly loading something.  The XGCL code is not too big, so it
could just be included with GCL if you want.  The thing that is big
is the Xlib; if that is a shared library, it might not be much addition.
On my machine saved_gcl* is 8575667 and saved_xgcl* is 9925314 or +16%.
In the "good old days" 10MB was a lot, but now it is 1% of a PC.

I changed dwtrans.lsp to export symbols.  This should allow users to
just say (use-package 'xlib) and get the symbols that way.  Most of
the symbols are long hyphenated names that should not conflict with
any user symbols, the possible exceptions being MENU, WINDOW, and
STRINGIFY; only STRINGIFY is a function.

The remaining symbols in the file dwimportsb.lsp include some
symbols that might duplicate user symbols, but nobody should need to
load this file except for me when compiling dwindow.lsp .

I updated the documentation dwdoc.tex a bit, including some on the
color editor and Emacs-like editor.  I also put in pointers to my
web site for examples and for pages on how to use this interface
to have an interactive graphical interface to Lisp within a web page.
I converted the dwdoc.tex documentation into .dvi, .ps, .pdf, and .html
versions.

I was able to compile GCL and XGCL last week, but not this week; it
got the following error:
   /usr/lib/libbfd.a(cache.o): In function `bfd_open_file':
   ../../bfd/cache.c:440: undefined reference to `unlink_if_ordinary'
Kay said:
>Does your build really want the staticly linked library?  I would use 
>the shared library if possible.  
The build that did not work is /p/src/gcl-2.6.8pre/
The one that worked is /p/src/gcl-2.6.8prea/

I tested by running the /p/src/gcl-2.6.8prea/unixport/saved_xgcl
and loading my new dwtrans.lsp on top of it.  The file dwtestcases.lsp
has some test cases.

You might try including my /xgcl-4/ files in your build, and we can
see if it works okay.  I will repeat it here as soon as whatever the
compile problem is gets fixed.

This is a bit off the subject, but I wonder if it would be good to
make a WHILE macro part of GCL.  Allegro CL has WHILE (and gives an
error if you try to redefine it), making a bit of a compatibility
problem between GCL and ACL.  Here is the definition I use:
(defmacro while (test &rest forms) `(loop (unless ,test (return)) ,@forms) )

Many thanks for your help with XGCL.
Best regards, Gordon