Brian Mastenbrook: Old News

An interesting side note: the Xerox Lisp Emulator - an emulator developed by Xerox for their Interlisp machines - is included as part of the Grammars Writer Workbench. I still have a set of Medley Lisp floppies lying around at home - and two Xerox Lisp machines sitting in the corner. Nice devices with a neat graphical system. Ok, far from the performance of a Symbolics, but since they were my first Lisp machines, I like them anyway somehow.

Included with the Xerox files are emulators for DOS, Linux, SunOS and Solaris. So I might have a chance to get my old Medley Sysouts running on Linux.

Somewhere in there is also the Medley Common Lisp - so not just the Interlisp-D, which is somewhat archaic compared to more modern Lisps (for example, it only has dynamic scope). However, I would first need to dust off my old Interlisp-D knowledge to figure out how to open a Common Lisp listener on the machine again, if it's not in the root menu...

I found the original article at Planet Lisp.

ReportLab - PyRXP - Very fast validating XML parser for Python - built on RXP

GNU Development Tools for the Renesas H8/300[HS] Series - Documentation on how to build a cross-compiler for the RCX

Lego-Mindstorms Simulator - Simulation of LeJOS programmed RCXs in Java

Another Update: how to get rcxcomm working with OS X 10.2

The problem with the rcxcomm stuff under 10.2 is that the headers from the JNI under 10.2 have incorrect links and therefore don't work. To fix it, you simply need to add to the line in lejos_2_1_0/rcxcomm/src/Makefile where CCOPT is defined:

 CCOPT = -g -O ${JNILIB_TYPE} -framework IOKit -framework CoreFoundation -I/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Headers -I/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.3.1/Headers

The latter part is the new one - I simply added the correct include path and then it finds jni.h. And it can compile. However, I haven't tested yet whether the whole thing actually works.

The leJOS Tutorial

Anyone who wants to see what's possible with LeJOS can have it demonstrated in this tutorial. Since the LeJOS documentation itself is limited to the API, this tutorial is all the more important. After all, the demo robots supplied with LeJOS are also quite sparse ...

Here's the original article.

XS: Lisp on Lego MindStorms

Cool - a complete Lisp that runs directly on the RCX. Perfect for the holiday season.

Unfortunately no OS X version, only something for Windows or Linux - and the latter only for the serial tower. Let me see if I can get something working for OS X with the USB tower. I also stumbled upon TinySOAR, a complete AI Agent Runtime for the Mindstorms RCX brick. Also very interesting - and hopefully also runnable on OS X through its embedding in TCL. And also new to me is the Java VM for the RCX: LeJOS. I don't like Java much, but it's definitely interesting for the RCX. And the oldy-but-goldy: LegOS, the complete operating system for the RCX written in C. However, due to its rather hefty toolchain (a complete GCC configured as a cross-compiler), it's somewhat tricky to install. Besides, it's now called BrickOS and is incidentally also under the Lisp as runtime. Here's the original article.

GadflyB5: SQL Relational Database in Python - 100% pure Python SQL database

Barebones pure-Python PostgreSQL client - PostgreSQL client in pure Python - no C compiler required, therefore very portable, but also less feature-rich

REgurgitate - Example of how to tokenize Python code and rebuild it

StupidSheet - Another example for tokenize - a small pure-Python spreadsheet

gb - CIA

A fascinating project, the CIA Open Source Notification System. You stick a small script into your CVS and it diligently logs, saves, and distributes every commit. There are RSS feeds for every view and contrary to many other projects that aggregate some large amounts of data, this one is also blazingly fast. By the way, the title links to my user and shows my three projects being monitored there. So if you're curious what I'm currently breaking, you can subscribe to the appropriate RSS feed.

Here's the original article.

Languages for the Java VM

For those interested in what programming languages are available on the JVM - yes, there are far more than just Java. And many of them are far more interesting than Java. And many integrate very well with Java libraries. In any case, Robert Tolksdorf has started building such a list here. I have no idea if it's complete, but the selection is enough for me ...

(although of course I'm biased and would only take either a Lisp dialect or Jython anyway)

Here you can find the original article.

PyX - Python graphics package - Generate 2D and 3D graphics suitable for presentations in Python

Bill Clementson: LispWorks 4.4 released

Looking at how the LispWorks implementation — originally actually foreign to OS X — is gaining ground on OS X (the previous version already ran cleanly under OS X, but this one has made further progress), one can clearly see how the distributor of the originally and still macOS native MCL implementation is failing in the market. You can't really put it more positively — MCL is in my opinion to be regarded as a debacle these days. At least the biggest news on their websites for 2004 is from the summer — that they got their mailing list running again. Great. MCL was once the star in the Lisp sky. At Planet Lisp you can find the original article.

Durus - Compact object database for Python - fast, but designed for read-heavy systems

Statement coverage for Python - Primitive code coverage analysis for Python

IPython - An enhanced Interactive Python

I had already written something about this earlier, but I've only been using it more intensively now. I have to say, the whole thing has developed tremendously. With a few settings in the system and in IPython, the whole system behaves almost as comfortably as a Lisp system prompt.

The integration of display system (on OS X it's recommended to set LESS to '-R' so that color information is evaluated) and editor (of course using VIM is recommended, but it also works quite well with the bbedit command line tool) allows you to work very nicely with the Python shell. On one hand, you don't have to constantly step out to quickly look at files or change a file, and on the other hand, you really get useful information with exceptions (the automatic activation of the debugger helps here).

Automatic deep-reloading too — that is, reloading a modified module while updating the contained references — helps tremendously, since you can finally edit the files directly and test them immediately without having to exit Python every time. Existing references to objects from classes that are in the modified file of course have to be rebuilt as well, since they still reference the old class.

All in all: highly recommended.

Here you can find the original article.

Logix Home

A very interesting project: building a language with a far more Lisp-like structure on top of the normal Python runtime. Compiles to the same bytecode as Python. Can be mixed with Python and also supports IPython as a shell.

With Logix, for example, the boundary between statement and expression finally falls away: in Logix everything is expressions. Lambda expressions that execute multiple commands and conditional expressions without detours through boolean expressions become possible.

There are also macros. The definition looks somewhat wild, but all the mechanisms seem to be there as they are also common in Common Lisp. So not just syntactic sugar, but real code-generating macros.

Of course everything is still alpha at the moment, but it already sounds very interesting. I'll keep watching this, it could definitely be interesting for me. Especially because I can mix it with Python.

Here's the original article.

xmltramp: Make XML documents easily accessible. - small compact XML parser and generator library for Python - nicely integrated into the syntax

RDFLib 2.0.4 Readme - Library for working with RDF in Python

A Lisp Comic That Explains Macros

Nice Thing - an explanation of Lisp macros for beginners. In the form of a comic. Macros are called - fittingly for the topic - SPELs.

Here's the original article.

Once Something Against the XML Hype

YAML is a very interesting and compact markup language. But one that is not based on XML or SGML; rather, it is principally oriented toward the old RFC mail formats. The genius of it: the contents are much easier for humans to read than all those angle-bracket dialects. And for the computer, the whole thing is also quite simple to parse - and it's still powerful in its expressive capabilities. If you feel like processing YAML files with Python, Syck is an extremely fast library that also offers an interface for Python. In the Active Storage Framework for Python I use YAML for database backup and restore and as a native data format. Importing YAML data into the database is thus very easy - and since YAML is hierarchical data and the Active Storage Framework for Python is a hierarchical database, everything fits together wonderfully. And you don't have to be afraid of hurting yourself on all those angle brackets.

Here's the original article.

Language-Independent Types for YAML - type tags for YAML sources

ASPN : Python Cookbook : Spreadsheet - a few ideas for controlled eval in Python

Living Code

A weblog from someone who programs in Python, PyGame and PyObjc under OS X (with Renaissance as a GUI system). With complete example applications available for download. If you want to take a closer look at something like this, you might find one or another piece of information there.

Here you can find the original article.

Renaissance - GNUStep GUI description language and library also for OS X Cocoa

Pyco - Tiny Python Distributions - build small Windows EXEs from Python tools.

Lasso - Souk - Python module for integration of the Liberty Alliance Single Signon Protocol.

Module Pycaml

Interesting project: someone has written a reimplementation of the Python/C API for OCaml (of course the native-code compiler, not the bytecode interpreter). This makes it possible to do the following things:

• Write Python extension libraries in OCaml
• Use Python-C extension libraries in OCaml
• Use Python modules in OCaml (generally use the Python interpreter in OCaml)
• Use the Python toplevel for OCaml

It all sounds very exciting and could be very interesting for some applications - OCaml produces very fast code and can easily compete with C in this area. Especially for implementing the parts of code that are too slow in Python, OCaml is of course much more interesting than C because of its significantly better type safety.

Here's the original article.

Python 2.4

Now it's out.

Here you can find the original article.

Python Packages Index: pyDB2 0.996a - DB/2 API for Python - need that at work

Fangs: The Firefox Screen Reader Emulator Extension - Standards-schmandards

A screen reader emulator for Firefox. So you can see how your own pages would come across in a screen reader.

Here's the original article.

tsearch-v2-intro - Introduction to tsearch2 - a full-text index technique for PostgreSQL

Tsearch2 - full text extension for PostgreSQL - Further documentation on tsearch2

Yet another Project in Python

If you've taken a closer look at the Toolserver, you may have already suspected that I want to do more with it. A second project that I started a few days ago will serve the same purpose. Active Storage Framework for Python is a Python framework for putting data into databases. However, not one of the usual object-relational mappers, but its own database structure that simply misuses a SQL database underneath as a data storage — I didn't want to reinvent everything. The ideas of the Active Storage Framework for Python come from Userland Frontier and Mumps — so a hierarchical namespace in which all elements are automatically persistent and in which many object types are mapped as tables (similar to Frontier). The whole thing uses pretty much every introspection feature of Python that I know. Ok, there are some programs from me that use even nastier methods, but sometimes I'm ashamed of the particular hacks there — what I've done here is considerably cleaner. Mainly getattr and friends. Though taken to excess. As a starting point for the Active Storage Framework for Python, the README is a good choice. If you want to try it out: PostgreSQL and psycopg must be installed. Otherwise you just need a database and you can get started. The Active Storage Framework for Python creates the database schema automatically. At the moment it's only available in CVS, since I'm currently — it's still 0.1.0 — tinkering wildly with it. Interfaces and data structures can still change significantly.

Here you can find the original article.

Toolserver Framework for Python - Slides

Anyone interested in the project Toolserver Framework for Python - a server written in Python that makes creating web services simple and convenient - can take a look at the presentation I recently gave to colleagues about it. To view the presentation, you need a reasonably current browser that supports and has JavaScript and CSS enabled. Yes, even the devil's tool works with it.

If the slides seem too vague without my commentary, you can simply print the presentation in your browser. This pulls a different CSS stylesheet and the printout includes supplementary explanations. Basically what I talked about. The presentation system used is actually quite clever - it's S5 by Eric Meyer. Practically perfect for quickly putting together presentations with notes and publishing them on the web. And I still prefer vi to PowerPoint. Here's the original article.

SimpleTAL - standalone TAL and METAL implementation

Digital Lumber, Inc. - A complete nameserver in Python

Patents Should Meet BASIC Tests of Reason

Ouch. A couple of employees from the Microsoft Visual Basic Team apparently filed a patent on the IsNot operator - yes, something like a "not equal to", but for object references instead of values - what a bunch of nonsense. And cheekily, they also claim in their application that Borland Delphi is a Basic derivative — while ignoring the fact that Delphi is Pascal, which has a quite different history...

The whole thing has the feel of a joke, but unfortunately it appears to be true.

Here's the original article.

pyeBay - Use the eBay API from Python - Python API für eBay

Python IAQ: Infrequently Answered Questions - Partly witty, partly serious answers to not entirely obvious questions about Python

Slate Language Website

More interesting is actually Slate. On the one hand, the implementation is freely available to play around with, and on the other hand, the language at least came into the world with a concept - Smalltalk with multimethod dispatch à la CLOS and a prototype-based object system à la Self. All of it, though, in classic Smalltalk syntax. That's at least a vision - let's do what Common Lisp has been able to do for a long time, but in Smalltalk.

But then I still ask myself why not just use Common Lisp, where you'd simply have to build the prototype-based object system as a package, but macros, multimethod dispatch and other fun stuff are already done? Programming language designers are masochists

Here's the original article.

The Curl Project

And since we're on a roll beating up on stupid programming languages: MIT wasn't really any better either. They replaced the round brackets with curly ones. Great. Not much better than angle brackets, and the commercial exploitation of this grandiose idea was promptly taken over by a company.

But since this is MIT, of course they went two steps further and wanted to basically understand it as a new markup system. So to speak, as an alternative to HTML.

And because you can only make waves at MIT if you're truly crazy, the whole thing ended up being not just an object-oriented Scheme where you replaced the round brackets with curly brackets - no, they also threw in a box model from TeX for layouting.

Hurrah. We needed that. Not.

Here's the original article.

Water -- Waterlanguage.org

Translation

Yet another programming language that nobody really needs. In principle, it's based on a Lisp that works with XML syntax instead of S-expressions (those wild bracket expressions that Lispers love so much and everyone else hates). Angle brackets instead of parentheses - what a tremendous improvement.

And to top it all off, it's also a proprietary project. And written in Java. Wow, Java must be really sick if it's coming up with such sick solutions.

The same thing can be done better and more elegantly with various free Lisp projects - and you can stick with the round brackets too.

Here's the original article.

Welcome to read4me project page - RSS Reader in Python with Bayesian Filter

wxPython and wxGlade Tutorial - Tutorial on wxPython and wxGlade

2Entwine | FotoBuzz Viewlet - Javascript+Flash for presenting images with in-image commenting

ONLamp.com: Introducing Slony - Slony is an asynchronous replication solution for PostgreSQL

What's New in Python 2.4

Who wants to know what comes with Python 2.4, Andrew Kuchling has as usual produced a good overview. A few things are really interesting - I particularly like the generator expressions. But then again, I'm an old Lisperer.

Also nice is the Decimal data type - it will solve some problems at the company much more elegantly than they are approached today. And higher performance is certainly good too.

Here's the original article.