The initial Interlisp code of WebCard, my RetroChallenge 2024 project, defines the new type "Web" of NoteCards card. It's the first step for extending NoteCards to visit websites. The main code is in the function WCD.CreateWebCardType, a thin wrapper around the NoteCards API fun … | Continue reading
Now that I entered the RetroChallenge 2024 the next step is to flesh out the scope and details of my WebCard project, a NoteCards extension for visiting websites. What will WebCard do? How will it work? Specification In NoteCards the area of a card or filebox that makes up a li … | Continue reading
Team Lisp is ready to play: I'm entering the RetroChallenge 2024 (RC2024) with a NoteCards project targeting Medley Interlisp. The RC2024 announcement explains the point of the challenge is to do something new, learn, and have fun with retro systems: In a nutshell, the RetroC … | Continue reading
I'm examining in depth NoteCards, the hypermedia environment of Medley Interlisp well described in the 1987 paper NoteCards in a Nutshell. To experiment with the NoteCards API I set out to explore the space of possible answers to the question: what if Lisp programs were represen … | Continue reading
Although online access to Medley Interlisp is convenient and prebuilt binaries are available for all major operating system, it's also possible to compile it from source. I first built Medley from source when I wanted to run it on my Raspberry Pi 400 and no ARM64 binaries were a … | Continue reading
I upgraded my System76 Merkaat mini PC from Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon to Mint 22 "Wilma". It didn't go as hoped but some extra effort eventually made Mint 22 run fine. I began by starting the upgrade process from Mint 21.3. I didn't get a good feel for the upgrade tool, with a c … | Continue reading
I'm writing this on my new desktop computer. It's a Linux system I chose after deciding to migrate from ChromeOS back to Linux: a System76 Merkaat short case mini PC with a 5 GHz 13th gen Intel Core i7 processor, Intel Iris Xe graphics, 32 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD, 2.5 G Ethernet, and … | Continue reading
I'm going back to Linux after nine years of ChromeOS. In 2015 I had been using Linux for a couple of decades. Exasperated by the frequent maintenance issues, that year I migrated to ChromeOS. I was living in the browser anyway and ChromeOS seemed like a stable alternative, so I … | Continue reading
I implemented the last features originally planned for Insphex, my hex dump tool in Common Lisp for Medley Interlisp. The first new feature is an Exec command for invoking the program. The command HD works the same way as the function INSPHEX:HEXDUMP and accepts the same argumen … | Continue reading
I added a GUI to Insphex, the hex dump tool I'm writing in Common Lisp on the Medley Interlisp environment. The initial version printed the hex dump only to the standard output, now optionally to a separate TEdit window with a command menu. The menu has items for displaying the … | Continue reading
I'm developing the new program Insphex (inspect hex), a hex dump tool that is created with and runs on the Medley Interlisp environment. Similarly to the Linux command hexdump, it shows the contents of files as hexadecimal values and the corresponding ASCII characters. An early … | Continue reading
When the Medley Interlisp Project began reviving the system around 2020, its Common Lisp implementation was in the state it had when commercial development petered off in the 1990s, mostly prior to the ANSI standard. Back then Medley Common Lisp mostly supported CLtL1 plus CLOS … | Continue reading
I read the book Recursion via Pascal by Jeffrey S. Rohl, Cambridge University Press, 1984. I discovered this rare, little known gem by chance and, although it's available online, I also bought a cheap printed copy. The book Recursion via Pascal. What makes this short book so in … | Continue reading
I finally fixed a longstanding duplicate definitions issue with Femtounit, my Interlisp unit test framework. Femtounit creates a new File Manager type for unit tests, TESTS. DEFTEST, which defines a test, adds an entry of type TESTS and expands into an internal function that car … | Continue reading
I shut down Free Python Books, the list of Python books that are free to read online or download I had been maintaining since 2019. I archived the project's GitHub repo, which is now read-only and no longer accepts contributions. If you're interested you're welcome to fork the r … | Continue reading
I got a cheap used copy of the book A Programmer's Guide to COMMON LISP by Deborah G. Tatar, Digital Press, 1987. The book A Programmer's Guide to COMMON LISP by Deborah G. Why did I read such an old book, published a few years after CLtL1 and well before ANSI finalized the Com … | Continue reading
Medley is a rich development environment but it's missing a test framework. Or so I thought. To fill the supposed gap I wrote Femtounit, ... | Continue reading