Subject: Re: kinds of clisp applications

From: Rainer Joswig <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 02:58:04 +0200

At 16:36 Uhr -0700 16.10.1998, Bruno Haible wrote:

>How about you? Please reply to [email-masked].

We were running for quite some time a telephone log accounting
software with CLisp, parsing the logs of our 60 channel ISDN
telephone system, sending daily summaries and creating
monthly cost sums for billing our customers. Currently it runs
on another Lisp (this has nothing to do with the
quality of CLisp, though).

I think some logs of a Radius authentication server for our
Ascend remote access equipment will be nightly parsed,
checked and summarized by a CLisp program. Should also
give a usage overview. Some other code is running
on a Lisp machine.

A student is currently working on a program controlling the
temperature in our server room and inside some machines
(fan failures!). A CLisp program will send daily temperature
overviews and will report in 15 minute intervals problematic
conditions.

Sure some more... We are using CLisp on Solaris (SPARC and x86).

Our experiences: does its work very effectively - has replaced
scripting languages like SCSH - a bit weak on the environment/UI
side - more complete ANSI compliance would make sharing
code with other Lisps easier.

Thanks to the developers and maintainers!

Rainer Joswig

Rainer Joswig, Lavielle EDV Systemberatung GmbH & Co, Lotharstrasse 2b, D22041
Hamburg, Tel: +49 40 658088, Fax: +49 40 65808-202,
Email: [email-masked] , WWW: http://www.lavielle.com/~joswig/

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From: Erann Gat <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 10:42:33 -0700 (PDT)

> What is CLISP being used for? I'd be interested to hear from as many of
> you as possible, what you are doing in CLISP. For example,
> 
>    - Erann Gat and his team uses/used it as 2nd choice for the NASA Millenium
>      Space Flight. (The first choice being Harlequin CL.)

An overview of this project (an autonomous control system called Remote
Agent) can be found in the Sept/Oct '98 issue of IEEE Intelligent Systems
Magazine.  We haven't published anything about software engineering issues
or the use of Lisp per se.  Lisp is still a political hot potato at NASA
so we're trying not to make a big deal out of it.

The Harlequin Lispworks implementation of the Remote Agent is being
evaluated by several other NASA projects, so far with positive results.

Erann Gat
[email-masked]

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From: Matthias Lindner <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 17:45:21 +0200 (MEST)

Bruno Haible wrote:
 > you as possible, what you are doing in CLISP. 

The first thing I did with CLISP was 'classic' AI research: Plopp! a
planner for office procedures. That's where WITH-WISH came from.

Last year I implemented an application that supports the production
process of the new Wayfinding and Information System of Deutsche Bahn
AG. Architects specify contents of information signs, relations
between signs (i.e. sign groups)  and architectural constraints. Based
on this information the systems generates sign layouts that are used
by the sign producers to control the CNC machines that cut slides for
the signs. The system guarantees that all layout rules
specified by the designers of the new Wayfinding System are obeyed.
The need for this kind of system arose as Deutsche Bahn AG currently
renovates about 6500 railway stations in Germany and it was impossible 
to layout all signs by hand *and* to guarantee a consistent use of the
design rules.

The system consists of a server, implemented in CLISP, that is
connected via FFI to a relational database, a pixmap drawing module
and a TCP/IP module. Clients connect via TCP/IP to this server either
by launching a special Tcl/Tk GUI or a WEB browser. 
They can create stations, insert signs and groups of signs, preview the
layout, print station catalogs or produce sign production layouts.

The use of COMMON LISP and of CLISP in particular was the critical
decision that enabled me to implement this complex 'real world'
application within a relatively short time.

So, if you ever come to one of the renovated railway stations in
Germany and see one of the shiny new white-on-blue or blue-on-orange
signs, remember it was CLISP that made them!
(But if you lose your way or if you do not like the design of the
signs you can't put the blame on CLISP! ;-) )

--Matthias

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matthias Lindner, Wilhelm-Leuschner-Str.46, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany
Tel.: +49 6151 22071, E-Mail: [email-masked]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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From: Joachim Schrod <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 17:01:35 +0100

>>>>> "BH" == Bruno Haible <[email-masked]> writes:

BH> What is CLISP being used for?

Some of our projects:

xindy, a next-generation index processor, is written in CLISP. (Note
that this is an index processor, not an indexing system.)

http://www.iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de/xindy/ has more information.

xindy is actively developped. It is one of the projects that try to
push out a Lisp-based systems to the `masses' who are not interested
in Lisp at all. An interesting part problem is the creation of a
reasonably good source distribution. (Distribution and documentation
structure are currently one of our greatest hurdles.) -- If anyone
wants to give a hand here, contact Roger
<[email-masked]> or me... :-) :-)

xindy builds on the ideas of STIL, (`SGML Transformations in Lisp', a
style sheet language to create structure-controlled SGML
applications.) STIL is an experiment to check if a CLOS-based approach
may be used in that context, instead of the commonly used scheme-based
DSSSL approaches. It is not a production system.

STIL is not actively developped.

Oh yes, and ETLS, the Executable TeX Language Specification. An
interpreter for a formal specification of the TeX Macro Language,
written in CLISP. (The concept used is very near to standard
denotational semantics.) Some day, I'm going to continue on that
project, make a TeX debugger out of it to show that this theoretical
work can have practical consequences... :-)

Besides, Lisp systems to interpret specifications of UI toolkits. But
that's up to Gabor to describe, he's reading this list, too. :-)

Cheers,
	Joachim

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