I have not played with MCL 5.0 from Digitool for years now.

I realize that CL has been standardized, which can be viewed as a
virtue or a vice, depending on how one looks at it.

I notice that MCL is still at version 5.0, as it was in 2002 when I
bought my copy.

I realize there is a very small market for MCL. Is that the main
reason that effort is not expended by Digitool.Inc to upgrade MCL in
order to take advantage of newer hardware and software and any modern
computing techniques that have evolved in the past few years?

Another question - does MCL have any serious competition, or is it
still the only game in town for the Macintosh?

Just curious -

Mark-

From:	Peter Seibel
Subject:	Re: Any Reason MCL 5.0 Should Be Upgraded (or not)
Date:	Sat, 22 Jan 2005 00:58:09 GMT

Mark Conrad writes:

> I have not played with MCL 5.0 from Digitool for years now.
>
> I realize that CL has been standardized, which can be viewed as a
> virtue or a vice, depending on how one looks at it.
>
> I notice that MCL is still at version 5.0, as it was in 2002 when I
> bought my copy.
>
> I realize there is a very small market for MCL. Is that the main
> reason that effort is not expended by Digitool.Inc to upgrade MCL in
> order to take advantage of newer hardware and software and any modern
> computing techniques that have evolved in the past few years?
>
> Another question - does MCL have any serious competition, or is it
> still the only game in town for the Macintosh?

Far from it. Allegro Common Lisp and Lispworks also both have OS X
versions of their products and almost all of the regular
free/open-source Common Lisps run on it as well (SBCL, CLISP, and, I
think, CMUCL.) And finally there's OpenMCL a quite good open-source
Lisp with interesting Cocoa and Carbon integration.

-Peter

--
Peter Seibel peter@javamonkey.com

Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp

From:	Mark Conrad
Subject:	Re: Any Reason MCL 5.0 Should Be Upgraded (or not)
Date:	Sat, 22 Jan 2005 15:29:03 GMT

In article , Peter Seibel
wrote:

> > Another question - does MCL have any serious competition, or is it
> > still the only game in town for the Macintosh?
>
> Far from it. Allegro Common Lisp and Lispworks also both have OS X
> versions of their products and almost all of the regular
> free/open-source Common Lisps run on it as well (SBCL, CLISP, and, I
> think, CMUCL.) And finally there's OpenMCL a quite good open-source
> Lisp with interesting Cocoa and Carbon integration.

Okay, and thanks for responding.

Obviousy, Digitool sells enough of the 5-year old implementation of
MCL-version-5.0 to warrant them keeping it on the market.

I have a hard time understanding why some Lisp users shell out $750 for
MCL, when they can get a free CL implementation.

In my case, I bought it because I thought it might have more "useful"
features than a free implementation.

Now I am having second-thoughts, especially because Digitool shows no
interest in adding new features to MCL, as the years tick away.

Lisp itself has changed and improved over the years, and I suspect it
is still changing and improving in subtle ways, even though it is
"standardized". (read "fixed in stone")

'scuse me, just ranting away about things that puzzle me.

Mark-

From:	Wade Humeniuk
Subject:	Re: Any Reason MCL 5.0 Should Be Upgraded (or not)
Date:	Sat, 22 Jan 2005 16:07:43 GMT

Mark Conrad wrote:

>
> Now I am having second-thoughts, especially because Digitool shows no
> interest in adding new features to MCL, as the years tick away.
>

Ahh, suddenly an insight. A reason why "Worse is Better" seems
to succeed more. If something is not always perceived to
be growing it is considered dead and useless (and thus ignored).
It explains feature creep and the annoying behaviour of companies
holding back features and releasing them in dribs and drabs to
get people to buy "upgrades"/growth. Must be some primitive instinct
in people related to perceiving food/health in their environment.

Wade

From:	Michael Sullivan
Subject:	Re: Any Reason MCL 5.0 Should Be Upgraded (or not)
Date:	Sun, 23 Jan 2005 06:08:19 -0500

Wade Humeniuk wrote:
> Mark Conrad wrote:

> > Now I am having second-thoughts, especially because Digitool shows no
> > interest in adding new features to MCL, as the years tick away.

> Ahh, suddenly an insight. A reason why "Worse is Better" seems
> to succeed more. If something is not always perceived to
> be growing it is considered dead and useless (and thus ignored).
> It explains feature creep and the annoying behaviour of companies
> holding back features and releasing them in dribs and drabs to
> get people to buy "upgrades"/growth. Must be some primitive instinct
> in people related to perceiving food/health in their environment.

In fact, there are a *lot* of shortcomings in MCL 5.0, and there was
much discussion on the list about them. It was largely a stop gap to
get people with MCL legacy code able to port to OSX. Taking full
advantage of Cocoa and native interface widgets, etc. required a major
rewrite, and it looks like they just don't have the developer time to
get that done quickly. If enough people abandon ship in the meantime,
that may mean that the economics don't justify it ever getting done at
all.

But what's causing people to leave is not a random assumption of
featuritis, it's significant issues left unaddressed by MCL, many of
which *have* been addressed by competing implementations, both free and
commercial.

Michael

--
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. -- Dwight Eisenhower
"In Christ there is no killing" -- St. Patrick

From:	Wade Humeniuk
Subject:	Re: Any Reason MCL 5.0 Should Be Upgraded (or not)
Date:	Sun, 23 Jan 2005 16:08:07 GMT

Michael Sullivan wrote:
> In fact, there are a *lot* of shortcomings in MCL 5.0, and there was
> much discussion on the list about them. It was largely a stop gap to
> get people with MCL legacy code able to port to OSX. Taking full
> advantage of Cocoa and native interface widgets, etc. required a major
> rewrite, and it looks like they just don't have the developer time to
> get that done quickly. If enough people abandon ship in the meantime,
> that may mean that the economics don't justify it ever getting done at
> all.
>
> But what's causing people to leave is not a random assumption of
> featuritis, it's significant issues left unaddressed by MCL, many of
> which *have* been addressed by competing implementations, both free and
> commercial.
>

I was not assuming that MCL has featuritis, I was assuming that it does
not. I was responding to a post where the sentiment seems to be that
"if it has not changed much in such and such a period, it is no good".

If you use something enough, one always sees significant issues with any
implementation. MCL is not alone in this regard. People do it all the
time, familiarity breeds contempt. With software and even with other
people. I do not know enough about what is what with MCL but maybe
part of their problems have to do with supporting legacy apps. The
other Lisps do not have to do that. (But if there is a "run on the
bank" with MCL there will lots of blame to spread around).

Wade

From:	Nils Stritzel
Subject:	Re: Any Reason MCL 5.0 Should Be Upgraded (or not)
Date:	Sat, 22 Jan 2005 17:12:17 +0100

On 2005-01-22 16:29:03 +0100, Mark Conrad said:

> Obviousy, Digitool sells enough of the 5-year old implementation of
> MCL-version-5.0 to warrant them keeping it on the market.

I have heard they release version 5.1 very soon, so there still is some
progress.

Nils

From:	Rainer Joswig
Subject:	Re: Any Reason MCL 5.0 Should Be Upgraded (or not)
Date:	Sat, 22 Jan 2005 16:57:05 +0100

In article <220120050729580847%NoSpamDammit@invalid.com>,
Mark Conrad wrote:

> In article , Peter Seibel
> wrote:
>
> > > Another question - does MCL have any serious competition, or is it
> > > still the only game in town for the Macintosh?
> >
> > Far from it. Allegro Common Lisp and Lispworks also both have OS X
> > versions of their products and almost all of the regular
> > free/open-source Common Lisps run on it as well (SBCL, CLISP, and, I
> > think, CMUCL.) And finally there's OpenMCL a quite good open-source
> > Lisp with interesting Cocoa and Carbon integration.
>
> Okay, and thanks for responding.
>
> Obviousy, Digitool sells enough of the 5-year old implementation of
> MCL-version-5.0 to warrant them keeping it on the market.

I think there was some work on a MCL 5.1 version.
>
> I have a hard time understanding why some Lisp users shell out $750 for
> MCL, when they can get a free CL implementation.

Maybe the 'free' CL implementations don't have some feature
that the $750 commercial MCL version has.

> In my case, I bought it because I thought it might have more "useful"
> features than a free implementation.
>
> Now I am having second-thoughts, especially because Digitool shows no
> interest in adding new features to MCL, as the years tick away.

That made a lot of people move to Allegro CL and/or LispWorks.
Both are available on Mac OS X. Both are commercially supported
and both feature an implementation of Common Lisp with lots
of extensions. LispWorks has the advantage of a native GUI and IDE,
that is not too alien to a Mac user.

> Lisp itself has changed and improved over the years, and I suspect it
> is still changing and improving in subtle ways, even though it is
> "standardized". (read "fixed in stone")
>
> 'scuse me, just ranting away about things that puzzle me.
>
> Mark-

From:	Wade Humeniuk
Subject:	Re: Any Reason MCL 5.0 Should Be Upgraded (or not)
Date:	Sat, 22 Jan 2005 15:39:39 GMT

Mark Conrad wrote:
> In article , Peter Seibel
> wrote:
>
>
>>>Another question - does MCL have any serious competition, or is it
>>>still the only game in town for the Macintosh?
>>
>>Far from it. Allegro Common Lisp and Lispworks also both have OS X
>>versions of their products and almost all of the regular
>>free/open-source Common Lisps run on it as well (SBCL, CLISP, and, I
>>think, CMUCL.) And finally there's OpenMCL a quite good open-source
>>Lisp with interesting Cocoa and Carbon integration.
>
>
> Okay, and thanks for responding.
>
> Obviousy, Digitool sells enough of the 5-year old implementation of
> MCL-version-5.0 to warrant them keeping it on the market.
>
> I have a hard time understanding why some Lisp users shell out $750 for
> MCL, when they can get a free CL implementation.
>

Because that is the way the economy works. If people do not exchange
money then there will be no MCL, no expertise and the people will be
gone. There will be nobody left if people do not pay. In the short
term you may be thinking that you are getting a good deal by
going with the free version, but long term ... ?

Wade

From:	Luis Oliveira
Subject:	Re: Any Reason MCL 5.0 Should Be Upgraded (or not)
Date:	Sun, 23 Jan 2005 19:53:15 +0000

Mark Conrad skribis:
> I have not played with MCL 5.0 from Digitool for years now.

BTW, I'm trying to play with MCL myself (I'm interested in playing with
its CLIM implementation mainly) and I'm trying to use their demo:

ftp://ftp.digitool.com/mcl/demos/mcl-5.0-demo.sea.bin

However I get an error uncompressing this file so there's no executable
in the MCL folder. I wonder if someone else has the some problem and if
it is possible to get this file from somewhere else.

Thanks,

--
Luís Oliveira
Reply-To: luismbo (@) netcabo (.) pt
Equipa Portuguesa do Translation Project
http://www2.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard/po/registry.cgi?team=pt

From:	Nils Stritzel
Subject:	Re: Any Reason MCL 5.0 Should Be Upgraded (or not)
Date:	Sun, 23 Jan 2005 21:52:01 +0100

On 2005-01-23 20:53:15 +0100, Luis Oliveira said:

> ftp://ftp.digitool.com/mcl/demos/mcl-5.0-demo.sea.bin

This file uncompresses without any problems on my system. Although this
is not helping much, I guess :(

Nils