The next meeting of the Montreal Scheme/Lisp User Group
will be held on Wednesday, June 15th 2005.
Speaker: Danny Dubé, Laval University
Subject: Scheme implementations for embedded systems
We will present two implementations of the Scheme language for the
generation of small executables to be used in micro-controllers: BIT
and PICBIT. Although Scheme is a high level language, its small
specification (semantics and library) allows the generation of small
executables, making it a realistic choice for the development of
embedded programs. Both implementations share a number of features,
but they differ in the type of compacity they provide. We show that
using BIT, an almost complete subset of the Scheme standard library
can fit in less than 6Kb, and that using PICBIT, non-trivial
applications can run on machines with at most 2Kb of RAM. We will demo
some electronic devices programmed in Scheme using our systems. Marc
Feeley collaborated on this effort.
For more information, visit:
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~boucherd/mslug/mslug-home-en.html
Dominique
Call for Participation
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
=====================================
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
Supported by ALU
For more information visit http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net
or contact pc(a)p-cos.net.
News (June 2, 2005)
===================
Important Dates
+ Abstract submission deadline: June 10, 2005
+ Notification of acceptance: June 17, 2005
+ ECOOP early registration deadline: June 24, 2005
+ Final paper submission deadline: July 15, 2005
Other News
==========
+ Richard P. Gabriel has agreed to give a keynote talk at the workshop:
"On the Interaction of Life and Machines in Self-Sustaining Systems"
Software systems today are produced according to a manufacturing
model: A finished product is constructed at the factory and shipped
to its final destinationwhere it is expected to act like any other
machine-reliably but oblivious to its surroundings and its own
welfare. Software needs to grow up and become responsible for itself
and its own future. A promising approach seems to be to separate
software that does the work from software that keeps the system
alive.
+ The submission deadline has been extended to June 10, 2005. Due to the
late publication of the fee structure for the ECOOP conference, we have
split submission into two phases: You can submit an abstract of your
paper or breakout group proposal before June 10 and we will notify you
of acceptance or rejection on June 17. The final paper / breakout group
proposal should be submitted by July 15.
+ The early registration deadline for ECOOP 2005 is June 24, 2005.
Participating is cheaper than you may think: If you only participate at
the workshop, the fee is 180 pounds (ca. 260 Euros or 320 US-Dollars) or
90 pounds (ca. 130 Euros or 160 US-Dollars) for students. This includes
coffee breaks and lunches on the two workshop days, the main reception
on the first workshop day and access to BoFs and the poster display on
the two workshop days. See http://2005.ecoop.org/fees.html for full
details.
Overview
========
"...Please don't assume Lisp is only useful for Animation and
Graphics, AI, Bioinformatics, B2B and E-Commerce, Data Mining,
EDA/Semiconductor applications, Expert Systems, Finance,
Intelligent Agents, Knowledge Management, Mechanical CAD, Modeling
and Simulation, Natural Language, Optimization, Research, Risk
Analysis, Scheduling, Telecom, and Web Authoring just because these
are the only things they happened to list." -- Kent Pitman
Lisp is one of the oldest computer languages still in use today. In the
decades of its existence, Lisp has been a fruitful basis for language
design experiments as well as the preferred implementation language for
applications in diverse fields. The structure of Lisp, including Common
Lisp and Scheme as its major dialects of today, makes it easy to extend
the language or even to implement entirely new dialects without
starting from scratch. Common Lisp, with the Common Lisp Object System
(CLOS), was the first object-oriented programming language to receive an
ANSI standard at the beginning of the 1990's. It is, arguably, the most
complete and advanced object system of any programming language, and has
influenced many other object-oriented programming languages that were to
follow.
Despite having somewhat disappeared from the radar of popular computer
science, Common Lisp and Scheme are still alive and have just started to
gain momentum again. There is a steadily growing interest in Lisp as
such, with numerous user groups having formed recently worldwide, and
Lisp's metaprogramming notions that are being transferred to other
languages to different extents, as for example in AOP, MDA, DSL, and so
on.
This two-day workshop will address the near-future role of Lisp-based
languages in research, industry and education. We want to solicit papers
and suggestions for breakout groups that discuss the opportunities Lisp
provides to capture and enhance the possibilities in software
engineering. We also want to promote lively discussion between
researchers proposing new approaches and practitioners reporting on
their experience with the strengths and limitations of current Lisp
technologies.
The workshop will be split into two parts: The first part is for talks
with a more classroom-like atmosphere, the second will consist of a
number of sessions for breakout groups discussing or working on
particular topics.
Papers
======
Presentations on the workshop can take anything between 5 minutes and an
hour. Additional time will be given for questions and answers. Papers
may be published on the website in order to provide background
information in advance.
Suggested topics for presented papers
+ Macro programming
+ Metaprogramming
+ Reflection
+ New language features / abstractions
+ Persistence Systems
+ Hardware support for Lisp systems
+ Case studies
+ Experience reports
+ Industrial applications
+ Object-Oriented Programming
+ Declarative Programming
+ Aspect-Oriented Programming
+ Domain-Oriented Programming
+ Generative Programming
+ Ambient Intelligence
+ Unanticipated Software Evolution
+ Design Patterns
+ Educational Perspectives
Breakout Groups
===============
The workshop will provide for the opportunity to meet face to face and
work on focused topics. We will organize these breakout groups and
provide for rooms and infrastructure.
Suggested topics for breakout groups
+ Discuss the feature set of the next version of Slime
+ Work on details of the CLRFI process
+ Exchange experiences with various macro systems for Scheme
+ Detail a wishlist for R6RS
+ Environments for creating web applications
+ Persistence systems
+ Compiler technology
+ Lisp on bare metal / Lisp hardware / Lisp operating systems
+ Compare and enhance curricula for computer science education
In order to have effective discussions at those breakout groups, we are
negotiating meeting rooms for an extra day in addition to the actual
workshop with the ECOOP organizers.
Submission Guidelines
=====================
Potential attendants are expected to submit
+ either a long paper (10 pages) presenting scientific and/or empirical
results about Lisp- and Scheme-based uses or new approaches for software
engineering purposes
+ or a short essay (5 pages) defending a position about where research
and practice based on Lisp and Scheme should be heading in the near
future
+ a proposal for a breakout group (1-2 pages) describing the theme, an
agenda and/or expected results
Abstract submissions should be mailed as PDF or text to Pascal Costanza
(pc(a)p-cos.net) before the submission deadline. Please indicate whether
you need an earlier notification of acceptance than the official date.
The final paper should be mailed before the respective submission
deadline - afterwards, we cannot guarantee timely publication at the
website anymore.
Registration
============
This workshop is co-located with ECOOP 2005, and this time it is one of
the official workshops at that conference. Therefore, registration, fee
and accomodation are all handled through the conference organization.
See the conference website and especially
http://2005.ecoop.org/fees.html and http://2005.ecoop.org/travel.html
for further information.
Advance registration to the workshop is handled through the primary
contact person of the Workshop, Pascal Costanza (pc(a)p-cos.net) Please
contact him by regular email with your submission or input to the
workshop in order to receive your login to the workshop website. Include
your preferred login name for the workshop website with your
application. Further information for participants will be provided on
the workshop website.
Organizing Committee
====================
The organizing comitee consists of the following people:
+ Pascal Costanza, http://www.pascalcostanza.de,
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium (contact organizer)
+ Theo D'Hondt, http://prog.vub.ac.be/~tjdhondt,
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
+ Arthur Lemmens, Independent Consultant, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
+ Manuel Serrano, http://www-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/Manuel.Serrano/,
INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, France
--
Pascal Costanza Vrije Universiteit Brussel
mailto:Pascal.Costanza@vub.ac.be Programming Technology Lab
http://www.pascalcostanza.de Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel (Belgium)
The next meeting of the Montreal Scheme/Lisp User Group
will be held on Wednesday, May 18th 2005.
Speaker: Guillaume Marceau, Brown University
Subject: A Dataflow Language for Scriptable Debugging
Debugging is a laborious, manual activity that often involves
the repetition of common operations. Ideally, users should
be able to describe these repetitious operations as little
programs. Debuggers should therefore be programmable, or
scriptable. The operating environment of these scripts,
however, imposes interesting design challenges on the
programming language that we use to write these scripts.
We present MzTake, our scriptable debugger for Scheme. MzTake
is built on top of FrTime, a functional reactive programming
language also developed at Brown. We will discuss how the
powerful data flow constructs of FrTime capture many
important debugging and comprehension metaphors. By removing
the need for callbacks and removing the need for state,
debugging scripts become concise and reusable.
For more information, visit:
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~boucherd/mslug/mslug-home-en.html
Dominique Boucher
--
Dominique Boucher, Ph.D.
The Scheme Way Project
http://schemeway.sourceforge.net
Hi,
this is a follow up on my presentation. My fractal zoomer evolved to
support anti-aliasing and movie generation, you can get a sample movie
here:
http://ygingras.net/files/m2.mpg
If you like the result, there is a movie pack with 20 high resolution
animations at:
http://www.xach.com/fract/mp1.torrent
--
Yannick Gingras Math Student, UQAM
Hi guys,
Unfortunately, I have to cancel this week's meeting. I have not been
able to find anybody to give a talk. I have a few candidates for next
month's meeting, though. But if you have suggestions, let me know.
Feel free to use the mailing list to organize an informal meeting in
some nice pub.
See you next month!
Dominique
--
The Scheme Way Project
http://schemeway.sourceforge.net
Hi, I'm in Seattle. I co-run a group called SeaFunc, for Seattle
functional programmers. We are a merger of local Lisp and ML groups.
We figured we had better survival odds together than separate. We have
a mailing list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SeaFunc/
I find it useful to stay coordinated with other user groups as they tend
to have similar problems of organization, member retention, and growth.
So hello!
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.9.5 - Release Date: 4/7/2005
Hi guys,
I was in talk with a VERY prestigious potential speaker in the past
days and he seemed interested. But someone else in the group attempted
to contact him and, unfortunately, this ruined the whole effort. I was
a little upset, to say the least.
If you intend to invite prestigious speakers in behalf of the MSLUG, I
STRONGLY suggest (mark my words) that you pass through the official
channels (i.e. Marc and I) first. We are certainly in a better
position to make attractive offers and/or organize bigger events if
required (unless, of course, you work for an organization that can pay
those speakers and organize the event).
The Scheme/Lisp world is so small. We must combine our efforts instead
of competing with each other.
--
Dominique Boucher, Ph.D.
The Scheme Way Project
http://schemeway.sourceforge.net
BTW, on the ruby-talk mailing-list, there are currently threads going on
about Paul Graham and about the (rather large) influence of LISP/Scheme on
Ruby.
For those who don't know, Ruby borrows this from LISP/Scheme:
* everything's an expression... well, except for some syntactic quirks,
but essentially it's there.
* the semicolon is an operator such that a;b;c;... behaves like LISP's
(progn a b c ...)
* lexical closures and continuations
* multiple inheritance with method lookup backtracking, just like
CLOS's (call-next-method). (Perl recently got this feature
*because* Ruby had it)
* dispatch on singletons. (However this is much different from the
one in CLOS, because Ruby is much more Smalltalk-like than Lisp-like)
* Symbols (are Smalltalk-like but look like LISP keywords because of
colon-prefix)
* "!" and "?" suffixes on some methodnames.
* mark-and-sweep; load-time is part of run-time; eval (but on strings);
untyped variables, mostly holding pointers to type-tagged objects, except
some "unboxed objects"; etc; ... the above list was off the top of my mind
so it's by no means complete and I may have even skipped important
borrowings.
_____________________________________________________________________
Mathieu Bouchard -=- Montréal QC Canada -=- http://artengine.ca/matju
The next meeting of the Montreal Scheme/Lisp User Group
will be held on Wednesday, March 16th 2005.
Untangling the Web with Parentheses
-----------------------------------
Speaker: Yannick Gingras
Laboratoire de Combinatoire et d'Informatique Mathématique
Université du Québec à Montréal
Common Lisp has many features that makes it an ideal language for
developing web applications. This presentation will review some of
those and show three applications developed using Common Lisp: a
fractal generator, a phylogenetic tree viewer and a browser for
genomic similarities. The presentation will be in French with slides
in English.
For more information, visit:
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~boucherd/mslug/mslug-home-en.html
--
Dominique Boucher, Ph.D.
The Scheme Way Project
http://schemeway.sourceforge.net
Hi guys,
Guillaume's presentation is available on the MSLUG web site.
I have also added links to some Scheme/Lisp books in the 'Resources'
section of the site.
Cheers!
--
Dominique Boucher
The Scheme Way Project
http://schemeway.sourceforge.net
