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∂06-Feb-87 2207 RPG next x3j13 agenda
∂06-Feb-87 1753 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU next x3j13 agenda
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Fri 6 Feb 87 20:48:38-EST
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 1987 20:48 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12277009706.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: MATHIS@ADA20.ISI.EDU
Cc: bobrow.pa@XEROX.COM, gls@ZARATHUSTRA.THINK.COM, rpg@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU,
scherlis@VAX.DARPA.MIL, squires@VAX.DARPA.MIL,
willc%tekchips@RELAY.CS.NET
Subject: next x3j13 agenda
In-reply-to: Msg of 3 Feb 1987 17:34-EST from MATHIS at ADA20.ISI.EDU
That leaves Wed morning for the "cleanup" committee. That may be
right for an initial session of that type, but we cann't expect
much in the way of results.
The compiler committee may actually have more to present than the
cleanup committee. Rob Maclachlan has produced an excellent proposal
that looks to me like it might fix up almost all the outstanding
compilation issues at one swoop. Whether the rest of the compiler
committee will want to put this forward as a proposal, I can't say.
Unfortunately, Rob won't be at this meeting (CMU has no budget for such
travel), but perhaps one of the other compiler committee people will
want to present Rob's proposal.
I think that the cleanup committee is going to have to be reorganized so
that some work gets done. Most of the original members have been
inactive, and some have been downright incommunicado. I think we're
going to have to oust the inactive members and try to add some new ones
with more time and energy for this task. I think this will need to be
discussed by mail BEFORE the meeting, rather than trying to solve the
problem in the middle of the conference. If we just ask for volunteers,
we'll get all the wrong people and things will be even worse than now.
I think that the right move might be to invite some specific people to
join the committee and help out: Rob, Skef Wholey, Eric Benson...people
who might be able to grab a few issues and run with them.
I don't know if there will be anything to report on errors, presentation
of the standard, windows, or the other issues that had committees set up
for them.
Any chance that a more or less final object proposal will be ready for
circulation before the meeting?
I don't see any point in wasting any more time on Lisp1/Lisp2 until
someone has a coherent Macro proposal to present and some better ideas
on how to automate the transition. No sense plowing the same technical
ground and stating the same opinions over and over again, unless the
plan is to bring this to a final vote and be done with it once and for
all.
-- Scott
∂09-Feb-87 1033 RPG Re: next x3j13 agenda
∂09-Feb-87 0851 Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM Re: next x3j13 agenda
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Sender: Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM
From: Danny Bobrow <Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM>
Subject: Re: next x3j13 agenda
In-reply-to: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>'s message of Fri,
6 Feb 87 20:48 EST
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
cc: MATHIS@ADA20.ISI.EDU, bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM,
gls@ZARATHUSTRA.THINK.COM, rpg@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU,
scherlis@VAX.DARPA.MIL, squires@VAX.DARPA.MIL,
willc%tekchips@RELAY.CS.NET
Message-ID: <870209-084444-5562@Xerox>
Any chance that a more or less final object proposal will be
ready for circulation before the meeting?
We expect to circualte a document to the committee so that it can be
presented. As to what "final" means, we have mostly agreed on most of
the contents, but what happens when the committee sees it.
danny
∂19-Feb-87 1216 RPG Re: Questions
∂19-Feb-87 1113 MATHIS@ADA20.ISI.EDU Re: Questions
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Date: 19 Feb 1987 10:15-PST
Sender: MATHIS@ADA20.ISI.EDU
Subject: Re: Questions
From: MATHIS@ADA20.ISI.EDU
To: RPG@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Message-ID: <[ADA20.ISI.EDU]19-Feb-87 10:15:25.MATHIS>
In-Reply-To: The message of 18 Feb 87 0948 PST from Dick Gabriel <RPG@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU>
Dick,
I will try to retransmit my prior message on new addresses to
rmaiii at sail etc.
yes slater is the smoker. try slater@a.isi.edu.
my tendency has been to put people on the list and then check
them later. I sent letters to about a dozen people on the
physical list and about six of them dropped off. After the Palo
Alto meeting and the X3 bills, I was planning to question some of
the people on both the electronic and physical lists.
I think of the meetings as partially open. Additional people
from the same companies as members are welcome as are potential
new members; but not just anybody. Speaking and participating
might be restticted.
Bob
∂20-Feb-87 0931 RPG Re: Address
∂20-Feb-87 0653 MATHIS@ADA20.ISI.EDU Re: Address
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Date: 20 Feb 1987 06:52-PST
Sender: MATHIS@ADA20.ISI.EDU
Subject: Re: Address
From: MATHIS@ADA20.ISI.EDU
To: RPG@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Cc: Mathis@ADA20.ISI.EDU
Message-ID: <[ADA20.ISI.EDU]20-Feb-87 06:52:52.MATHIS>
In-Reply-To: The message of 19 Feb 87 1230 PST from Dick Gabriel <RPG@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU>
Dick, you had about three items:
1. in an attemp to be efficient I cleaned-up my old messages when
I put that address list together for you, so I don't know who
RMAIII is either. Even though I wish I could answer the
question, this is the first time I have deleted a message that I
later wanted back. That situation occurs so infrequently, I am
sure I am not deleting enough.
2. about all those names from Symbolics and Xerox. I am waiting
to see how many they are willing to pay for. It is also early.
Moon hasn't come to a meeting yet, but is very active; Masinter
wasn't on the original Xerox list and now he is also very active.
3. About the ISO meeting. Since the French will have the
convenorship, it is natural for them to want to host the first
meeting in France. The European countries seem to be much more
concerned about invitations to meet in particular countries and
so the French would not invite themselves to Italy. We can
however point out in our ballot that it would be nice to have the
meeting in Italy and the Italian standards body hopefully would
respond by inviting us. Another solution is to hold the meeting
in France (Paris or Nice for example) at a time that could fit in
nicely with IJCAI in August. The reason for this June suggestion
was some other conference they wanted to attach to. I really
don't have any other information on that. It may be possible
that we would like to attend that conference anyway. I don't
know. In any case We can suggest the August meeting time. I
didn't know anything about this funding business.
-- Bob
∂04-Mar-87 1413 RPG PART 2 of 2
∂04-Mar-87 0919 a37078%ccut.u-tokyo.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@RELAY.CS.NET PART 2 of 2
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Date: Thu, 5 Mar 87 00:22:28+0900
From: Masayuki Ida <a37078%ccut.u-tokyo.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@RELAY.CS.NET>
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To: mathis@ADA20.ISI.EDU, rpg@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Subject: PART 2 of 2
---- PART 2 Activities of Selected Working Groups
A Survey on needs for Lisp and AI applications in Japan
Ryu Katayama, Sanyo Electric Co.,Ltd.
1-18-13 Hashiridani Hirakata, Japan
Jeida Lisp Committee made a survey on Lisp and AI applica-
tions from Nov. 1985 to Feb. 1986 to clarify the current needs
and trends of AI languages (including Lisp) and AI applications
in Japan [1]. The contents of questionnaire are (1) company out-
line, (2) interests and development policy on AI systems, (3)
needs for AI languages and its applications, (4) needs for Lisp,
(5) needs for Common Lisp, and (6) Common Lisp subsetting. 350
questionnaires were sent to researchers and engineers engaged in
knowledge information processing, and among 135 replies, 56 are
from those who belong to private companies, 37 from universities,
and 42 from public research institutes and others.
Concerning interests on AI systems such as expert system
(ES), image recognition, voice recognition, machine translation,
CAI system, and intelligent robot, ES is most interested in
(91.1%), followed by machine translation (57.0%), image recogni-
tion (52.6%). Also over 10 % answers indicate that those three AI
systems are now commercially developed at their own organiza-
tions.
With respect to (3), needs for AI languages are surveyed in-
cluding hardware environments. Most widely used machine is VAX-11
family (72), followed by SUN (28), Xerox-1100 series (27), Sym-
bolics (22), FACOM M series (17), ACOS series (17), HITAC M
series (16), USTATION (15), DEC 20XX family (15).
Commonly used AI languages are illustrated in Fig.1. Widely
used Lisp languages are Franz Lisp (60), VAX Lisp (40), Inter-
lisp/ Interlisp-D(33), UtiLisp (33), Zetalisp (18), Kyoto Common
Lisp (17), while popular Prolog languages are C-Prolog (46),
Prolog-KABA (44), DEC-10 Prolog (23), micro-Prolog (19), Quintus
Prolog (17), Prolog/KR (17), and so on. Familiarly used object
oriented languages are smalltalk-80 (38), Flavors (19), Loops
(7), Objective-C (8). Among other conventional languages, C (89
answers), FORTRAN (51), PASCAL (49), BASIC (30) are also used.
Major objectives for those AI languages are for development
of ES (29.6%), natural language processing (including machine
translation) (17.8%), intelligent man machine interface (17.8%),
image recognition/understanding (10.4%).
On the development of ES, 62.8% organizations are developing
ES by their own, and among them 46.8% are also developing ES
development tool (shell), while 32.3% utilize commercially avail-
able shells. Most commonly used language for developing shell is
Lisp (55 answers), followd by Prolog (26), C (19). Widely used
shells are OPS5 (18), KEE (8), ZEUS (7), ART (5), BRAINS (4).
Concerning needs or complaints for Lisp, many users tend to
point out slow execution speed (32), poor graphics (28), inabili-
ty to handle Japanese characters (26), lack of object oriented
facilities (18), large size of required memory (16), inefficient
programming tools such as editor or debugger (16).
With respect to Common Lisp (CL), 82.7% are interested in CL
, and 66 users already introduced CL, 21 are planning to intro-
ducing CL.
Concerning language specifications of CL, there are comments
that appreciates its compiler oriented design such as lexical
scope or function closure (20.3%), sufficient data types (8.6%),
while point out the large memory use (21.4%), needs for object
oriented facilities (18.7%), requests for supporting Japanese
characters (16.0%), etc.
On the needs for subsetting CL, 60.2% answers indicate that
some suitable organization or committee should deal with the
standardization of CL subsets.
Based upon the survey, needs for standardization of CL sub-
sets, object oriented facilities, embedding Japanese characters
in CL are considered to be made clear in Japan.
number of users
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
------------------------------------
| | | | | | |
Franz Lisp |****************************** (60)
C-Prolog |************************ (46)
Prolog-KABA |********************** (44)
VAX Lisp |******************** (40)
smalltalk-80 |******************* (38)
Interlisp,Interlisp-D |***************** (33)
UtiLisp |***************** (33)
DEC-10 Prolog |************ (23)
micro-Prolog |********** (19)
Flavors |********** (19)
Zetalisp |********* (18)
Kyoto Common Lisp |********* (17)
Quintus Prolog |********* (17)
Prolog/KR |********* (17)
Maclisp |******** (16)
muLisp |******* (14)
PSL (Protable Standard Lisp) |******* (13)
K-Prolog |****** (12)
Loops |**** (7)
MProlog |**** (7)
Objective-C |*** (5)
Fig. 1 Commonly used AI Programming Languages in Japan '85
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Jeida Lisp committee members who
made great efforts to accompolish this survey, especially Satoshi
Uchida and his colleagues of Aoyama Gakuin University for their primary
analysis of the collected data.
================================================================
Activities of Subset Working Group
Katsuhiko Yuura
Central Research Laboratory, Hitachi,Ltd.
1-280, Higashi-koigakubo, Kokubunji-shi, Tokyo 185, Japan
1. Background and Purpose
Most Japanese Lisp users on personal computers(pc) do not
use all functions of the full set of Common Lisp so that good
performance is a constant concern. Although some subset imple-
mentations for pc have been developed, they not surprisingly have
different specifications. To set up an international Lisp stan-
dard for pc, the authors would like to propose a subset, which
does not include seldom used functions and those that make a sys-
tem inefficient.
2. Discussions and Proposal Activities
Discussions for the subset started in December 1985, and the
authors decided on four steps for the completetion of Common
Lisp/Core. The first step was the review of Ida's personal pro-
posal for a subset (IPSJ WGSYM 34-4), and the second step was the
examination of the necessities for each function and the diffi-
culties in implementing them. In the third step the basic issues
of Common Lisp/Core were decided, and in the fourth step the
functions were selected by the vote of WG members.
An open meeting on Common Lisp/Core was held in Tokyo on
July 8, 1986, in which sixty researchers and users came together.
From the implementer's point of view, it was felt that the scale
of Common Lisp/Core was not so much smaller than that of the full
set. From the user's point of view, it was hoped that more func-
tions were selected from packages, streams and declarations.
Common Lisp/Core was proposed at the Lisp standardization
meeting on August 5, 1986 during Lisp and Functional Programming
Conference. Common Lisp/Core is regarded as the middle position
of three levels, which are theoretical basis, kernel and practi-
cal use, of the Lisp language definition.
3. Basic Issues of Common Lisp/Core
Common Lisp/Core preserves the arms and legs of Common Lisp,
because it is important to be able to transfer programs in the
subset to those in the full set easily, as well as to enable sub-
set users to grow into full set users naturally. The following
"arms and legs" features were selected in the third discussion
step: scope and extent rules including lexical closure features,
keyword parameters, the principles of type hierarchy and generic
functions, and some useful and characteristic data types (bignum,
ratio, structure and readtable). Some package features are very
useful, and other parts are not so useful and make a system
heavy. But the useful part can not be cut out of the whole pack-
age features with keeping Common Lisp/Core language consistent.
On the other hand, Common Lisp is characterized by rich
functions, so that the aim for the number of functions in Common
Lisp/Core is about a half of the full set, which is over that of
Utilisp (developed at University of Tokyo in 1981, one of the
most famous Lisps' in Japan) or Franzlisp. The functions which
do not correspond to the "arms and legs" features were selected
in the fourth discussion step, giving higher priority to func-
tions having high necessity than to functions that can be imple-
mented easily.
Common Lisp/Core includes 356 functions and 20 variables and
constants, wheras Common Lisp includes 622 functions and 101
variables and constants. Major deleted items are most system
parameter constants, complex numbers, most package features, lo-
cal functions, adjustable arrays, hashtables and pathnames.
Subset WG members :
Hideki Kato (Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd.)
Yukiko Hashimoto (NEC Corp.)
Kazusaku Kawagome (SORD Computer Corp.)
Susumu Kawai (Nihon Digital Equipment Corp.)
Shigeaki Harada (Sharp Corp.)
Yoichi Yamamura (Nippon UNIVAC Kaisha Ltd.)
Nobuyuki Saji (NEC Corp.)
Masayuki Ida (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.)
====================================================================
Recent Activities of Object Oriented Programming Working Group
Toru Ishida
NTT Electrical Communication Laboratories
1-2356 Take, Yokosuka-shi, 238-03, Japan
The working group for Object Oriented Programming (OOWG) was organized
in April 1985 as the first working group of the JEIDA Common Lisp
Committee. Although there were more urgent problems for the Japanese
Lisp Society, such as subsetting and handling Japanese characters, we
started the OOWG so early because:
- The Object Oriented Programming paradigm was the center of attention
in Japanese academic society at that time. However, notion and its
effectiveness were not well understood by industrial society.
- Standardization of new programming paradigms requires a lot of
experience. Thus, we thought discussion should begin as soon as
possible.
In 1985, six companies joined the OOWG. Our first job was to arouse
positive public opinion about the movement toward standardization of
Lisp Object Oriented Programming. The members reviewed and summarized
on-going discussions at the Common Lisp Committee of the United
States, and reported on the major problems in standardization to the
JEIDA Lisp Workshop[1] and the IPSJ (Information Processing Society of
Japan) Special Interest Group of Symbolic Processing. The reports
include analysis of the three standardization proposals from HP, Xerox
and LMI.
Since 1986, fourteen companies have been involved in the OOWG. More
people have participated in the discussions and contacted people
outside of the working group. Several members of the OOWG attended
the Lisp Standardization Meeting in Boston in August. In addition, an
extended JEIDA meeting with Gregor Kczales, a co-author of
CommonLoops[2], was held in October. Various other matters have also
been discussed at meetings and through mail networks.
Discussions have also been expanded to cover wider problems. Language
specification issues have been clarified through the use of the
Portable CommonLoops provided by Xerox Corporation. From the end of
1986, discussions have involved Object Oriented Programming
Environments and applications: AI tools, window systems, etc.
As a summary of our activities in the last two years, the OOWG has
contributed to the understanding of Lisp Object Oriented Programming
in Japanese industry. In the next stage, we hope to contribute to
international standardization of Lisp Object Oriented Programming.
[1] Report on Microcomputer - Common Lisp - , Jeida, 61-A-235[2],1986
(in Japanese)
[2] D. G. Bobrow et al: CommonLoops: Merging Common Lisp and
Object-Oriented Programming, Proc. of OOPSLA '86, ACM, 1986.
Contributors:
Nobuyuki Saji (NEC Corp.)
Kiyoki Ohkubo (Panafacom Ltd.)
Taiji Nishida (Fuji Zerox Co., Ltd.)
Haruyuki Kawabe (Nippon UNIVAC Kaisha Ltd.)
Tadashi Maruyama (FUJIFACOM Corp.)
Yasutaka Tominaga (Fuji Electric Corporate Research and Development Ltd.)
Hiroshi Nakajima (OMRON TATEISI ELECTRONICS Co.)
Makoto Yokoo (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.)
Satoshi Uchida (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.)
Masayuki Ida (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.)
=============================================================
Kanji WG --- Embedding Japanese Characters in Common Lisp
MOTOYOSHI, F.
Electrotechnical Laboratory,
1-1-4 Umezono, Sakura-mura, Niihari-gun, Ibaraki,
305 JAPAN
We have discussed the way to embed Japanese characters
in Common Lisp for a year. We first decided on the policy to
be followed in the whole discussions:
a Japanese character should be treated as a character of
Common Lisp.
All members of the working group agreed this policy and many
users prefer it to others.
Then we drew up guidelines to be respected within the
limits of above policy. The are
1) a program which is written without regard to Japanese
characters should run as expected when it is given data
which include Japanese characters,
2) any multi-byte character set other than Japanese
characters can be implemented in the same manner,
3) a program which does not deal with Japanese characters
should run without so much loss of efficiency for speed
and memory.
According to above principles, we have made a proposal
to embed Japanese characters in Common Lisp as described in
the following. The basic idea is very simple and is that
let the value of 'char-code-limit' be large enough for
the system to include all Japanese characters.
This means that one can even define a read macro to any
Japanese character.
By taking that way, we need only one change to CLtL,
which is concerning to character printing width. The point
is that the set of fixed-pitch characters for font 0 is
limited to graphic standard characters. Instead, we
introduce a function 'write-width' for getting the print
width.
No problem occurs when a system has a uniform internal
structure for strings, however, some system may have two or
more types of strings internally for memory efficiency.
There may be some loss of efficiency for users who use only
standard characters in such a system.
A new type of string is introduced in such cases and is
used mainly in declarations. The name is
'internal-thin-string', which is a vector of special
characters distinguished from others by a predicate
'internal-thin-char-p'. This does not mean that 'internal
thin character' should be a proper subset of 'string
character'. They may represent a same character set and this
case is equivalent to the above one for uniform structure of
string.
We have described the common topic to any multi-byte
characters so far. We also discussed the problem specific to
Japanese, where our main concerns are related to the meaning
of each Japanese character. The major problem is that of
characters whose print forms are similar to those of standard
characters. We reached to the agreement that any system
should have at least one mode where any characters other than
standard characters have not special meanings. Althogh
functions to define classes of Japanese characters were also
determined, they are not described in this paper.
Contributed by
IKEO, J. (Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.)
KIMURA, K. (Toshiba Corp.)
MURAYAMA, K. (Nippon Univac Kaisha, Ltd.)
NAKAMURA, S. (Fujitsu, Ltd.)
OKA, M. (Japan Radio Co., Ltd.)
SAKAIBARA, K. (Hitachi Co., Ltd.)
SHIOTA, E. (Nihon Symbolics Corp.)
SUGIMURA, T. (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.)
∂04-Mar-87 1416 RPG PART 1 of my report
∂04-Mar-87 0945 a37078%ccut.u-tokyo.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@RELAY.CS.NET PART 1 of my report
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From: Masayuki Ida <a37078%ccut.u-tokyo.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@RELAY.CS.NET>
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To: mathis@ADA20.ISI.EDU, rpg%su-ai.arpa@RELAY.CS.NET
Subject: PART 1 of my report
A progress report on the Common Lisp related activities in Japan
Compiled by Masayuki Ida
This report is composed of two parts.
One is a survey of the recent activities related to Common
Lisp and Lisp standardization efforts in japan by Masayuki Ida,
who chairs the Jeida Common Lisp committee, and the JIS Lisp WG
both.
The other is the reports of the sub working groups under the
Jeida Common Lisp committee by each chair.
Since JIS Lisp WG has only 7 months history and still in the
'first' phase to design a draft, this paper is mainly stressed on
the activities of Jeida Common Lisp committee.
The contents of this report contains lots of contributions
of many persons, the authors express their thanks to all the con-
tributors. This report is not the official ones, though each au-
thors is (was) responsible person for each group.
----- PART 1 Summary
Masayuki Ida
Aoyama Gakuin University
1 Morinosato-aoyama, Atsugi, Kanagawa, Japan 243-01
ida%u-tokyo.junet@utokyo-relay.csnet
ida@utokyo-relay.csnet
1. before the dawn --- 1984 ----
The year 1984 is the year CLtL was published. In USA, a conver-
gence of the E-mail discussions gave CLtL, while in japan, the
possibility to form a committee to investigate the current move-
ment of Lisps had been discussed. As one of the candidates, The
author proposed to form a Common Lisp related committee for Jei-
da. This proposal was selected as a candidate of the next year's
project. We had two more pre-assembly meeting and as a conclu-
sion of several key companies, Jeida Common Lisp committee was
scheduled to start in April 1985.
2. The activities of Jeida Common Lisp committee
2.1 Purposes
The purposes of the committee is NOT to make a domestic
standard lisp in Japan. The work was governed by the following:
1) Understand the Common Lisp specification
2) Discussion on implementation techniques
3) Investigations of existing CL implementations
4) Communicating with CL community of the USA
5) Investigations of applications of Common Lisp
2.2 Organizations sending members
Here is an alphabetical list of the early 28 organizations which
sent members, including several subsidiaries of USA companies.
Aoyama Gakuin University, DEC Japan, Electro-Technical Lab
(MITI), Fuji Electronic, Fuji Facom, Fuji XEROX, Fujitsu, Hita-
chi, JRC, Matsushita (panasonic), Meidensha, Mitsubishi, Nippon
Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), NEC, nippon Data General, Omron,
Oki electric, panaFacom, Sanyo, Sharp, Sinko, Sord, Sumitomo,
Symbolics Japan, Toshiba, nippon UNIVAC, Yamatake-Honeywell
(later in 1986, Kyoto university, and several companies joined)
2.3 Brief history
From May 1985, the meeting has been held once a month. In Sep-
tember 1985, a Common Lisp work shop was held for intensive dis-
cussion. Under the committee there were two groups in 1985 and 4
groups in 1986; an object oriented working group(OOWG 1985-), a
subset working group(subsetWG 1985-), a kanji working group(kanji
WG 1986-), a bboard working group (bboardWG 1986-). The summary
of OOWG, subsetWG and kanjiWG is attached as PART II contribut-
ed by the chair of each WG. At monthly meeting of Jeida Common
Lisp committee, along with the technical discussions the presen-
tation of the Common Lisp implementors, and related announcements
and discussions are there. (we had the hearings from DEC, NTT,
Hitachi, Fujitsu, Fuji Xerox, DG, Symbolics, ...)
2.4 questionnaire asking the directions
To know the basic needs, in October 1985, the Common Lisp commit-
tee sent questionnaire to selected organizations, whom might be
considered to be the most advanced in Lisp related works in
Japan. This results of the questionnaire assured the direction
of the later related activities of us in japan. We found the
needs for Common Lisp is large and if we can make a line for ob-
ject oriented facility inclusion, japanese character provision,
subsetting consideration on Common Lisp, it will almost cope with
the japan domestic needs which was considered at the time of the
questionnaire. The details are summarized by the editor elected
by the committee, which is attached in PART 2. Major differences
between the population status of '85 and that of now are KCL is
now more used and there are several Common Lisps as company pro-
ducts, such as HiLisp from Hitachi and Fujitsu Lisp. The ques-
tionnaire reflecting the current status is under consideration
but not yet performed.
2.5 working groups under Jeida Common Lisp committee
The formation of the WG is based on the results of the question-
naire. That is, subsetting, object oriented facilities, japanese
character manipulation. From time to time, the author have sent
private mails and common lisp bboard mails. The triggering of
the kanji issues, subsetting issues and other mails were there.
While we have discussions based on the communications, as Dr.
Yuasa of Kyoto university brought us a copy of the archives, we
formed a bboardWG to translate the contents.
Subset WG made a CL/Core design and reported to USA. OOWG inves-
tigated the OO bboard discussion given by Ken Kahn and later by
G.Kiczales, and use PCL as an executable model to analyze. The
versions of PCL have been brought from G.Kiczales with the cour-
tesy of Xerox PARC to the author. They were re-sent to OOWG
members, along with universities and software vendors. Kanji WG
made a design to cope with japanese characters with the major
contributions from Fuji Xerox and Symbolics along with the
japanese companies. From the author's point of view, the current
design was only to cope with japanese characters. So the author
asked them as a task of 1987 to extend it to more universal
specification to cope with the multi national treatment. Say, It
should be possible for the Chineses Common Lisp can translate
japanese natural language texts into arabic ones on the United
states machines. After the discussion is over, it will be avail-
able to anyone. (the progress is well understood anytime by
several USA companies who sending members).
3. Common Lisp implementations in japan.
The questionnaire told the most dominant Common Lisp in japan at
that time was VAXLisp, whose population was the second among the
overall Lisp population. (the number 1 is 4BSD Franzlisp)
There are KCL (kyoto Common Lisp), HiLisp (Hitachi Lisp), and
others to be appeared as japan domestic products, while Symbolics
Common Lisp, Vaxlisp, and other US made Common Lisps are also
well used. As for the Common Lisps on PC, there are several
Lisps which claim a subset of Common Lisp, including GCLisp,
ICLisp, muLisp and more. The populations of them are NOT inves-
tigated yet.
4. JIS Lisp WG
In 1986 July, JIS Lisp WG is formed as an official committee to
make a draft for JIS Lisp standard along with the international
movement. The activity of the JIS WG during 1986 has been
stressed on the design principles. French government asked the
JIS WG to be the contact point to Eulisp matters, and the JIS WG
agreed to do so. (But JIS WG will not make a joint effort to
make Eulisp.) JIS WG also knows the importance of Common Lisp.
The term for the work is until June 1989. JIS WG will try to
discuss the principle issues like, Lisp1/Lisp2, scoping, evalua-
tion of forms, special variables, terminology, layered model,
generic functions, inclusion of environments, etc. Members of
1986 are; Masayuki Ida (Aoyama Gakuin University, chair), Taiichi
Yuasa (Kyoto University), Y. Murao (Tokyo University), Fumio
Motoyoshi (Electro technical Lab), Nobuyuki Inada (Riken), Ikuo
Takeuchi (NTT), Toshiaki Kurokawa (IBM), Michiaki Yasumura (Hita-
chi Ltd.), Shuichi Nakamura (Fujitsu Ltd.), Yukiko Hashimoto
(NEC), Atsusi Nagasaka (Oki electric), Shigeru Kobayashi (Toshi-
ba), Masahiro Kuroda (Mitsubishi), Shoichi Itoh (standards divi-
sion, AIST MITI), Hiroshi Torii (Jeida) 6 persons (and 10 organi-
zations) are also in the name list of Jeida Common Lisp Committee
at the same time. The members of 1987 fiscal year will change in
some extent.
∂05-Mar-87 2158 RPG Re: I sent you 2 mails
∂05-Mar-87 1750 a37078%ccut.u-tokyo.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@RELAY.CS.NET Re: I sent you 2 mails
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Date: Fri, 6 Mar 87 10:07:26+0900
From: Masayuki Ida <a37078%ccut.u-tokyo.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@RELAY.CS.NET>
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To: MATHIS@ADA20.ISI.EDU,
a37078%ccut.u-tokyo.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@RELAY.CS.NET
Subject: Re: I sent you 2 mails
Cc: RPG@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Bob, yes, it was a report you are hoping for.
I will appreciate you will print it in the US and distribute at the meeting
with the kind assistnance of Dick.
The meeting schedule was changed from March 5 to March 4.
And we have had important meetings 4 or 5 times in Feb and March.
I was asked by the chair of the JIS standardization committee
which is the boss of my JIS Lisp WG to have more close direction to Common Lisp.
I and he made every eforts to do so. I now have a strong confidence
to steer my JIS Lisp WG.
In 1987, I will send mails as a chair of JIS WG saying japanese official comments
to assist Common Lisp based standardization efforts of US, oops,
"In 1987" means "after April 1987".
One question.
Where I can submit comments on Common Lisp Object system ?
commonloops.pa @ xerox ?
Common-lisp @ su - ai ?
X3j13@su-ai ?
I have over 20 points to suggest. The list I am maintaining was checked by
the persons from Fuji Xerox, Symbolics japan, Nippon Univac (TI-explorer),
NEC, and NTT specialists. They gave me more advices.
I dont want to discuss about my list by E-mail to avoid the chaos.
Please suggest a best way.
Thank you Bob and thank you Dick.
Sincerely yours
Masayuki
"a37078%ccut.u-tokyo.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet"@RELAY.CS.NET/su
News
Prof IDA:
I have printed up your report and will pass it out at the X3J13 meeting.
Please mail your comments about the object system to:
Common-lisp-object-system@sail.stanford.edu.
-rpg-