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<![CDATA[I'm exploring another corner of the Interlisp ecosystem and history: the Interlisp-10 implementation for DEC PDP-10 mainframes, a 1970s character based environment that predated the graphical Interlisp-D system. I approached this corner when I set out to learn and experiment with a tool I initially checked out only superficially, the TTY editor. This command line structure editor for Lisp code and expressions was the only one of Interlisp-10. The oldest of the Interlisp editors, it came before graphical interfaces and SEdit. On Medley Interlisp the TTY editor is still useful for specialized tasks. For example, its extensive set of commands with macro support is effectively a little language for batch editing and list structure manipulation. Think Unix sed for s-exps. The language even provides the variable EDITMACROS (wink wink). Evaluating (PRINTDEF EDITMACROS) gives a flavor for the language. For an experience closer to 1970s Interlisp I'm using the editor in its original environment, Interlisp-10 on TWENEX. SDF provides a publicly accessible TWENEX system running on a PDP-10 setup. With the product name TOPS-20, TWENEX was a DEC operating system for DECSYSTEM-20/PDP-10 mainframes derived from TENEX originally developed by BBN. SDF's TWENEX system comes with Interlisp-10 and other languages. This is Interlisp-10 in a TWENEX session accessed from my Linux box: A screenshot of a Linux terminal showing Interlisp-10 running under TWENEX in a SSH session. Creating a TWENEX account is straightforward but I didn't receive the initial password via email as expected. After reporting this to the twenex-l mailing list I was soon emailed the password which I changed with the TWENEX command CHANGE DIRECTORY PASSWORD. Interacting with TWENEX is less alien or arcane than I thought. I recognize the influence of TENEX and TWENEX on Interlisp terminology and notation. For example, the Interlisp REPL is called Exec after the Exec command processor of the TENEX operating system. And, like TENEX, Interlisp uses angle brackets as part of directory names. It's clear the influence of these operating systems also on the design of CP/M and hence MS-DOS, for example the commands DIR and TYPE. SDF's TWENEX system provides a complete Interlisp-10 implementation with only one notable omission: HELPSYS, the interactive facility for consulting the online documentation of Interlisp. The SDF wiki describes the basics of using Interlisp-10 and editing Lisp code with the TTY editor. After a couple of years of experience with Medley Interlisp the Interlisp-10 environment feels familiar. Most of the same functions and commands control the development tools and facilities. My first impression of the TTY editor is it's reasonably efficient and intuitive to edit Lisp code, at least using the basic commands. One thing that's not immediately apparent is that EDITF, the entry point for editing a function, works only with existing functions and can't create new ones. The workaround is to define a stub from the Exec like this: (DEFINEQ (NEW.FUNCTION () T)) and then call (EDITF NEW.FUNCTION) to flesh it out. Transferring files between TWENEX and the external world, such as my Linux box, involves two steps because the TWENEX system is not accessible outside of SDF. First, I log into Unix on sdf.org with my SDF account and from there ftp to kankan.twenex.org (172.16.36.36) with my TWENEX account. Once the TWENEX files are on Unix I access them from Linux with scp or sftp to sdf.org. This may require the ARPA tier of SDF membership. Everything is ready for a small Interlisp-10 programming project. #Interlisp #Lisp a href="https://remark.as/p/journal.paoloamoroso.com/exploring-interlisp-10-and-twenex"Discuss.../a Email | Reply @amoroso@oldbytes.space !--emailsub--]]>
<![CDATA[It has been a year since I set up my System76 Merkaat with Linux Mint. In July of 2024 I migrated from ChromeOS and the Merkaat has been my daily driver on the desktop. A year later I have nothing major to report, which is the point. Despite the occasional unplanned reinstallation I have been enjoying the stability of Linux and just using the PC. This stability finally enabled me to burn bridges with mainstream operating systems and fully embrace Linux and open systems. I'm ready to handle the worst and get back to work. Just a few years ago the frustration of troubleshooting a broken system would have made me seriously consider the switch to a proprietary solution. But a year of regular use, with an ordinary mix of quiet moments and glitches, gave me the confidence to stop worrying and learn to love Linux. linux a href="https://remark.as/p/journal.paoloamoroso.com/my-first-year-since-coming-back-to-linux"Discuss.../a Email | Reply @amoroso@oldbytes.space !--emailsub--]]>
<![CDATA[DandeGUI now does graphics and this is what it looks like. Some text and graphics output windows created with DandeGUI on Medley Interlisp. In addition to the square root table text output demo, I created the other graphics windows with the newly implemented functionality. For example, this code draws the random circles of the top window: (DEFUN RANDOM-CIRCLES (&KEY (N 200) (MAX-R 50) (WIDTH 640) (HEIGHT 480)) (LET ((RANGE-X (- WIDTH ( 2 MAX-R))) (RANGE-Y (- HEIGHT ( 2 MAX-R))) (SHADES (LIST IL:BLACKSHADE IL:GRAYSHADE (RANDOM 65536)))) (DANDEGUI:WITH-GRAPHICS-WINDOW (STREAM :TITLE "Random Circles") (DOTIMES (I N) (DECLARE (IGNORE I)) (IL:FILLCIRCLE (+ MAX-R (RANDOM RANGE-X)) (+ MAX-R (RANDOM RANGE-Y)) (RANDOM MAX-R) (ELT SHADES (RANDOM 3)) STREAM))))) GUI:WITH-GRAPHICS-WINDOW, GUI:OPEN-GRAPHICS-STREAM, and GUI:WITH-GRAPHICS-STREAM are the main additions. These functions and macros are the equivalent for graphics of what GUI:WITH-OUTPUT-TO-WINDOW, GUI:OPEN-WINDOW-STREAM, and GUI:WITH-WINDOW-STREAM, respectively, do for text. The difference is the text facilities send output to TEXTSTREAM streams whereas the graphics facilities to IMAGESTREAM, a type of device-independent graphics streams. Under the hood DandeGUI text windows are customized TEdit windows with an associated TEXTSTREAM. TEdit is the rich text editor of Medley Interlisp. Similarly, the graphics windows of DandeGUI run the Sketch line drawing editor under the hood. Sketch windows have an IMAGESTREAM which Interlisp graphics primitives like IL:DRAWLINE and IL:DRAWPOINT accept as an output destination. DandeGUI creates and manages Sketch windows with the type of stream the graphics primitives require. In other words, IMAGESTREAM is to Sketch what TEXTSTREAM is to TEdit. The benefits of programmatically using Sketch for graphics are the same as TEdit windows for text: automatic window repainting, scrolling, and resizing. The downside is overhead. Scrolling more than a few thousand graphics elements is slow and adding even more may crash the system. However, this is an acceptable tradeoff. The new graphics functions and macros work similarly to the text ones, with a few differences. First, DandeGUI now depends on the SKETCH and SKETCH-STREAM library modules which it automatically loads. Since Sketch has no notion of a read-only drawing area GUI:OPEN-GRAPHICS-STREAM achieves the same effect by other means: (DEFUN OPEN-GRAPHICS-STREAM (&KEY (TITLE "Untitled")) "Open a new window and return the associated IMAGESTREAM to send graphics output to. Sets the window title to TITLE if supplied." (LET ((STREAM (IL:OPENIMAGESTREAM '|Untitled| 'IL:SKETCH '(IL:FONTS ,DEFAULT-FONT*))) (WINDOW (IL:\\SKSTRM.WINDOW.FROM.STREAM STREAM))) (IL:WINDOWPROP WINDOW 'IL:TITLE TITLE) ;; Disable left and middle-click title bar menu (IL:WINDOWPROP WINDOW 'IL:BUTTONEVENTFN NIL) ;; Disable sketch editing via right-click actions (IL:WINDOWPROP WINDOW 'IL:RIGHTBUTTONFN NIL) ;; Disable querying the user whether to save changes (IL:WINDOWPROP WINDOW 'IL:DONTQUERYCHANGES T) STREAM)) Only the mouse gestures and commands of the middle-click title bar menu and the right-click menu change the drawing area interactively. To disable these actions GUI:OPEN-GRAPHICS-STREAM removes their menu handlers by setting to NIL the window properties IL:BUTTONEVENTFN and IL:RIGHTBUTTONFN. This way only programmatic output can change the drawing area. The function also sets IL:DONTQUERYCHANGES to T to prevent querying whether to save the changes at window close. By design output to DandeGUI windows is not permanent, so saving isn't necessary. GUI:WITH-GRAPHICS-STREAM and GUI:WITH-GRAPHICS-WINDOW are straightforward: (DEFMACRO WITH-GRAPHICS-STREAM ((VAR STREAM) &BODY BODY) "Perform the operations in BODY with VAR bound to the graphics window STREAM. Evaluates the forms in BODY in a context in which VAR is bound to STREAM which must already exist, then returns the value of the last form of BODY." `(LET ((,VAR ,STREAM)) ,@BODY)) (DEFMACRO WITH-GRAPHICS-WINDOW ((VAR &KEY TITLE) &BODY BODY) "Perform the operations in BODY with VAR bound to a new graphics window stream. Creates a new window titled TITLE if supplied, binds VAR to the IMAGESTREAM associated with the window, and executes BODY in this context. Returns the value of the last form of BODY." `(WITH-GRAPHICS-STREAM (,VAR (OPEN-GRAPHICS-STREAM :TITLE (OR ,TITLE "Untitled"))) ,@BODY)) Unlike GUI:WITH-TEXT-STREAM and GUI:WITH-TEXT-WINDOW, which need to call GUI::WITH-WRITE-ENABLED to establish a read-only environment after every output operation, GUI:OPEN-GRAPHICS-STREAM can do this only once at window creation. GUI:CLEAR-WINDOW, GUI:WINDOW-TITLE, and GUI:PRINT-MESSAGE now work with graphics streams in addition to text streams. For IMAGESTREAM arguments GUI:PRINT-MESSAGE prints to the system prompt window as Sketch stream windows have no prompt area. The random circles and fractal triangles graphics demos round up the latest additions. #DandeGUI #CommonLisp #Interlisp #Lisp a href="https://remark.as/p/journal.paoloamoroso.com/adding-graphics-support-to-dandegui"Discuss.../a Email | Reply @amoroso@oldbytes.space !--emailsub--]]>
<![CDATA[Printing rich text to windows is one of the planned features of DandeGUI, the GUI library for Medley Interlisp I'm developing in Common Lisp. I finally got around to this and implemented the GUI:WITH-TEXT-STYLE macro which controls the attributes of text printed to a window, such as the font family and face. GUI:WITH-TEXT-STYLE establishes a context in which text printed to the stream associated with a TEdit window is rendered in the style specified by the arguments. The call to GUI:WITH-TEXT-STYLE here extends the square root table example by printing the heading in a 12-point bold sans serif font: (gui:with-output-to-window (stream :title "Table of square roots") (gui:with-text-style (stream :family :sans :size 12 :face :bold) (format stream "~&Number~40TSquare Root~2%")) (loop for n from 1 to 30 do (format stream "~&~4D~40T~8,4F~%" n (sqrt n)))) The code produces this window in which the styled column headings stand out: Medley Interlisp window of a square root table generated by the DandeGUI GUI library. The :FAMILY, :SIZE, and :FACE arguments determine the corresponding text attributes. :FAMILY may be a generic family such as :SERIF for an unspecified serif font; :SANS for a sans serif font; :FIX for a fixed width font; or a keyword denoting a specific family like :TIMESROMAN. At the heart of GUI:WITH-TEXT-STYLE is a pair of calls to the Interlisp function PRINTOUT that wrap the macro body, the first for setting the font of the stream to the specified style and the other for restoring the default: (DEFMACRO WITH-TEXT-STYLE ((STREAM &KEY FAMILY SIZE FACE) &BODY BODY) (ONCE-ONLY (STREAM) `(UNWIND-PROTECT (PROGN (IL:PRINTOUT ,STREAM IL:.FONT (TEXT-STYLE-TO-FD ,FAMILY ,SIZE ,FACE)) ,@BODY) (IL:PRINTOUT ,STREAM IL:.FONT DEFAULT-FONT)))) PRINTOUT is an Interlisp function for formatted output similar to Common Lisp's FORMAT but with additional font control via the .FONT directive. The symbols of PRINTOUT, i.e. its directives and arguments, are in the Interlisp package. In turn GUI:WITH-TEXT-STYLE calls GUI::TEXT-STYLE-TO-FD, an internal DandeGUI function which passes to .FONT a font descriptor matching the required text attributes. GUI::TEXT-STYLE-TO-FD calls IL:FONTCOPY to build a descriptor that merges the specified attributes with any unspecified ones copied from the default font. The font descriptor is an Interlisp data structure that represents a font on the Medley environment. #DandeGUI #CommonLisp #Interlisp #Lisp a href="https://remark.as/p/journal.paoloamoroso.com/changing-text-style-for-dandegui-window-output"Discuss.../a Email | Reply @amoroso@oldbytes.space !--emailsub--]]>
<![CDATA[I continued working on DandeGUI, a GUI library for Medley Interlisp I'm writing in Common Lisp. I added two new short public functions, GUI:CLEAR-WINDOW and GUI:PRINT-MESSAGE, and fixed a bug in some internal code. GUI:CLEAR-WINDOW deletes the text of the window associated with the Interlisp TEXTSTREAM passed as the argument: (DEFUN CLEAR-WINDOW (STREAM) "Delete all the text of the window associated with STREAM. Returns STREAM" (WITH-WRITE-ENABLED (STR STREAM) (IL:TEDIT.DELETE STR 1 (IL:TEDIT.NCHARS STR))) STREAM) It's little more than a call to the TEdit API function IL:TEDIT.DELETE for deleting text in the editor buffer, wrapped in the internal macro GUI::WITH-WRITE-ENABLED that establishes a context for write access to a window. I also wrote GUI:PRINT-MESSAGE. This function prints a message to the prompt area of the window associated with the TEXTSTREAM passed as an argument, optionally clearing the area prior to printing. The prompt area is a one-line Interlisp prompt window attached above the title bar of the TEdit window where the editor displays errors and status messages. (DEFUN PRINT-MESSAGE (STREAM MESSAGE &OPTIONAL DONT-CLEAR-P) "Print MESSAGE to the prompt area of the window associated with STREAM. If DONT-CLEAR-P is non NIL the area will be cleared first. Returns STREAM." (IL:TEDIT.PROMPTPRINT STREAM MESSAGE (NOT DONT-CLEAR-P)) STREAM) GUI:PRINT-MESSAGE just passes the appropriate arguments to the TEdit API function IL:TEDIT.PROMPTPRINT which does the actual printing. The documentation of both functions is in the API reference on the project repo. Testing DandeGUI revealed that sometimes text wasn't appended to the end but inserted at the beginning of windows. To address the issue I changed GUI::WITH-WRITE-ENABLED to ensure the file pointer of the stream is set to the end of the file (i.e -1) prior to passing control to output functions. The fix was to add a call to the Interlisp function IL:SETFILEPTR: (IL:SETFILEPTR ,STREAM -1) #DandeGUI #CommonLisp #Interlisp #Lisp a href="https://remark.as/p/journal.paoloamoroso.com/adding-window-clearing-and-message-printing-to-dandegui"Discuss.../a Email | Reply @amoroso@oldbytes.space !--emailsub--]]>
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You heard there was money in tech. You never cared about technology. You are an entryist piece of shit. But you won’t leave willingly. Give it all away to everyone for free. Then you’ll have no reason to be here.
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Debates, at their finest, are about exploring topics together in search for truth. That probably sounds hopelessly idealistic to anyone who've ever perused a comment section on the internet, but ideals are there to remind us of what's possible, to inspire us to reach higher — even if reality falls short. I've been reaching for those debating ideals for thirty years on the internet. I've argued with tens of thousands of people, first on Usenet, then in blog comments, then Twitter, now X, and also LinkedIn — as well as a million other places that have come and gone. It's mostly been about technology, but occasionally about society and morality too. There have been plenty of heated moments during those three decades. It doesn't take much for a debate between strangers on this internet to escalate into something far lower than a "search for truth", and I've often felt willing to settle for just a cordial tone! But for the majority of that time, I never felt like things might escalate beyond the keyboards and into the real world. That was until we had our big blow-up at 37signals back in 2021. I suddenly got to see a different darkness from the most vile corners of the internet. Heard from those who seem to prowl for a mob-sanctioned opportunity to threaten and intimidate those they disagree with. It fundamentally changed me. But I used the experience as a mirror to reflect on the ways my own engagement with the arguments occasionally felt too sharp, too personal. And I've since tried to refocus way more of my efforts on the positive and the productive. I'm by no means perfect, and the internet often tempts the worst in us, but I resist better now than I did then. What I cannot come to terms with, though, is the modern equation of words with violence. The growing sense of permission that if the disagreement runs deep enough, then violence is a justified answer to settle it. That sounds so obvious that we shouldn't need to state it in a civil society, but clearly it is not. Not even in technology. Not even in programming. There are plenty of factions here who've taken to justify their violent fantasies by referring to their ideological opponents as "nazis", "fascists", or "racists". And then follow that up with a call to "punch a nazi" or worse. When you hear something like that often enough, it's easy to grow glib about it. That it's just a saying. They don't mean it. But I'm afraid many of them really do. Which brings us to Charlie Kirk. And the technologists who name drinks at their bar after his mortal wound just hours after his death, to name but one of the many, morbid celebrations of the famous conservative debater's death. It's sickening. Deeply, profoundly sickening. And my first instinct was exactly what such people would delight in happening. To watch the rest of us recoil, then retract, and perhaps even eject. To leave the internet for a while or forever. But I can't do that. We shouldn't do that. Instead, we should double down on the opposite. Continue to show up with our ideals held high while we debate strangers in that noble search for the truth. Where we share our excitement, our enthusiasm, and our love of technology, country, and humanity. I think that's what Charlie Kirk did so well. Continued to show up for the debate. Even on hostile territory. Not because he thought he was ever going to convince everyone, but because he knew he'd always reach some with a good argument, a good insight, or at least a different perspective. You could agree or not. Counter or be quiet. But the earnest exploration of the topics in a live exchange with another human is as fundamental to our civilization as Socrates himself. Don't give up, don't give in. Keep debating.
In my old age I’ve mostly given up trying to convince anyone of anything. Most people do not care to find the truth, they care about what pumps their bags. Some people go as far as to believe that perception is reality and that truth is a construction. I hope there’s a special place in hell for those people. It’s why the world wasted $10B+ on self driving car companies that obviously made no sense. There’s a much bigger market for truths that pump bags vs truths that don’t. So here’s your new truth that there’s no market for. Do you believe a compiler can code? If so, then go right on believing that AI can code. But if you don’t, then AI is no better than a compiler, and arguably in its current form, worse. The best model of a programming AI is a compiler. You give it a prompt, which is “the code”, and it outputs a compiled version of that code. Sometimes you’ll use it interactively, giving updates to the prompt after it has returned code, but you find that, like most IDEs, this doesn’t work all that well and you are often better off adjusting the original prompt and “recompiling”. While noobs and managers are excited that the input language to this compiler is English, English is a poor language choice for many reasons. It’s not precise in specifying things. The only reason it works for many common programming workflows is because they are common. The minute you try to do new things, you need to be as verbose as the underlying language. AI workflows are, in practice, highly non-deterministic. While different versions of a compiler might give different outputs, they all promise to obey the spec of the language, and if they don’t, there’s a bug in the compiler. English has no similar spec. Prompts are highly non local, changes made in one part of the prompt can affect the entire output. tl;dr, you think AI coding is good because compilers, languages, and libraries are bad. This isn’t to say “AI” technology won’t lead to some extremely good tools. But I argue this comes from increased amounts of search and optimization and patterns to crib from, not from any magic “the AI is doing the coding”. You are still doing the coding, you are just using a different programming language. That anyone uses LLMs to code is a testament to just how bad tooling and languages are. And that LLMs can replace developers at companies is a testament to how bad that company’s codebase and hiring bar is. AI will eventually replace programming jobs in the same way compilers replaced programming jobs. In the same way spreadsheets replaced accounting jobs. But the sooner we start thinking about it as a tool in a workflow and a compiler—through a lens where tons of careful thought has been put in—the better. I can’t believe anyone bought those vibe coding crap things for billions. Many people in self driving accused me of just being upset that I didn’t get the billions, and I’m sure it’s the same thoughts this time. Is your way of thinking so fucking broken that you can’t believe anyone cares more about the actual truth than make believe dollars? From this study, AI makes you feel 20% more productive but in reality makes you 19% slower. How many more billions are we going to waste on this? Or we could, you know, do the hard work and build better programming languages, compilers, and libraries. But that can’t be hyped up for billions.
