doc/newLISP-9.3-Release.html

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  19 <H1 STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-top: 0in">newLISP<FONT SIZE=2>tm</FONT>
  20 v.9.3 Release Notes <FONT SIZE=2>February 1st, 2008, rev 4</FONT></H1>
  21 <H3 STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-top: 0in">Improved newLISP-GS
  22 Graphics Server module and editor</H3>
  23 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in">This is the
  24 second release with the new Java based graphical user interface (GUI)
  25 server for newLISP. Since newLISP-GS appeared for the first time in
  26 release 9.2 new functions have been added, many bugs where fixed, and
  27 the newLISP-GS based multi tab editor has much improved behavior when
  28 launching applications. The monitor area at the bottom of the editor
  29 now works as an interactive newLISP shell.
  30 </BLOCKQUOTE>
  31 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in">The new way
  32 of doing Graphics and GUIs in newLISP using the Java based newLISP-GS
  33 module has been well received by the community. newLISP can also
  34 still be used with <A HREF="http://www.gtk-server.org/">GTK-Server</A>
  35 or Tcl/Tk.</BLOCKQUOTE>
  36 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in; text-decoration: none">
  37 As in previous releases, most new functionality and changes where
  38 asked for or contributed by the community of newLISP users.</BLOCKQUOTE>
  39 <H3 STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in">Full support for nested association
  40 lists</H3>
  41 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in; text-decoration: none">
  42 This version has a new set of functions for managing nested
  43 association lists. Nested association lists are frequently the result
  44 from converting XML into Lisp s-expressions. XML has established
  45 itself as a format for data interchange on the internet. The new
  46 functions permit access, modification and deletion of associations in
  47 nested association lists. These functions also work together with
  48 FOOP, which represents objects as associations.</BLOCKQUOTE>
  49 <H3 STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-top: 0in">FOOP – Functional
  50 Object Oriented Programming</H3>
  51 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in">Using the <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">:
  52 </FONT>colon operator to implement <SPAN STYLE="font-style: normal">polymorphism</SPAN>
  53 in method application and using context namespaces to encapsulate all
  54 methods of an object class, an object oriented programming system for
  55 newLISP has been designed. Thanks to <I>Michael Michaels</I> from
  56 <A HREF="http://www.neglook.com/">neglOOk</A> for designing most of
  57 this new way of object oriented programming in newLISP and for
  58 creating the training video series: “Towards FOOP”. FOOP melts
  59 contexts, the new colon operator <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">:
  60 </FONT>and functional programming into a simple and efficient way of
  61 <SPAN STYLE="font-style: normal">object oriented programming</SPAN>
  62 in newLISP. The system features polymorphism and inheritance and can
  63 have anonymous objects, which are memory managed automatically by
  64 newLISP.</BLOCKQUOTE>
  65 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in">A very
  66 short description of FOOP can be found in the Users Manual. For a
  67 more in depth treatment of this topic see <I>Michael Michaels</I>'s
  68 video series accessible from the <A HREF="http://newlisp.org/index.cgi?Documentation">newLISP
  69 documentation </A>page and the <A HREF="http://www.neglook.com/">neglOOk</A>
  70 website.</BLOCKQUOTE>
  71 <H3 STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-top: 0in">New functions</H3>
  72 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">assoc-set,
  73 set-assoc, pop-assoc</FONT> – change or delete an association,
  74 handle nested associations.</BLOCKQUOTE>
  75 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">bind</FONT>
  76 – the function binds expressions to symbols from an association
  77 list and is normally used in logic programming together with <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">unify</FONT>.
  78 This function was already persent in earlier versions, but was not
  79 documented.</BLOCKQUOTE>
  80 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">destroy</FONT>
  81 – destroys a process addressed by the process id returned by yhr
  82 newLISP functions <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">process</FONT>
  83 or <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">fork</FONT>.</BLOCKQUOTE>
  84 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">dostring</FONT>
  85 – iterates over a string with the character value in the loop
  86 variable. On UTF-8 compiled newLISP UTF8 character values are
  87 returned by the loop variable.</BLOCKQUOTE>
  88 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">NEWLISPDIR</FONT>
  89 - this environment variable will be registered on startup as
  90 <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">/usr/share/newlisp</FONT>
  91 on Unix and Unix like OSs and as <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">%PROGRAMFILES%/newlisp</FONT>
  92 on Win32. This allows writing platform independent code for loading
  93 modules. An already existing definition of <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">NEWLISPDIR</FONT>
  94 will not be overwritten during startup.</BLOCKQUOTE>
  95 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">ref-set,
  96 set-ref, ref-set-all</FONT> – these functions modify one or all
  97 elements in a list searched by a key. The key can be any type of
  98 expression and <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">unify</FONT>,
  99 <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">match</FONT> or a
 100 user-defined function can be specified as comparison function. Like
 101 the <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">nth</FONT>, <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">set-nth</FONT>
 102 and <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">nth-set</FONT>
 103 family of functions these new list search-and-replace functions can
 104 pass lists by reference using a context name which is interpreted as
 105 a <I>default functor</I>.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 106 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">when</FONT>
 107 – works like <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">if
 108 </FONT>without the <I>else </I>clause evaluating a block
 109 conditionally and without the necessity of <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">begin</FONT>.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 110 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in">The <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">:
 111 </FONT>(colon) now also works as a function and can be attached to a
 112 symbol following it. The operator forms a context symbol from the
 113 symbol following it and the context symbol found as the first element
 114 of the list contained in the next argument. The colon operator is
 115 used to implement polymorphism in FOOP.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 116 <H3 STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-top: 0in">Enhancements and
 117 changes to existing functionality</H3>
 118 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">assoc</FONT>
 119 – now handles nested multilevel associations.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 120 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">count</FONT>
 121 – has been rewritten to be many times faster on Unix and Unix like
 122 OSs.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 123 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">dup</FONT>
 124 - without the repetition parameter will assume 2.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 125 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">find</FONT>
 126 – when used with a comparison functor puts the last found
 127 expression into <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">$0.</FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
 128 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">find-all</FONT>
 129 – can now be used on lists too.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 130 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">get-url,
 131 post-url, put-url, delete-url</FONT> - have been extended and
 132 reworked to return more error information as supplied by the server
 133 and have improved debugging support.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 134 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">last,
 135 nth, nth-set, set-nth</FONT> – now have last element speed
 136 optimization as previously only present in <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">push</FONT>
 137 and <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">pop</FONT>.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 138 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">nth,
 139 set-nth, nth-set, push, pop</FONT> – when used on lists, indices
 140 overshooting the beginning or the end of the list now will cause an
 141 error to be thrown. Before, out of range indices would pick the first
 142 or last element in a list. The new behavior is consistent with the
 143 behavior of indexing arrays.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 144 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">pack</FONT>
 145 – now can take lists for data.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 146 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">process</FONT>
 147 – this reworked function now creates the new process without the
 148 previous time and memory overhead on Unix. No extra newLISP fork will
 149 be created to launch the new process. In most cases the full path
 150 must now be given for the command in <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">process</FONT>.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 151 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">rand</FONT>
 152 – integer random number generation with better statistical quality
 153 on Win32.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 154 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">ref</FONT>
 155 – when used with a comparison function puts the last found
 156 expression into <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">$0.</FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
 157 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">set-assoc</FONT>
 158 – renamed <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">replace-assoc</FONT>
 159 changes an association, handles nested associations.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 160 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">set-nth,
 161 nth-set </FONT>– now return the old list or value when the second
 162 argument is not present. They behave now like <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">set</FONT>
 163 without the value argument. Before both, <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">set-nth</FONT>
 164 and <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">nth-set </FONT>returned
 165 <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">nil</FONT> when the
 166 value argument was missing.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 167 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">signal</FONT>
 168 – the <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">nil</FONT> flag
 169 now specifies <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">SIG_IGN
 170 </FONT>and the <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">true</FONT>
 171 flag <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">SIG_DFL</FONT>.
 172 Before 9.3 <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">nil</FONT>
 173 would specify an empty newLISP handler and the <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">true</FONT>
 174 flag was not available. This allows to reset the signal handler for a
 175 specific signal to its OS default.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 176 <H3 STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in">Other additions and changes</H3>
 177 <P STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">newlisp.vim</FONT>
 178 – the syntax highlighting and editing control file for the <A HREF="http://www.vim.org/">VIM</A>
 179 text editor has been much improved by <A HREF="http://wagner.pp.ru/~slobin/"><I>Cyril
 180 Slobin</I></A>.</P>
 181 <P STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">crypto.lsp</FONT>
 182 – this module has been expanded to offer <FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">hmac</FONT>
 183 encryption using MD5 or SHA-1 hashing.</P>
 184 <P STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">amazon.lsp</FONT>
 185 – this new module interfaces to the Amazon Web Services, S3 storage
 186 API.</P>
 187 <P STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">newlispdoc</FONT>
 188 – this utility has been improved to handle indices and links to
 189 external <A HREF="http://newlisp.org/modules">module collections</A>.</P>
 190 <P STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in"><FONT FACE="Lucida Sans Regular, sans-serif">wordnet.lsp</FONT>
 191 - this new module interfaces to the WordNet 3.o datebase</P>
 192 <P STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in">The amazon.lsp and wordet.lsp modules
 193 are not part of the distribution, but can be accessed in the new
 194 <A HREF="http://newlisp.org/modules">http://newlisp.org/modules</A>
 195 section.</P>
 196 <H3 STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-top: 0in">Bug fixes and
 197 documentation corrections</H3>
 198 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in">Many bugs
 199 have been fixed in this release stabilizing some of the new features
 200 in the previous 9.2 release and fixing older previously undetected
 201 bugs. For more detail on bug fixes and changes see the CHANGES file
 202 in the source distribution of newLISP v.9.3.0 in
 203 newlisp-9.3.0/doc/CHANGES. This file details fixes changes for the
 204 development versions between 9.2.0 and to 9.3.0.</BLOCKQUOTE>
 205 <BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="margin-left: 0.2in; margin-right: 0in; text-align: center">
 206 &sect;</BLOCKQUOTE>
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