This is CLISP, a Common Lisp implementation.


What is LISP?
-------------

LISP is a programming language. It was invented by J. McCarthy in 1959.
There have been many dialects of it, but nowadays LISP has been standardized
and wide-spread due to the industrial standard COMMON LISP. There are
applications in the domains of symbolic knowledge processing (AI), numerical
mathematics (MACLISP yielded numerical code as good as FORTRAN), and
widely used programs like editors (EMACS) and CAD (AUTOCAD).
There is an introduction to the language:

  Sheila Hughes: Lisp. Pitman Publishing Limited, London 1986.
  107 pages.

After a while wou will need the standard text containing the language
definition:

  Guy L. Steele Jr.: Common Lisp - The Language. Digital Press.
  1. edition 1984, 465 pages.
  2. edition 1990, 1032 pages.

LISP is run in an interactive environment. You input forms, and they will be
evaluated at once. Thus you can inspect variables, call functions with given
arguments or define your own functions.


Contents:
---------

It consists of the following files:

      lisp.run         main program
      lispinit.mem     memory image needed for startup
      clisp.1          manual page in Unix man format
      clisp.man        manual page
      impnotes.txt     implementation notes
      README           this text
      SUMMARY          short description of CLISP
      ANNOUNCE         announcement
      COPYRIGHT        copyright notice
      GNU-GPL          free software license
      config.lsp       site-dependent configuration

and - to your convenience, if you like reading source -

      *.lsp            the source of lispinit.mem
      *.fas            the same files, already compiled


Hardware requirements:
----------------------

There are two versions of CLISP for the Amiga, both require at least 1.5MB RAM.
The *-low version runs on Amigas with no memory outside the 24 bit addressable
space (68000, A2620 & A2630). The *-high Version can address memory upto
address 0x0FFFFFFF and has been compiled for 68020 (or better) processors. It
runs on an A3000 or A4000.


Installation:
-------------

Edit the contents of config.lsp appropriately for your site,
especially the definitions of short-site-name and long-site-name.
You may also want to edit the time zone definition in defs1.lsp.
Then start

         lisp.run -M lispinit.mem

When the LISP prompt

      > _

appears, type

        (compile-file "config")
        (load "config")

and - in case you modified defs1.lsp -

        (compile-file "defs1")
        (load "defs1")

and then

        (saveinitmem)

to overwrite the file lispinit.mem with your configuration. Then

        (exit)

Then create a directory, and put the executable and the memory image there.



Note:
-----

You can start CLISP from Workbench(tm). The following Tooltypes are
recognized in the Tool Icon:

   WINDOW=<window or pipe specification>
   ARGS=<CLI-like arguments>

For example,

   WINDOW=CON:0/11/640/200/CLISP-Listener
   ARGS=-M lispinit.mem


When you encounter problems:
----------------------------

After errors, you are in the debugger:

     1. Break> _

You can evaluate forms, as usual. Furthermore:

     Help
               calles help
     Abort     or
     Unwind
               climbs up to next higher input loop
     (show-stack)
               shows the contents of the stack, helpful for debugging

And you can look at the values of the variables of the functions where the
error occurred.

On bigger problems, e.g. "guru"s, please send a description of the error
and how to produce it reliably to the authors.


Mailing List:
-------------

There is a mailing list for users of CLISP. It is the proper forum for
questions about CLISP, installation problems, bug reports, application
packages etc.

For information about the list and how to subscribe it, send mail to
listserv@ma2s2.mathematik.uni-karlsruhe.de, with the two lines
          help
          information clisp-list
in the message body.


Acknowledgement:
----------------

We are indebted to
  * Guy L. Steele and many others for the Common Lisp specification.
  * Richard Stallman's GNU project for GCC.


Authors:
--------

        Bruno Haible                    Michael Stoll
        Augartenstrae 40               Gallierweg 39
    D - W 7500 Karlsruhe 1          D - W 5300 Bonn 1
        Germany                         Germany

Email: haible@ma2s2.mathematik.uni-karlsruhe.de

Amiga Port by:
--------------

        Jrg Hhle
        Radolfzeller Strae 3
    D - W 7753 Allensbach
        Germany

Email: hoehle@inf-wiss.ivp.uni-konstanz.de
