I agree that this is a matter of community organization. There are
several libraries out there to accomplish this, but there isn't any
momentum behind any one of them. I think this is due to the
individualistic tendencies of lisp programs and programmers, but I think
there are enough people interested in doing Real Work® that we should
just pick some packages and start writing tutorials. Instead of
creating a cl-batteries project that combines other libraries, I think
what is needed is an index of comprehensive tutorials, which just needs
more blood and sweat than code.
I think the main usefulness of the python docs is that the information
is centralized, not that its one dependancy. A python programmer knows
they want to send an email, so they go to that page and find "email" and
are on their way. The lisp programmer wanting to send an email needs to
find and evaluate a number of competing libraries that might be what
they want. Right now much of the lisp tutorial information is scattered
through cliki, cl-user, cl-cookbook, blogs, mailing lists, irc logs,
clhs, and others I'm forgetting. For example, searching cl-user for
"email" finds cl-pop, core services, and rfc2822. Searching for the tag
"email" reveals cl-http, cl-smtp, cl-pop, mel-base, and rfc2822. More
choices are confusing for users who just want a functional solution to a
common problem. I have much more interest in a documentation project
designed to answer questions like "how do I send an email" than another
meta-package to combine libraries. I think the meta-package would
follow naturally after a critical mass of tutorials are written/linked to.
I think expanding a project like cl-cookbook
(http://cl-cookbook.sourceforge.net/) would be a better use of effort.
If the beginning of a section of tutorials had a requirements bit saying
what needed to be asdf-installed, than a cl-cookbook meta-package would
be straightforward to assemble. This would also highlight the places
that are missing good libraries, and create some smaller targets for
library writers.
Thanks,
Ryan Davis
Acceleration.net
Director of Programming Services
2831 NW 41st street, suite B
Gainesville, FL 32606
Office: 352-335-6500 x 124
Fax: 352-335-6506
Paolo Amoroso wrote:
"Brad Beveridge" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
I propose that we clone this page http://docs.python.org/lib/lib.html,
and emulate as much as possible.
Done :)
http://www.cl-user.net/asp/tags/by-topic
http://www.cl-user.net/asp/tags/ansi
http://www.cl-user.net/asp/map
http://www.cl-user.net/asp/index
Thoughts?
I'll try to be frank again. Absolutely no blame intended for anybody,
really. Real life does take its toll.
But the past year made me utterly skeptical on the possibility of
completing such projects. The latest batteries-package-like project
was STDUTIL:
http://common-lisp.net/project/stdutil/
Despite the date at the bottom right of the page, I seem to remember
that it was started just a few months ago. But there's not much
beyond a few mailing lists with an automated nag:
http://common-lisp.net/pipermail/stdutil-devel/2006-June/date.html
Yours is an excellent idea, but I'm afraid ideas are not enough. It
takes a lot of "blood, sweat and code" to even start a project.
Paolo
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