Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Graham Fawcett]

On 4/1/07, Matthew Welland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Wait! Was this a (nother) April fools joke or is it for real? If the former
the jokesters can revel in the knowledge that they were very successful in
pulling the wool over the eyes of at least one list member.


Let's just say that next year, I'll check my calendar before replying
to one of Nelson's messages with a five-point tirade :-)

Happy April 1 everyone, and long live the Chicken.

Graham


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Matthew Welland wrote:
Wait! Was this a (nother) April fools joke or is it for real? If the former 
the jokesters can revel in the knowledge that they were very successful in 
pulling the wool over the eyes of at least one list member. 
  


Me too.  And I can't tell who's serious about what.  Returning now to 
pet the dinosaur in the parking lot.



Cheers,
Brandon Van Every



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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Graham Fawcett wrote:


I just read Alejo's blog post:

  4. [Java] tends to make the code very easy to maintain 


#4 is extremely arguable. Most serious Java projects I've seen have
degraded into an unreadable pile of abstraction layers. There is such
a thing as too many interfaces. And the code is not succinct at all;
lots of maintenance code needed (e.g. for exception handling). IMO,
Python and Ruby have a good sweet-spot for short, generally-readable
code.


I helped start the Seattle Functional Programmers.  It has a strong 
contingent from Amazon.com, who use various experimental languages for 
heavy duty web and customer database stuff.  Pretty much as world class 
as this sort of problem is going to get.  As of 6 months ago, Python and 
Ruby were internally popular, but the Ruby crowd was getting more actual 
work done.  I don't know the situation today.  But from this data point, 
it's clear to me that the smart guys think there are better things to 
work with than Java.



Cheers,
Brandon Van Every



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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Zbigniew wrote:


Bigloo has fewer resources going into wikis, extensions, and
cross-platform builds.  That's more resources for your program.


IIUYC, you're saying the fairly small Bigloo community doesn't have much 
to do, and would be ready and eager to take on a fairly arbitrary 
project, such as SvnWiki.  Whereas the Chicken community is larger, but 
people all have their own areas of specialty, and are pretty busy with 
their own concerns.  To this I say: I seriously doubt the Bigloo 
volunteers have time on their hands like you suggest.  You'd better go 
ask 'em before billing them as a readily available labor pool.  It is 
far more likely that they have as much energy per volunteer as any open 
source community: very little .  And we do know that Bigloo's community 
is smaller, with less effort made towards the infrastructural concerns 
(wikis, extensions, cross-platform builds) that make systems more widely 
useful and attract more developers.




[...]

Bigloo's build is based on GNU Autoconf, which is much easier to
program with when dealing with a large project such as a web page.


Why is that?  I presume you're speaking from experience, programming 
both GNU Autoconf and CMake "in the large?"  Or are you speaking from 
prejudice, that you know GNU Autoconf, lotsa other people know GNU 
Autoconf, and you have no idea if CMake offers any advantages or 
disadvantages, other than it's not GNU Autoconf?  FWIW CMake is good 
enough for KDE, and for them it was better than SCons, so I'm not 
inclined to believe any a priori assertion that there's a problem with 
programming CMake in the large.  I'd like to hear specific details about 
what's an enabler or disabler in either build system.


Why is Bigloo or Chicken's build even an issue here?  Since when do we 
build Scheme itself to implement a Scheme application?  Or is there 
something exotic in SvnWiki's principle of operation that I'm not aware 
of?  I wasn't aware that the build system was of any concern to the 
Scheme programmer at all, other than it builds, it builds on my system, 
and it builds without me tearing my hair out.




Finally, a major advantage of Bigloo over Chicken Scheme is that
Bigloo does not have Scheme in its name.  This is critical for your
goals.


I really doubt that, considering that "Bigloo is a Scheme 
implementation..." is the 1st statement on its homepage.  If marketing 
is really the dealbreaker, we can canonically refer to "Chicken" when 
dealing with people who are scared of Scheme.  But I think this is 
silliness.  It's not that it's Scheme.  It's that it's not a mainstream 
web language, i.e. Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, or Perl, that lotsa people 
already know.  You simply aren't going to get a lot of people arseing 
themselves to learn a new, non-mainstream, somewhat weird language.  The 
labor pool is inherently limited.



Cheers,
Brandon Van Every



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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Matthew Welland]

Wait! Was this a (nother) April fools joke or is it for real? If the former 
the jokesters can revel in the knowledge that they were very successful in 
pulling the wool over the eyes of at least one list member. 

On Sunday 01 April 2007 13:16, Kon Lovett wrote:
> Oh my, we are a serious bunch.
>
>
>
> ___
> Chicken-users mailing list
> Chicken-users@nongnu.org
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/chicken-users

-- 
http://www.kiatoa.com, fight for a better world.


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Arto Bendiken]

On 4/1/07, Peter Busser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


I suggest to implement a Scheme interpreter in PHP. That way the junior
programmers can ``grow the LOC'' in PHP. And the senior programmers can
do whatever they do in Scheme. That way you can expect contributions
from both communities.


There are several Lisp/Scheme interpreters written in PHP. There is
even one [1] which is bundled as an add-on module providing a
scripting language for one of the most popular content management
systems around [2].

Yes, never worry, Greenspun's Tenth [3] is well and going strong.

[1] http://drupal.org/project/dript
[2] http://drupal.org/
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun's_Tenth_Rule

--
Arto Bendiken | http://bendiken.net/


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Ivan Raikov]

There is, in fact, a Scheme interpreter written in PHP:

http://www.geocities.com/markoriedelde/scheme/index.html


Peter Busser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On Sun, Apr 01, 2007 at 03:12:20PM -0400, Graham Fawcett wrote:
>> On 4/1/07, Nelson Castillo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> >  This way, even junior programmers with little programming knowledge 
>> >  could help
>> >  us grow the number of lines of code that Svnwiki currently has.
>> 
>> With respect, Nelson, making it easier for junior PHP programmers to
>> "grow the LOC" of a project sounds like a recipe for disaster.
>
> I suggest to implement a Scheme interpreter in PHP. That way the junior
> programmers can ``grow the LOC'' in PHP. And the senior programmers can
> do whatever they do in Scheme. That way you can expect contributions
> from both communities.
>
> Groetjes,
> Peter.
>


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Peter Busser]

On Sun, Apr 01, 2007 at 03:12:20PM -0400, Graham Fawcett wrote:
> On 4/1/07, Nelson Castillo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >  This way, even junior programmers with little programming knowledge 
> >  could help
> >  us grow the number of lines of code that Svnwiki currently has.
> 
> With respect, Nelson, making it easier for junior PHP programmers to
> "grow the LOC" of a project sounds like a recipe for disaster.

I suggest to implement a Scheme interpreter in PHP. That way the junior
programmers can ``grow the LOC'' in PHP. And the senior programmers can
do whatever they do in Scheme. That way you can expect contributions
from both communities.

Groetjes,
Peter.


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Peter Busser]

Hi!

> Oh my, we are a serious bunch.

I believe someone once said that humour is a serious business...

Groetjes,
Peter.


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Graham Fawcett]

On 4/1/07, Kon Lovett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Oh my, we are a serious bunch.


Yes, too serious, and especially so on certain days of the year.

Graham

"Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise:
and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."
   --- Proverbs 17:28


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Kon Lovett]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Oh my, we are a serious bunch.

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iEYEARECAAYFAkYQEyUACgkQJJNoeGe+5O62NwCeJZl31J8/EBRbDVQhnbmjqB0H
RWMAn1lR13vu3zrLORngxXXeU32rMCLG
=Nghb
-END PGP SIGNATURE-


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Shawn Rutledge]

What are the problems you wish to solve by rewriting it at all?  Is it
really so bad?  Are there so many features to add that you need so
much help from other programmers?

On 3/31/07, Alejandro Forero Cuervo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I have been having some conversations with Nelson Castillo and other
Svnwiki users and contributors.  Some of us believe that by rewriting
Svnwiki entirely in another programming language the number of
contributions would increase significantly.  A lot of people would
like to contribute but they lack the programming skills required to
learn Scheme.

We are considering rewriting it in either Java or PHP.  I'm leaning
more towards Java but a very good case for PHP has been made by
Arhuaco.  We have also considered Python, Ruby and C#.

There are more details here:

http://wiki.freaks-unidos.net//weblogs/azul/rewriting-svnwiki

It should be said that we haven't made up our minds yet.  The amount
of efforts to rewrite Svnwiki in another language shouldn't be
underestimated.  However, unless a good case is made for keeping it in
Scheme, chances are we will switch to another language.

Thoughts?

Alejo.
http://azul.freaks-unidos.net/


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[Chicken-users] Re: srfi-19 local-timezone-locale

[Kon Lovett]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Apr 1, 2007, at 10:14 AM, Hans Bulfone wrote:


hi,





thanks!

i hate to say this but it still doesn't work on my system :(

should the tz offset in the tz string constructed in
make-local-timezone-locale be east or west of utc?


Positive for west. So PST is +8:00 & CET is -1:00:

"If preceded by a (`-') the time zone shall be east of the Prime  
Meridian; otherwise it shall be west (which may be indicated by an  
optional preceding (`+'))."


But SRFI-19 uses the reverse:

"The field tm_gmtoff is the offset (in seconds) of the time  
represented from UTC, with positive values indicating east of the  
Prime Meridian."




if i unterstand correctly, it should be west of utc,
which is what seconds->local-time returns on my system
(and also should return according to the docs @ callcc.org).
so imho the sign of the timezone offset shouldn't be
flipped on linux.

imho seconds->local-time should be fixed so that it at least
returns the timezone offset with the same sign interpretation
on all systems.  it imho now returns seconds east of utc
on mac os x and seconds west of utc on all other platforms.


Yes, different meaning on MacOS X from, it seems, everything else.

MacOS X:

#;2> (local-timezone-locale)
(#t (name . "+8:0:0PST+7:0:0") (source . "POSIX") (std-name .  
"") (std-offset . 28800) (dst-name . "PST") (dst-offset . 25200)  
(dst-start (4 1 0) . 3600) (dst-end (10 5 0) . 3600))

#;3> (timezone-locale-offset)
- -25200
#;4> (seconds->local-time (current-seconds))
#(56 32 12 1 3 107 0 90 #t -25200)

Windows:

#;2> (local-timezone-locale)
(#t (name . "+8:0:0+7:0:0") (source . "POSIX") (std-name .  
"") (std-offset . 28800) (dst-name . "") (dst-offset . 25200)  
(dst-start (4 1 0) . 3600) (dst-end (10 5 0) . 3600))

#;3> (timezone-locale-offset)
- -25200
#;4> (seconds->local-time (current-seconds))
#(30 7 12 1 3 107 0 90 #t 28800)

Sigh, please get 2.6.5; this is fixed.

Note that 'ftime' & 'gettimeofday' both return a positive value for  
the tz offset in minutes (i.e. west of UTC) in MacOS X. This might be  
a better x-platform source.



felix, what do you think about this?


BTW, what does '(vector-ref (seconds->local-time (current-seconds))
8)' return?


#;8> (vector-ref (seconds->local-time (current-seconds)) 8)
#t

bye,
hans.


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TrwAn2gfoUmmYWA8qX6/dbrakk8mzlRI
=z2bm
-END PGP SIGNATURE-


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Graham Fawcett]

On 4/1/07, Nelson Castillo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

  This way, even junior programmers with little programming knowledge could help
  us grow the number of lines of code that Svnwiki currently has.


With respect, Nelson, making it easier for junior PHP programmers to
"grow the LOC" of a project sounds like a recipe for disaster.

It can be healthy to have a second implementation of anything.
Rewriting it in PHP isn't going to magically attract a horde of
developers, though.

I just read Alejo's blog post:
http://wiki.freaks-unidos.net/weblogs/azul/rewriting-svnwiki
where he raises these points:
  1. it has been proved to scale to a great scale,
  2. we will very soon have a free software implementation,
  3. it is a very well-known language (ie. a lot of people know how
to code on it),
  4. it tends to make the code very easy to maintain and
  5. it will probably run significantly faster than PHP.

I'd like to respond, here among friends:
#1 has more to do with the JVM than Java; and other things have been
proven to scale (even PHP). There are other JVM languages if you are
looking for choices.
#2 isn't a reason to choose Java, merely one less reason not to choose Java.
#3 is definitely true.
#4 is extremely arguable. Most serious Java projects I've seen have
degraded into an unreadable pile of abstraction layers. There is such
a thing as too many interfaces. And the code is not succinct at all;
lots of maintenance code needed (e.g. for exception handling). IMO,
Python and Ruby have a good sweet-spot for short, generally-readable
code.
#5 is a reason not to pick PHP, but it's also a reason not to leave Scheme.

Pick whatever language you want guys, and best of luck: it's the
developers not the language that makes the difference in the end. (Me,
I think I'd write a Scheme DSL for writing subversion-based wiki
applications, and show my junior PHP developers what a Real Language
can do. ;-)

Good luck,

Graham


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Zbigniew]

If the issue is difficulty with Scheme then may I suggest Bigloo.

Bigloo is based on a far easier dialect of Scheme.  For example,
Bigloo doesn't have first class continuations by default.  And the
Bigloo standard is only 49 pages, much of which is advertising.

Bigloo has fewer resources going into wikis, extensions, and
cross-platform builds.  That's more resources for your program.

Bigloo has a notion of static type annotations so the HTML will be
faster and more understandable for the average user.

Bigloo's build is based on GNU Autoconf, which is much easier to
program with when dealing with a large project such as a web page.

Finally, a major advantage of Bigloo over Chicken Scheme is that
Bigloo does not have Scheme in its name.  This is critical for your
goals.

Check it out:
http://chicken.wiki.br/bigloo

On 4/1/07, Alejandro Forero Cuervo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Some of us believe that by rewriting Svnwiki entirely in
another programming language the number of contributions
would increase significantly.  A lot of people would like to
contribute but they lack the programming skills required
to learn Scheme.



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[Chicken-users] Re: srfi-19 local-timezone-locale

[Hans Bulfone]

hi,

On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 02:43:16PM -0700, Kon Lovett wrote:
> Hi Hans,
> 
> I released 2.6.4 which has the local-timezone-locale hack conditioned  
> on platform type. Also, the hack has been moved into 'make-local- 
> timezone-locale' & 'local-timezone-locale' is now a parameter.

thanks!

i hate to say this but it still doesn't work on my system :(

should the tz offset in the tz string constructed in
make-local-timezone-locale be east or west of utc?

if i unterstand correctly, it should be west of utc,
which is what seconds->local-time returns on my system
(and also should return according to the docs @ callcc.org).
so imho the sign of the timezone offset shouldn't be
flipped on linux.

imho seconds->local-time should be fixed so that it at least
returns the timezone offset with the same sign interpretation
on all systems.  it imho now returns seconds east of utc
on mac os x and seconds west of utc on all other platforms.
felix, what do you think about this?

> BTW, what does '(vector-ref (seconds->local-time (current-seconds))  
> 8)' return?

#;8> (vector-ref (seconds->local-time (current-seconds)) 8)
#t

bye,
hans.


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Nelson Castillo]

I'm not sure whether the contributions would increase significantly.
Most free software projects depend on a very small number of developers.

> We are considering rewriting it in either Java or PHP.  I'm leaning
> more towards Java but a very good case for PHP has been made by
> Arhuaco.  We have also considered Python, Ruby and C#.

The disadvantage of svnwiki is that it depends on Subversion. Currently
Adamantix uses Wiliki, which is written in Guache Scheme. It is perhaps
not the best Wiki out there. But it is install and forget. I would switch
to svnwiki because it has more features and is under active development
(and because it runs on Chicken). I don't know if I would contribute,
because I am still not a very good Scheme programmer. Most free software
projects only have a few people who do most of the work.


That's why I think we should use PHP instead.

  Whether I like it or not, I must admit that those difficult cumbersome
 functional programming techniques have turned off a lot of prospective
 contributors. Understanding the PHP tricks you have to do to overcome
 the limitations of the language is easier than learning the functional
 programming stuff.

 This way, even junior programmers with little programming knowledge could help
 us grow the number of lines of code that Svnwiki currently has.

 http://wiki.freaks-unidos.net/weblogs/arhuaco/svnwiki-in-php

I'd also settle for Java, but I think that PHP would be better.

Regards,
Nelson.-





--
http://arhuaco.org
http://emQbit.com


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Alejandro Forero Cuervo]

> The disadvantage of svnwiki is that it depends on Subversion. Currently
> Adamantix uses Wiliki, which is written in Guache Scheme. It is perhaps
> not the best Wiki out there. But it is install and forget. I would switch
> to svnwiki because it has more features and is under active development
> (and because it runs on Chicken). I don't know if I would contribute,
> because I am still not a very good Scheme programmer. Most free software
> projects only have a few people who do most of the work.

I find it interesting you consider the dependance on Subversion a
disadvantage.  To me not only it is Svnwiki's greatest advantage, it
is it's raison d'etre: I didn't want the information for my
documentation (including history) to be stored in an adhoc format that
only my wiki used.

By using Subversion I can make a checkout of the entire documentation
and work on it locally to commit the changes back (this was very
useful yesterday, when I modified around 300 files linked from
http://bogowiki.org/bogotanismos to make the same change to all of
them) and it also has the consequence of creating backups for the
information in the wikis in lots of different drives.  I can even use
WebDAV to modify the information in the wikis or software such as
, which doesn't have anything
Svnwiki-specific, on the contents of the wikis.

> Of course I could invest time to learn Subversion, but for what?

Once you've got it installed, I believe 15 minutes would be far more
than enough to learn well enough how to use it.  You may be
overestimating the time required to learn how to use it.

By the way, it should be possible to replace the dependency in
Subversion for a dependency in other version control systems, such as
DARCS or Monotone (or even, horrors, Svnwiki's adhoc format) and let
the admin decide what to use.  I don't have any interests in doing
this right now and it wouldn't be trivial, but I thought I would
mention it.  Do you currently use any kind of version control
software?

> Somewhere in the distant future I could contribute svnwiki packages
> for Adamantix, Debian, and Ubuntu.

To me the only disadvantage depending on Subversion has is that it
makes the installation process for Svnwiki a little bit more complex
than it would be if it used its own adhoc format.  To me, having
Svnwiki packages for Debian for would be a great advantage.  :-)

Thanks for your message.

Alejo.
http://azul.freaks-unidos.net/


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Mario Domenech Goulart]

On Sun, 1 Apr 2007 05:37:15 + Alejandro Forero Cuervo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:
^

> I have been having some conversations with Nelson Castillo and other
> Svnwiki users and contributors.  Some of us believe that by rewriting
> Svnwiki entirely in another programming language the number of
> contributions would increase significantly.  A lot of people would
> like to contribute but they lack the programming skills required to
> learn Scheme.
> 
> We are considering rewriting it in either Java or PHP.  I'm leaning
> more towards Java but a very good case for PHP has been made by
> Arhuaco.  We have also considered Python, Ruby and C#.

May I suggest Intercal? :-)

Best wishes,
Mario


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[Peter Busser]

Hi!

On Sun, Apr 01, 2007 at 05:37:15AM +, Alejandro Forero Cuervo wrote:
> I have been having some conversations with Nelson Castillo and other
> Svnwiki users and contributors.  Some of us believe that by rewriting
> Svnwiki entirely in another programming language the number of
> contributions would increase significantly.  A lot of people would
> like to contribute but they lack the programming skills required to
> learn Scheme.

I'm not sure whether the contributions would increase significantly.
Most free software projects depend on a very small number of developers.

> We are considering rewriting it in either Java or PHP.  I'm leaning
> more towards Java but a very good case for PHP has been made by
> Arhuaco.  We have also considered Python, Ruby and C#.

The disadvantage of svnwiki is that it depends on Subversion. Currently
Adamantix uses Wiliki, which is written in Guache Scheme. It is perhaps
not the best Wiki out there. But it is install and forget. I would switch
to svnwiki because it has more features and is under active development
(and because it runs on Chicken). I don't know if I would contribute,
because I am still not a very good Scheme programmer. Most free software
projects only have a few people who do most of the work.

But for me the obstacle which prevents me from switching to svnwiki is that
it depends on Subversion. No doubt is Subversion an excellent piece of
software. Only a piece of software I don't use and therefore don't know.
Of course I could invest time to learn Subversion, but for what? It is
much easier to install Wiliki, even if it provides less functionality.

Rewriting svnwiki in Java or PHP would only make it less attractive for
me. Java is an even bigger dependency of (at this moment still) non-free
software. PHP is free, but for me it doesn't remove the Subversion
obstacle.

Somewhere in the distant future I could contribute svnwiki packages for
Adamantix, Debian, and Ubuntu.

Well these are my 2 Euro-cents...

Groetjes,
Peter.


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Re: [Chicken-users] Rewriting Svnwiki in Java or PHP

[minh thu]

2007/4/1, Alejandro Forero Cuervo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

I have been having some conversations with Nelson Castillo and other
Svnwiki users and contributors.  Some of us believe that by rewriting
Svnwiki entirely in another programming language the number of
contributions would increase significantly.  A lot of people would
like to contribute but they lack the programming skills required to
learn Scheme.

We are considering rewriting it in either Java or PHP.  I'm leaning
more towards Java but a very good case for PHP has been made by
Arhuaco.  We have also considered Python, Ruby and C#.

There are more details here:

http://wiki.freaks-unidos.net//weblogs/azul/rewriting-svnwiki

It should be said that we haven't made up our minds yet.  The amount
of efforts to rewrite Svnwiki in another language shouldn't be
underestimated.  However, unless a good case is made for keeping it in
Scheme, chances are we will switch to another language.

Thoughts?



It's a sad news : every other project starter could say then : hey,
look, they turned their code to something else for lack of
contribution.

I guess it would not bring as many people than using Java but maybe
you can consider the following:
consider the time of a rewrite and consider the time to make the
extant code be well documented, maybe to some part, looking like a
(Scheme) tutorial.
People like Real World code.

About Ruby or Python, am I wrong by thinking that people who know Ruby
or Python are a good audience for that kind of document ? For example,
in programming.reddit, Haskell, Ruby, Scheme are well represented.

I mean that if you switch to Ruby (not Java), you will gain community
but the *kind* of programmer will be the same (i.e. functionnal or at
least not-main-stream languages lovers). So keeping Scheme might not
be so bad to attract them.

Thanks,
thu


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