GNU CLISP 2.28 release

[Sam Steingold]

The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
that has been posted to comp.os.linux.announce as well.

GNU CLISP 2.28 is now available at
 <http://clisp.cons.org>
 <http://www.clisp.org>
 <http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1355>
 <ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/ftp/clisp/release/latest>
 <ftp://cvs2.cons.org/pub/lisp/clisp/source/latest/>
 <ftp://cvs2.cons.org/pub/lisp/clisp/binaries/latest/>
please ask questions about CLISP on <address@hidden>.
if you would like to contribute to CLISP development, please subscribe
to <address@hidden> and send patches there.

CLISP Common Lisp Summary

Common Lisp is a high-level, all-purpose, object-oriented, dynamic,
functional programming language.

CLISP is a Common Lisp implementation by Bruno Haible of Karlsruhe
University and Michael Stoll of Munich University, both in Germany.
It mostly supports the Lisp described in the ANSI Common Lisp standard.

CLISP includes an interpreter, a compiler, a debugger, most of CLOS,
a foreign language interface and a socket interface &c.
An X11 interface is available through CLX and Garnet.
Command line editing is provided by GNU ReadLine.

CLISP runs on microcomputers (OS/2, Windows 95/98/2000/NT, Amiga
500-4000, Acorn RISC PC) as well as on Unix workstations (GNU/Linux,
BSD, SVR4, Sun4, DEC Alpha OSF, HP-UX, NeXTstep, SGI, AIX, Sun3 and
others) and needs only 2 MB of RAM.

CLISP is Free Software and may be distributed under the terms of GNU
GPL. You may distribute commercial applications compiled with CLISP, see
file COPYRIGHT in the CLISP distribution.

The user interface comes in German, English, French, Spanish and Dutch,
and can be changed during run time.


2.28 (2002-03-03)
=================

Important notes
---------------

* All .fas files generated by previous CLISP versions
  are invalid and must be recompiled.

User visible changes
--------------------

* ANSI CL functions MAKE-LOAD-FORM and MAKE-LOAD-FORM-SAVING-SLOTS
  are implemented.

* ANSI CL pretty printer <http://www.lisp.org/HyperSpec/Body/sec_22-2.html>
  is implemented.
  In particular,
    variables     *PRINT-LINES*, *PRINT-MISER-WIDTH*, *PRINT-PPRINT-DISPATCH*,
    macro         PPRINT-LOGICAL-BLOCK,
    local macros  PPRINT-EXIT-IF-LIST-EXHAUSTED, PPRINT-POP
    and functions PPRINT-DISPATCH, COPY-PPRINT-DISPATCH, SET-PPRINT-DISPATCH,
                  PPRINT-FILL, PPRINT-LINEAR, PPRINT-TABULAR, PPRINT-TAB,
                  PPRINT-NEWLINE, PPRINT-INDENT
  are implemented.
  See the impnotes <http://clisp.cons.org/impnotes.html#clpp> for details.

* The functions WRITE and WRITE-TO-STRING now accept :LINES, :MISER-WIDTH
  and :PRINT-PPRINT-DISPATCH keyword arguments.
  This change requires recompilation of all .fas files.

* Weak hash-tables are now supported.
  See the impnotes <http://clisp.cons.org/impnotes.html#make-hash> for details.

* Support Cygwin's "/cygdrive/drive/path" pathname syntax on Win32.

* New macro EXT:FCASE which allows specifying comparison function in CASE.
  See the impnotes <http://clisp.cons.org/impnotes.html#fcase> for details.

* New user variable CUSTOM:*LOAD-LOGICAL-PATHNAME-TRANSLATIONS-DATABASE*.
  See the impnotes <http://clisp.cons.org/impnotes.html#load-lpt> for details.

* Packages can now be locked and unlocked using EXT:PACKAGE-LOCK
  See the impnotes <http://clisp.cons.org/impnotes.html#pack-lock> for details.

* CLISP now supports internationalized Lisp programs, via GNU gettext.
  Macros ENGLISH, FRANCAIS and DEUTSCH have been removed.
  See the impnotes <http://clisp.cons.org/impnotes.html#language> for details.

* The UI language can now be changed dynamically,
  via symbol-macro *CURRENT-LANGUAGE*.
  See the impnotes <http://clisp.cons.org/impnotes.html#i18n> for details.

* Fixed a bug: LDIFF now handles dotted lists correctly.


Known problems in this release:

1. When CLISP is compiled with GCC3 on Solaris, some FFI tests fail.
   You may ignore this and proceed with the build.
   Alternatively, build without FFI.

2. Weak hash tables may crash CLISP on 64-bit platforms.
   If you do not use them, you are in good shape.


Thanks to everyone who pre-tested the release, including
 Eric Marsden <address@hidden>
 Todd Sabin <address@hidden>
 Arseny Slobodjuck <address@hidden>
and others (sorry if I forgot you :-).


--
Sam Steingold (http://www.podval.org/~sds) running RedHat7.2 GNU/Linux