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AIList Digest Volume 3 Issue 016
AIList Digest Friday, 8 Feb 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 16
Today's Topics:
AI Tools - Scheme for MS-DOS & IBM VM/CMS Lisp & SUN PSL &
ADA and LISP Standards,
Applications - Command and Control,
Seminars - The Totality of Knowledge (SU) &
Logic and Functional Programming (CSLI) &
AI and Distributed Computing (MIT)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 85 18:22:48 PST
From: Richard K. Jennings <jennings@AEROSPACE>
Subject: Scheme for MS-DOS
Is there a source of documentation for Scheme, and an implementation for
small MS-DOS machines? Would appreciate any information on this topic.
Rich.
AFSCF/XRP
PO Box 3430
Sunnyvale, CA 94088-3430
(408) 744-6427 AV: 799-6427
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 85 9:04:33 EST
From: Pierre duPont <pdupont@bbn-spca>
Subject: IBM VM/CMS Lisp
I am trying to locate information about what Lisp interpreters
and/or compilers are available on IBM VM/CMS mainframes. So far,
the only one I have identified is from IBM, and as yet I know
very little about it.
I am interested in any flavor of lisp, preferrably Common Lisp, and
would like to get the names of companies, people, or whatever,
who have experience with or know about VM/CMS Lisps.
Thanks,
- Pierre
pdupont@bbn-unix.arpa
------------------------------
Date: 06 Feb 85 11:59:58 PST (Wed)
From: peck@sri-spam
Subject: AI, Lisp, Graphics on SUN computers?
I would like to hear from anyone using SUN computers
who can supply answers or comments on any of these issues:
Is Franz the only (best) lisp available?
Has anyone used the Maryland Flavors to create useful tools/extensions?
Any support for sun graphics (windows, menus,etc) a la Interlisp-D?
Any differential reports of Prolog (Quintus) vs Lisp ?
Any obvious alternative to SUN? (vendor in same class (Tektronix?))
Worst or hidden problems, pitfalls, gotcha's, etc.
> Can real AI development (even applications) be supported on SUN's? <
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 85 14:36:22 MST
From: kessler%utah-orion@utah-cs (Robert Kessler)
Subject: Re: AI, Lisp, Graphics on SUN computers? (Long Message)
> I would like to hear from anyone using SUN computers
> who can supply answers or comments on any of these issues:
> Is Franz the only (best) lisp available?
We have finally finished porting Portable Standard LISP (PSL) to yet
another machine. This time it is now running on the SUN. Initial
timing measurements indicate that its speed is somewhere between a
Vax 750 and 780 (all running PSL), and about twice as fast as Franz running
the REDUCE algebra system test on Suns. We are now running the Gabriel
benchmarks to discover where it fits in the set. For more details
see the announcement at the end of this message.
> Has anyone used the Maryland Flavors to create useful tools/extensions?
PSL provides support for a simple flavors package that seems quite
useful. However, the current version has no inheritance.
> Any support for sun graphics (windows, menus,etc) a la Interlisp-D?
We have oload working which allows you to call externally compiled
routines (like other c sources). So the interface should be easy to
add (but we haven't done it).
> Any differential reports of Prolog (Quintus) vs Lisp ?
None that I know of.
> Any obvious alternative to SUN? (vendor in same class (Tektronix?))
PSL also runs on Apollo's and HP Series 200 (both 68K based machines).
We have also ported a simple "educational" version to the 128K
Macintosh which is used in a beginning programming class. We plan on
moving at least the Standard LISP subset and compiler to the 512K mac
(so if you want to go really cheap...... :-) )
> Worst or hidden problems, pitfalls, gotcha's, etc.
We had a lot of problems with the Sun port. Some were hardware
related, others were differences between Unix 4.2 on the Sun and on the
Vax. After we get some more experience using PSL on the machine, maybe
we could report more.
> > Can real AI development (even applications) be supported on SUN's? <
I think so, as long as you can get one with enough memory. Some of our
applications running on HP 9836's (which doesn't have virtual memory)
really fly (better than a 780 in speed). So, memory is really a key to
a fast machine.
>
Bob.
PSL 3.2 for the SUN Workstation
We are pleased to announce that Portable Standard LISP (PSL) version
3.2 is now available for the Sun workstation. PSL is about the power,
speed and flavor of Franz LISP or MACLISP, with growing influence
from Common LISP. It is recognized as an efficient and portable
LISP implementation with many more capabilities than described in
the 1979 Standard LISP Report. PSL's main strength is its
portability across many different systems, including: Vax BSD
Unix, Vax VMS, Extended Addressing DecSystem-20 Tops-20, Apollo
DOMAIN Aegis, and HP Series 200. A version for the IBM-370 is in
beta test and two Cray versions are being used on an experimental
basis. [...]
PSL is in heavy use at Utah, and by collaborators at Hewlett-Packard,
Rand, Stanford, Columbia and over 250 other sites. Many existing
programs and applications have been adapted to PSL including
Hearn's REDUCE computer algebra system and GLISP, Novak's object
oriented LISP dialect. These are available from Hearn and Novak.
For more information, contact:
Utah Symbolic Computation Group Secretary
University of Utah - Dept. of Computer Science
3160 Merrill Engineering Building
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112
ARPANET: CRUSE@UTAH-20
USENET: utah-cs!cruse
------------------------------
Date: 7-Feb-85 19:41:45-PST
From: jbn@FORD-WDL1.ARPA
Subject: Lisp standards?
One correction; Ada subsets are NOT approved by DoD; see ANSI/MIL-STD
1815a-1983, section 1.1.2. There are no approved subsets, and no approved
supersets. Before there were any validated Ada compilers, the AJPO was
somewhat tolerant of the use of the Ada name regarding compilers that
were incomplete, but the official policy appears on the inside cover of the
Ada standard; ``Describing, advertising, or promoting a language processor
as an ``Ada'' processor is equivalent to making a voluntary statement of
conformance to ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A. ... Those persons advertising or
otherwise promoting a language processor asserted as being a standard Ada
processor ... are required to provide the AJPO with evidence sufficient
to demonstrate conformance with the Ada standard. ... Misuse of the trademark
(Ada) may lead to legal action.''
That seems to cover it.
As for Common Lisp, the amusing thing about the Lisp community is that
all the recent dialects are being promoted as ``standard''; we have
Common Lisp, Portable Standard Lisp, and the old Interlisp. None of these
are ANSI or ISO standards. All are huge. And all assume an environment
suitable for program development (as opposed to an embedded system).
What we really need is an agreed-upon minimal Lisp in which portable
programs can be written if desired, and for which everyone agrees that the
semantics of the primitives are uniform. Larger dialects would be supersets
of this base. As yet, we don't even have agreement on the semantics of
(car nil).
John Nagle
------------------------------
Date: 6 Feb 1985 1001-EST (Wednesday)
From: trwatf!maverick@seismo.ARPA (Mark D. Grover)
Subject: re: Command and Control applications
In response to Araman's question, there certainly *are*
applications of expert systems in Command and Control. The prob-
lem (which you've probably already run into) is that researchers
of this application rarely publish anything which would be useful
to other designers. In my view, this is due to a combination of
the competition among defense contractors, the practical (ap-
plied vs. basic research) flavor of the work, and the lack of
return-value from publishing to the sponsors of the work.
Occasionally there are write-ups in the military service jour-
nals, but the only place you'll find information that is
truly helpful to designers will be in the traditional AI journals
(for those applications which have not yet hit the opera-
tional stage). Of course the government AI labs publish useful
basic research of good quality, but such systems have gen-
erally not been developed for the rigorous conditions of an
operational environment. Anything that has reached that
stage, I'd love to know about. The closest thing I know is Infer-
ence Corp's Navex system for NASA using ART. (Aviation Week,
9/17/84, p. 79). TRW has produced fielded prototypes for certain
C3I applications but has not yet published details.
I face these problems constantly (both in trying to do
research and figuring out where, when and what I should pub-
lish). I would favor a government clearinghouse (like NTIS)
specifically for research software distribution (especially
half-baked solutions that could be picked up and improved by oth-
ers). This should work at all appropriate classification levels,
but unclassified software could be stressed.
Most of the C3I work with which I am familiar
relies heavily on planning, constraint checking, and deduction.
Other than that, I can only say that the success has
been mixed. I believe this is due more to the paucity of
researchers working on fieldable defense solutions than to
the maturity of AI. There is much that is promising in produc-
ing intelligent adjuncts to command, and we are working
seriously to provide them.
-- MDG Mark D. Grover
Advanced Technology Facility
TRW Defense Systems Group
2751 Prosperity Ave.
Fairfax, VA 22031
(703) 876-8184, -8036
ARPA: trwatf!maverick@SEISMO
UUCP: ...!{decvax,ihnp4,allegra}!seismo!trwatf!maverick
------------------------------
Date: Wed 6 Feb 85 10:09:17-PST
From: Renate Kempf <HPP-SECRETARY@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - The Totality of Knowledge (SU)
[Forwarded from the Stanford SIGLUNCH distribution by Laws@SRI-AI.]
DATE: Friday, February 8, 1985
LOCATION: Chemistry Gazebo, between Physical and Organic Chemistry
TIME: 12:05
SPEAKER: Pierre Bierre
Clairvoyant Systems
sensory learning machine research
ABSTRACT: The Totality of Knowledge
Would it be possible, in a few words or a single illustration, to
capture and enclose all the knowledge both existing now and in the
indefinite future?
The field of AI stands to benefit by coming to grips with the totality
of that which it claims to study. Having a way to once-and-for-all
embrace all knowledge will help AI researchers blaze the trail beyond
limited-domain systems in future work. The practical payoff will be
knowledge systems where the user steers the conversation at the
human-machine interface without running up against artificially
imposed domain boundaries. Once more, the same fluidity will apply to
knowledge transmission among intelligent machines.
Come munch on lunch while Pierre attempts to throw a lasso around
everything that will ever be known.
[For a detailed introduction to this week's SIGLUNCH topic, see "The
Professor's Challenge," The AI Magazine, Winter 1985, pp. 60-70. I
would take the central thesis to be that the future of AI is in
learning systems that build up concepts from their own experiences
(including formal instruction) rather than in expert systems with
knowledge bases supplied by AI theoreticians. -- KIL]
------------------------------
Date: Wed 6 Feb 85 17:20:59-PST
From: Emma Pease <Emma@SU-CSLI.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - Logic and Functional Programming (CSLI)
[Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.]
2:15 p.m., 2/14 CSLI Seminar
Redwood Hall ``Logic and Functional Programming''
Room G-19 Joseph Goguen, CSLI
Discussion will be led by Fernando Pereira
We begin by reviewing what logic and functional programming are, indicating
basic aspects of their programming styles, applications and implementations.
We then show how to enrich logic programming with some features of current
interest in programming methodology, maintaining both logical rigor and
efficient implementation. The first and most important feature is
functional programming; full logical equality provides an elegant way to
combine the power of logic programming (including logical variables,
pattern matching and automatic backtracking) with functional programing
(supporting functions and their composition, as well as strong typing and
user definable abstract data types). An interesting new feature that
emerges here is a complete algorithm for solving equations containing
logical variables; this algorithm uses ``narrowing,'' a technique from the
theory of rewrite rules. The underlying logical system here is many-sorted
Horn clause logic *with* equality. A useful refinement is ``subsorts,''
which can be seen as an ordering relation on the set of sorts (usually
called ``types'') of data. Finally, we provide generic modules by using
methods developed in the specification language Clear. These features make
up a language called Eqlog; we illustrate them with a program for the
well-known Missionaries and Cannibals problem, and with some simple
examples from natural language processing. --Joseph Goguen
------------------------------
Date: 6 Feb 1985 16:31 EST (Wed)
From: "Daniel S. Weld" <WELD%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - AI and Distributed Computing (MIT)
[Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.]
Gul A. Agha
Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Computing
TUESDAY 2/12/85 4:00pm 8th floor playroom
To take advantage of the parallelism available in distributed systems,
many programming languages incorporate concurrency. Unfortunately,
distributed systems often exhibit pathological behavior: Problems such
as divergence, deadlock, and the Brock-Ackerman anomaly make it
difficult to program using concurrent constructs. The talk will
describe a model for actors which addresses such problems.
Actors are particularly relevant to computation in A.I. For example,
actors permit dynamic reconfigurability and extensibility. We will
show how the actor model supports abstraction and compositionality in
the context of open, evolving systems. A simple actor language,
called SAL, will be defined for illustrative purposes.
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End of AIList Digest
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