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.exe         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
      emx-user.doc     emx applications user's guide
      README           this text
      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


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

Edit the contents of config.lsp appropriately for your site,
especially the definitions of short-site-name and long-site-name.

Then start

         lisp -M lispinit.mem

When the LISP prompt

      > _

appears, type

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

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.
Assuming D:\LIB\LISP :

   mkdir d:\lib\lisp
   copy lisp.exe d:\lib\lisp
   copy lispinit.mem d:\lib\lisp

And create a batch file that starts lisp:

   copy con c:\bat\clisp.bat
   d:\lib\lisp\lisp.exe -M d:\lib\lisp\lispinit.mem %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
   [Ctrl-Z]


The editor:
-----------

Normally CLISP's ED function calls the editor you specified in config.lsp.
However, after you did

    (load "editor")

it invokes a builtin screen editor. It is a bit Emacs-like: you can evaluate
lisp expressions from within the editor, and the result is pasted into the
editor buffer. Type Alt-H to see the full set of commands.


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

If clisp doesn't start up at all, check EMX-USER.DOC. lisp.exe is an EMX
application, so everything mentioned there applies to lisp.exe.

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. register dumps, please send a description of the error
and how to produce it reliably to the authors.


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

If you find CLISP fast and bug-free and you like using it, a gift of $25
(or any amount you like) will be appreciated. Most DOS software costs
something, so you will probably already be used to paying.

If not, feel free to send us suggestions for improvement. Or grab the
source of CLISP, improve it yourself and send me your patches.

We are indebted to
  * Richard Stallman's GNU project for GCC and the readline library.
  * Eberhard Mattes for EMX.


Authors:
--------

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

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

