Clementson's Blog

Lisp with Batteries Included

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

I often used to get emails from new Lisp users asking about the best way to get started developing with Common Lisp. I guess this was because, a few years ago, I created a page for the Common Lisp Cookbook called Setting up an IDE with Emacs on Windows or Mac OS X that a lot of people found useful. However, that page is now pretty much obsolete as I haven't maintained it for a number of years and the tool recommendations on the page are at least partly defunct (ILISP has been pretty much replaced by SLIME now). In recent years, if people asked for my advice, I have recommended one of the following:

• Emacs, SLIME, and either CLISP, OpenMCL, or SBCL (if they were adament about using an open source solution) with a suggestion to use Lispbox if they weren't very familiar with .emacs customizations.
• Either the trial (no cost) or commercial versions of Allegro Common Lisp or LispWorks (if they were amenable to using a non - OSS solution). For people who aren't already Emacs users, starting out with either ACL or LispWorks can greatly reduce the initial learning curve and both Franz and LispWorks have excellent support and user forums.

Dim Wsh
Set Wsh = Wscript.CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
Set Net = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Network")

rem Start up LispWorks
Wsh.Run("C:\PROGRA~1\LISPWO~1\LISPWO~1.EXE")

rem Wait for a few seconds for it to start
WScript.Sleep(5000)

rem Press the OK button on the splash screen
Wsh.AppActivate "Upgrade LispWorks"
Wsh.SendKeys "{ENTER}"

rem Load the startup code
Wsh.AppActivate "LispWorks Personal Edition 5.0.1"
username = Net.UserName
str = "(load " & """C:/Documents\ and\ Settings/" & username & "/My\ Documents/Lisp\ Libraries/start.lisp"")"
WScript.Sleep(100)
Wsh.SendKeys (str)
Wsh.SendKeys "{ENTER}"
WScript.Sleep(100)

do shell script "open -a \"LispWorks Personal\""
do shell script "sleep 8"

tell application "LispWorks Personal"
	activate
	tell application "System Events"
		tell process "LispWorks Personal"
			repeat until get frontmost
			end repeat
			-- The following should close the splash window but it doesn't work!! (manually close it for now)
			-- tell window "LispWorks Personal Edition"
			-- 	click button "Close"
			-- end tell
			tell window "Listener 1"
				keystroke "(when (probe-file \"~/Documents/Lisp-Libraries/start.lisp\") (load \"~/Documents/Lisp-Libraries/start.lisp\"))"
				keystroke return
			end tell
		end tell
	end tell
end tell