Re: Developers Guide to Semantic Web Toolkits for different Programming Languages

Well, different *dialects* of Lisp are generally incompatible. Perhaps you
are referring to using different Common Lisp *implementations* (and *closely
related* -- but now mostly obsolete -- dialects such as Symbolics Lisp,
etc.), between which there are only minor incompatibilities (often having
something to do with the OS interface, threads, and like -- the stuff that
the X3J13 committee didn't standardize).

The currently prevailing dialects of Lisp (Common Lisp & Scheme) do not even
share the same syntax.

Since -- what I understand to be -- the intention of the report is to be a
*practical* overview of existing Semantic Web toolkits, it makes a lot of
sense to say "Common Lisp", since finding a Scheme-based toolkit will not
help -- at all -- if it is Common Lisp that you want.

    - Ora

> From: "ext Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>
> Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 13:49:31 -0500 (EST)
> To: <ora.lassila@nokia.com>
> Cc: <chris@bizer.de>, <mail@d-westphal.de>
> Subject: Re: Developers Guide to Semantic Web Toolkits for different
> Programming Languages
> 
> And how is this different  from the case with C++, for example?  Yes, you
> can sometimes get a C++ program to compile with different compilers, but
> producing an actual executable is more difficult.
> 
> When I programmed in Lisp, I made sure that my program would work in
> different dialects as much as possible.   Sometimes it wasn't possible, but
> this was more usually because I needed some UI stuff that only existed on
> one particular platform.
> 
> peter
> 
> 
> From: Ora Lassila <ora.lassila@nokia.com>
> Subject: Re: Developers Guide to Semantic Web Toolkits for different
> Programming Languages
> Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 13:35:54 -0500
> 
>> No, if you say "Lisp" it isn't actually any language you can get a compiler
>> for, for example. Not true for Java or C. Ever since McCarthy's "Lisp 1.5"
>> was obsoleted, no "Lisp system" has actually been called "Lisp", and no
>> dialect has been called that either.
>> 
>> My observation (having been a user of many "Lisp" systems over the past 20+
>> years) is that only people who do not use any Lisp dialect call this *family
>> of languages* "Lisp".
>> 
>> And, having a Scheme program handy for some purpose does not help you -- at
>> all -- if you prefer Common Lisp.
>> 
>>     - Ora
>> 
>> -- 
>> Ora Lassila  mailto:ora.lassila@nokia.com  http://www.lassila.org/
>> Research Fellow & Head of Competence Area (Data Modeling & Management)
>> Nokia Research Center / Boston
>> 
>>> From: "ext Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>
>>> Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 12:50:07 -0500 (EST)
>>> To: <ora.lassila@nokia.com>
>>> Cc: <chris@bizer.de>, <mail@d-westphal.de>, <semantic-web@w3.org>
>>> Subject: Re: Developers Guide to Semantic Web Toolkits for different
>>> Programming Languages
>>> 
>>> From: Ora Lassila <ora.lassila@nokia.com>
>>> Subject: Re: Developers Guide to Semantic Web Toolkits for different
>>> Programming Languages
>>> Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 11:51:15 -0500
>>> 
>>>> Chris,
>>> 
>>> [...]
>>> 
>>>> First, "Lisp" is not an actual programming language per se. You should say
>>>> "Common Lisp" (this is the ANSI X3J13 Standard). There are other dialects,
>>>> such as "Scheme", but I haven't seen any RDF software for those.
>>> 
>>> Come again?  I would say that Lisp is just as much an actual programming
>>> language as C++ or Java.  Yes, there are different dialects of Lisp but so
>>> are there (or were there) different dialects of Java, just ask Sun and
>>> Microsoft.  Many other programming languages have distinct dialects;  I
>>> would guess that there are significant dialects of almost every widely used
>>> programming languages.
>>> 
>>> [...]
>>> 
>>> Peter F. Patel-Schneider
>>> Bell Labs Research
>>> 
>>> PS:  Yes, yes, I know that the Java disagreement has been sort of resolved.
>> 
>>

Received on Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:37:47 UTC