
Interlisp project: Restore Interlisp-D to usability on modern OSes - tosh
http://interlisp.org/
======
undershirt
I missed the golden age of lisp, but i know this project for its legendary
structural editor, SEdit[1], released the year I was born. i found it
mentioned in an old paredit readme, something poignant like “paredit is only a
shadow of what interlisp was: true structural editing”.

[1]:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qsmF8HHskg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qsmF8HHskg)

~~~
dleslie
What I find fascinating is less the balancing and structural editing, but that
these old lisps _strongly_ embraced the absence of source files. The
environment was being edited, and not some text documents.

~~~
cabalamat
> The environment was being edited, and not some text documents.

That's all very well until you want to put your code in source control.

~~~
varjag
Well, some older Lisps not only did support files, but also file versioning on
operating systems allowing for that. You still have provisions for that in
ANSI Common Lisp spec.

~~~
tester89
Where? I’d be curious to read it.

~~~
varjag
[http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/f_pn_h...](http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/f_pn_hos.htm)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versioning_file_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versioning_file_system)

------
Animats
_To try to recapture the sense of fluidity in the development cycle that I 've
not encountered since._

Er. no. My comment on HN when this came up 6 years ago: [1]

There were some good ideas in Interlisp, ones that could be revived for other
languages. One was the ability to select a block of code and have it pulled
out and made a separate function. This was a safe transformation. All
necessary variables were made parameters. Not hard to do in LISP. More useful
for C++ refactoring.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8751081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8751081)

~~~
agumonkey
I think there are a few things like that in emacs lisp but not well
distributed. Maybe people want to discover them for themselves.

~~~
moonchild
From another comment in this thread:

> paredit is only a shadow of what interlisp was: true structural editing

------
kps
The ‘Lexical Functional Grammar’ image mentioned in the article used to be
available together with an emulator that ran on the Alpha under OSF/1\. I
remember this because it caused me to slightly improve the OSF compatibility
layer of NetBSD¹ so I could run it on a surplused DEC 3000 that I'd picked up
for $100.

¹[https://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-
bugs/2001/05/30/0003.ht...](https://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-
bugs/2001/05/30/0003.html)

------
dang
If curious see also

2013:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5966328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5966328)

------
fractallyte
Here's a ready-to-run image:
[http://autergy.com/medley.zip](http://autergy.com/medley.zip)

------
mark_l_watson
I had an Xerox 1108 Lisp Machine. I used InterLisp-D for the first year and a
half of ownership and then switched to their Common Lisp implementation.

InterLisp-D was great fun and I would enjoy having for nostalgia. That said,
the modern Common Lisp ecosystem is awesome as is its community so I
personally would not use InterLisp-D for large projects.

------
13415
This is a great project. But it's only in the early planning phase so far,
right? Or is there already some code on Github?

~~~
Rotten194
Looks like they have their hands on the code and are making changes, but
haven't put the actual code on GH yet (maybe still working on getting
permission?):
[https://github.com/Interlisp/medley/issues/2#issuecomment-66...](https://github.com/Interlisp/medley/issues/2#issuecomment-664019632)

~~~
bobbane
I'm on the fringes of this project, trying to shake enough free time loose to
contribute to coding - I'm still employed beating code into submission for
NASA.

What we have is access to the source code for the D-machine emulator that
Interlisp-D/Medley Common Lisp ran on in the 1980's.

The emulator was quite usable on 1980-s hardware - I worked for the company
that sold it in the late 80s and early 90s.

We are still deciding stuff like what exact open source license to use, and
how much priority to give to the two main goals:

* Historical - can it run old system dumps with important systems like NoteCards, LOOPS, LFG...

* Modernization - integration with host OS (clipboard, file system, networking), increasing memory space, adding Unicode

------
timonoko
The Teletype editor was a marvel. The whole program on one line (cond & & ..).
In 1976 I remember I tried to invent something similar to natural languages.
Finnish was very suited for this, with long words with plenty of affixes, but
the base words are mostly short.

