Aaron (and pop-forum),
I'd like to hold a barbecue for all Poplog devotees. It would be on a
Saturday or Sunday in mid- or late-June and the location would be our
garden in Worthing (opposite the windmill).
At the moment, I'd like to know if anybody is interested in an
opportunity to catch up with fellow Poplog-ers. If so, what would be a
good date?
Regards,
Jeff.
In message <200404162339.i3GNdu98022770@acws-0051.cs.bham.ac.uk>, Aaron
Sloman <A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk> writes
>Brent,
>
>> Which reminds me: What should be considered the
>> 'official' state of Poplog? I had high hopes that
>> Jeff's sourceforge work would be the location for the
>> current state-of-the-art Poplog sources, since this
>> is a public location with CVS access that everyone
>> can reference.
>
>Eventually that should happen. Right now it is being used
>mainly as the workspace for people interested in porting poplog to
>windows.
>
>Discussions of this have mostly been on the poplog-dev email list --
>though that has been quiet lately: all the people concerned have to earn
>their living doing other things -- so the work comes in bursts!
>
>> I think it would be really useful to have a single
>> master repository for the Poplog sources that could
>> hold onto patches (like the one you forgot about) so
>> they could be tracked by a release system.
>
>Agreed. Jeff Best did add me to the list of people with access to the
>openpoplog site, but I have so many different things to do and am always
>so far behind with most of them them that I have not yet even learnt how
>to use the system.
>
>So when I have something to install I ask Jeff to do it, as he has
>explained.
>
>At present, there are so few people actually contributing anything to
>the unix/linux poplog system (mainly because it has so few bugs!) that
>it is simplest for me just to handle everything where I can quickly fit
>things in without even switching from using Ved -- I use it for mail,
>programming, documentation, reading news, running grep and managing its
>output, comparing files, or directories, etc. etc. and sometimes there
>is a problem that is holding someone up badly but is easy for me to fix,
>so I just open another ved window, fix it, and then continue with what
>I was doing, leaving a note for myself to update documentation
>and the bugfixes directory later. Usually this affects only add-on
>libraries, e.g. rclib or simagent.
>
>The work on windows poplog has two streams
>
> a. attempting to add graphics based on native windows graphics
> (being done mainly by Nico Aragon in Madrid, when he has time)
>
> b. attempting to get linux poplog to run under cygwin
> (being done/led mainly by Jeff, I believe.
> Non-trivial because everything has to be re-compiled
> from scratch using cygwin libraries -- in contrast with
> vmware, which alread supports linux poplog binaries under
> windows (at least in XP -- which is what I have actually
> seen -- but vmware costs quite a lot.)
>
> [I've only just noticed a web site for Colinux.
> http://www.colinux.org/
> I can't tell whether it provides the same functionality as
> vmware, e.g. running linux binaries directly, or whether it
> would require work to port poplog to it, as in cygwin..]
>
>At present, if you are working on windows poplog, in stream (a) or
>stream (b) it is best to use the openpoplog sources. Ask Jeff if you
>wish to be added to the list of contributors.
>
>Do you know anything about colinux?
>
>Most changes I install are unlikely to affect the windows version of
>poplog until it reaches the full functionality of linux poplog, in which
>case I'll be able to provide updates from the files in
>
> http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/src/new/
>
>which are NOT well organised!
>
>I don't install changes in the core poplog often enough to have worked
>systematically.
>
>The things I do change more often are the pop11 library-level add-ons
>developed at Birmingham (rclib, rcmenu, poprulebase, simagent) and from
>time to time David Young's popvision (which I fetch from Sussex where it
>is used on Suns, rebuild for linux then install here:
>
> http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/popvision/
> http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/popvision.tar.gz
>
>(it is due for an upgrade as David has made some changes recently.)
>
>Sometimes Steve Leach upgrades objectclass. I then install that
>in Linux and Solaris versions of poplog, and also make it visible
>here for people who wish to browse or fetch and install in a running
>poplog:
>
> http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/src/new/objectclass/
> http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/src/new/objectclass.tar.gz
> (Last updated March 2003)
>
>I have also gradually modified the scripts and documentation
>I use with the PC+linux poplog package assembled for our students
>
> http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/bham-linux-poplog.tar.gz
>
>making installation more automatic and allowing more options. As I am
>not an experienced shell scripter it takes me more effort than it
>should. I've also been gradually changing from csh to bash....
>which I don't normally use as tcsh suits me fine.
>
>> Also, I notice there are several cases where duplicate
>> copies of scripts are present with certain features
>> present or not, and certain paths set, etc.
>
>Do you mean at the bham site, or the openpoplog site, or both?
>
>Just to confuse things more, there is also the much older www.poplog.org
>site set up by Graham Higgins and Steve Leach, which is supposed to
>mirror the bham site, and add some extra pop11 facilities developed
>mainly by Steve Leach, but every now and again the mirroring software
>seems to get stuck and then people who use that site as a source for
>poplog get into difficulties. I think Graham Higgins has been working on
>it.
>
>It also archives comp.lang.pop postings, but the archiving has recently
>got stuck. Graham tells me there are problems caused by moving to a new
>server which he plans to sort out.
>
>> I'm
>> curious why something like AUTOCONF isn't being used
>> to allow you to have a few script templates that
>> could be used to generate the final scripts actually
>> used on a particular system?
>
>The main reason that it is not being used for unix/linux poplog is that
>I am the only person doing the packaging for linux/unix poplog and I
>have never used Autoconf and may not have time to find out how in the
>near future for the reasons given previously. I have never even
>constructed a Makefile....
>
>One problem I have found with a lot of stuff on linux tools is that it
>is very hard to get good introductory tutorial documentation: developers
>are often experienced users of things similar to the stuff they are
>developing and they assume all potential users have a similar
>background, which leads to over-terse documentation.
>
>Another reason I have not done anything more general is that I have only
>RedHat versions of linux to play with so I produce scripts that work for
>that, then if people using other versions of linux complain, I simply
>attempt to add either remedial documentation or extra modifications to
>the scripts.
>
>In the long run that's not good enough, I know.
>
>If there were more bugs to fix with more people contributing, then
>perhaps we'd have made more progress automating things.
>
>I have yet to learn to use CVS, as I am often exhorted to do...
>
>A very recent experimental change removed dependence on termcap, which
>was causing problems for several non-redhat users. That was one of the
>few things that required changes to core sources, a few weeks ago.
>
>It seems to have caused no problems and made things easier for
>Mandrake users, so I'll document that and install the patches
>on the web site. They are already in the 'current' packaged
>linux poplog versions.
>
>[Incidentally, almost all the changes I make require help from someone:
>E.g. Steve Isard made the crucial observation about how to remove
>dependence on Termcap in linux poplog.]
>
>Another parallel development is mini-linux pop11, developed by Steve
>Isard, and installed here
> http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/~stepheni/poplog
>or
> ftp://ftp.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/pub/stepheni/poplog
>
>and copied here:
> http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/mini-linux-pop/
>
>Described thus in the AREADME file:
>
> This version is particularly intended for small Linux distributions
> capable of running on systems with older Intel processors and
> limited memory and disk space. Because such systems are frequently
> based on libc5, which is smaller than the now current libc6, the
> executables here have been recompiled with libc5 libraries. They
> will also run on later libc6 based systems that include libc5
> libraries for backwards compatibility. I have run the pop11 here
> under RedHat 6.0, 6.2, 7.0 and 7.1, as well as on the libc5 based
> distributions
> Mulinux (http://sunsite.dk/mulinux),
> Monkey Linux (http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/monkey)
> and
> Tomsrtbt (http://www.toms.net/~toehser/rb/).
>
>He provides a tiny reduced pop11 package that fits on two floppies!
>
>I have no idea how many people are using that. I guess if anyone finds
>problems they tell Steve and he fixes them. But it has not changed
>much.
>
>Steve copies core bugfixes from Birmingham - e.g. a bug in array bounds
>checking, and a bug in compilation of complex conditionals.
>
>I guess that like me he finds it most convenient simply to work on his
>own machine. But eventually this should also be added to openpoplog.
>
>My feeling is that the time for that will come when there's a useable
>full poplog for windows in the openpoplog site. Then we can make that
>the master site for everything.
>
>Does that make sense?
>
>Aaron
>Ps
>I have made some unsuccessful attempts to get research council funds for
>someone to help me with poplog support and development. If I had
>such funds and had someone working full time, even if it were only for
>a couple of years, then things could change a lot.
>
>
--
Jeff
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