Re: [grt-talk]Lisp coder position

[Jason Dagit]

Nikodemus Siivola wrote (on Fri, 28 Mar 2003 at 11:17 +0200):

 > On Thu, 27 Mar 2003, Jason Dagit wrote:
 > 
 > > I know some lisp (cl and elisp).  Have any room on the project?
 > 
 > Definitely! The project has been standing still for a while now due
 > to real-life concerns, so a second developer would be perfect. With
 > two people it should be much easier to keep the thing moving.

Yes, and I'm about to start classes again, so my real-life concerns
will be an issue from time to time also.  But I agree, 2 is better
than one.

 > I'll try and email some plans & ideas on the list next week, but
 > kick me if I forget.

Sweet.  I'm looking forward to doing some simple stuff to get oriented
with the code.

 > How you just looked at the code, or have you yet checked out the
 > CVS and tried it out? Is there something specific you would like to
 > work on or do?  What platform are you on (Linux, OS-X, Windows,
 > etc)? Which Common Lisp do you use?

I browsed the online CVS repository and looked at the webpage.  Are
the images on the webpage from the C version or the lisp version?  I
should try it out this weekend.  I would like to if at all possible
convert it to use openGL, and perhaps get some of the rendering done
in hardware if it would help.  I use Debian's GNU/Linux distro
(currently using unstable).  I have several Common Lisps.  My favorite
is clisp, then cmucl.  Clisp is great fun to use, but cmucl has better
support for interfacing with c code.  Have you checked out cl-sdl?  It
has code that works with cmucl so that you can use openGL and the
sdl.  Pretty cool stuff.  It's in apt in debian, but I had to build it
myself before it would render properly.

I don't know how you are specifying scenes right now, but I had an
idea that we could create an extension to Common Lisp using macros and
functions and the lot so that you actually use lisp to define a
scene.  Perhaps you'd just load grt as a package, then hammer away in
your favorite lisp for a while and then you'd have a scene rendering
when you're done.

Do you have support for different graphic formats yet?  Perhaps I
could look into adding support for that.  Hmm...I think I need to try
out the code.  That would answer a lot of my questions.

Did you know that you can download some really great lisp references
on the net?  For example, "On Lisp" is available online and is a great
reference for advanced lisp programming.  The same goes for "Paradigms
in Artificial Intelligence Programming".  I know a fair amount of
lisp, but I feel like there is a ton more to be learned.

Jason