LispWorks
 |
| Developer(s) | LispWorks Ltd |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 6.1
/ January 27, 2012 |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel), Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris (x86/x64 and SPARC), and HP UX |
| Type | IDE |
| Website | LispWorks |
LispWorks is a commercial implementation and IDE for the Common Lisp programming language. The software runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X (PowerPC, Intel), Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris (x86/x64, SPARC) and HP UX.
LispWorks was developed by the UK software company Harlequin Ltd., and first published in 1989.[1] Harlequin ultimately spun off its Lisp arm as Xanalys, which took over management and rights to LispWorks. In January 2005, the Xanalys Lisp team formed LispWorks Ltd. to market, develop, and support the LispWorks software.
Some of LispWorks's features are
- an implementation of the Common Lisp Object System with support for the Metaobject protocol
- native threads
- Unicode support: it can read and write Unicode files and supports strings encoded in UCS-2
- Foreign Language Interface (FFI) for interfacing with routines written in C
- the Common Application Programmer's Interface (CAPI) GUI toolkit, which provides native look-and-feel on Windows, Cocoa, GTK+ and Motif
- an Emacs-like editor (source code is included in the Professional edition)
- a graphical debugger, inspector, stepper, profiler, class browser, etc.
- a native-code compiler for an extended ANSI Common Lisp
- a facility to generate standalone executables
- on Mac OS X it provides a bridge to Objective-C for using Apple's Cocoa libraries
- many of the libraries are written using the Common Lisp Object System and can be extended by the user (by writing subclasses and new methods)
The Enterprise edition also includes KnowledgeWorks, which supports rule-based programming (including support for Prolog); the CommonSQL database interface; and a CORBA binding. The Enterprise edition is also available as a 64bit implementation.
In September 2009, it had been announced that LispWorks 6 would support concurrent threads and the CAPI graphics toolkit has been extended to support GTK+.[2] LispWorks 6.1, released in January 2012,[3] includes many further enhancements to CAPI, such as support for anti-aliased drawing.
LispWorks ran on the spacecraft Deep Space 1. The application called RAX won the NASA Software of the Year award in 1999.[4]
Releases
- 1987, development of LispWorks started by the British company Harlequin
- 12 September 1989, Harlequin LispWorks 1.0, GUI with CLX, CLUE and LispWorks toolkit
- December 1991, Harlequin LispWorks 3.0
- 17 March 1997, Harlequin LispWorks 4.0 for Windows, GUI with CAPI
- 6 January 1999, Harlequin LispWorks 4.1, with CORBA
- 19 February 2001, Xanalys LispWorks 4.1.20
- 19 December 2001, Xanalys LispWorks 4.2, no runtime fees for applications on Microsoft Windows
- 5 May 2002, Xanalys LispWorks 4.2.6
- 30 June 2003, Xanalys LispWorks 4.3, first release for Mac OS X, with Cocoa support
- 8 December 2004, Xanalys LispWorks 4.4
- 15 April 2005, LispWorks Ltd LispWorks 4.4.5
- 31 July 2006, LispWorks Ltd LispWorks 5.0
- 27 March 2008, LispWorks Ltd LispWorks 5.1
- 6 January 2010, LispWorks Ltd Lispworks 6.0, with symmetric multiprocessing
- 27 January 2012, LispWorks Ltd LispWorks 6.1
See also
References
- ^ "Britain's Harlequin Announces LispWorks at US Artificial Intelligence Show". Cbronline.com. 1989-09-12. Retrieved 2013-07-19.
- ^ "LispWorks 6.0 beta announcement". Lispworks.com. Retrieved 2013-07-19.
- ^ "Release of LispWorks 6.1". Lispworks.com. Retrieved 2013-07-19.
- ^ "NASA Software of the Year award for Harlequin based development" (PDF). Globalgraphics.com. Retrieved 2013-07-19.