From hnets.uia.ac.be!feed2.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!news.rediris.es!news.uoregon.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!news-xfer.netaxs.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!ais.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!198.3.232.58!epcot.harlequin.com!kmp Fri Apr 4 13:35:24 1997 Xref: hnets.uia.ac.be comp.lang.lisp:7345 Path: hnets.uia.ac.be!feed2.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!news.rediris.es!news.uoregon.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!news-xfer.netaxs.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!ais.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!198.3.232.58!epcot.harlequin.com!kmp From: kmp@harlequin.com (Kent Pitman) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: $350.00 ANSI standard? Date: 03 Apr 97 21:54:53 GMT Organization: Harlequin Inc., Cambridge, MA, USA Lines: 32 Message-ID: References: <33403FE5.16BB@CS.Berkeley.EDU> <5hsrc7$klu@pasilla.bbnplanet.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: romulus.harlequin.com In-reply-to: kmp@harlequin.com's message of 03 Apr 97 20:32:22 GMT Oh, I realized after the fact that some reading this might not know what the Common Lisp HyperSpec (TM) is. As you could probably tell from my last post, it is not hardcopy. It is available on the web and you can download a copy for your own use or browse it at Harlequin. (There may be other mirrors, too--we don't keep track of that.) See http://www.harlequin.com/books/HyperSpec for the download info. It takes 16MB on disk, but it's worth it if you have to deal with the spec much at all. If I do say so myself, it's a mega-cool document with 105 kilohyperlinks (<-- how often do you get to use that word? :-) See http://www.harlequin.com/books/HyperSpec/FrontMatter/ to browse Harlequin's webbed copy. (But keep in mind that it will run much faster if you download your own copy to your local web.) See http://www.harlequin.com/books/HyperSpec/FrontMatter/About-HyperSpec.html#Legal for information about the legal restrictions on those who do downloading. I think most people will find them entirely reasonable. They're mostly about maintaining the integrity of the document; there's no dollars involved. The Common Lisp HyperSpec is NOT the ANSI CL spec, but it is derived from it, and is very similar (with only minor textual tweaks here and there to make it work webbed). If you need a truly official source, the ANSI spec is all you can do. But for most normal purposes, the CLHS is fine and at the price (FREE), it's hard to beat. It also comes cross-indexed against many design documents that the X3J13 subcommittee used, so you can learn about how some of the odd features of the language got to be that way. I hope this doesn't seem like too much of a self-serving plug, but gee-- Harlequin and I tried to make this as much of a public service as we could, and I don't exactly get royalties from it, so I'm entitled to make a fuss over it once in a while, I think.