From Aaron Sloman Fri Aug  7 11:26:34 BST 2009
To: all-users
Subject: Changes to Linux Poplog/Pop-11 imminent

This message is available here:

    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/cs-announce.txt

CONTENTS

 -- NEW VERSION OF POPLOG/POP-11
 -- ABOUT POPLOG/POP-11
 -- CHANGES
 -- EXISTING USERS
 -- TRYING THE NEW VERSION IN ADVANCE
 -- IF YOU ARE A POPLOG USER AND DON'T WANT TO CHANGE
 -- Unix/Linux MAN (manual) files

-- NEW VERSION OF POPLOG/POP-11

There is now a new version of 32-bit Linux Poplog (v15.6301) on the
school's linux systems.

Anyone using Poplog/Pop-11 for a summer project, who does not wish
to risk the upgrade, see below.

    (Poplog is a free, open source, multi-language teaching,
    research, and development package including incremental compilers
    for Pop-11, Prolog, Lisp, and ML, used mainly, but not
    exclusively, for AI. It was developed mainly at Sussex
    University, and used to be an expensive commercial package.
    It is used here in AI teaching and some research.)

Anyone wanting to download the new version to a private machine
running linux (with 32 bit libraries, etc.) can get it here (use the
get-and-install script):

    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/latest-poplog/

It should take less than two minutes (much less on a new machine!)
plus time to download a 17MB file.

If you don't care about poplog or pop-11 you can ignore the rest of
this message.

-- ABOUT POPLOG/POP-11

If you want to know more about it try the overview:

    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/freepoplog.html#whatspoplog

Or, for information about the teaching facilities, including list
processing, logic programming, turtle graphics, expert systems,
object oriented programming, natural language, vision, etc.:

    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/freepoplog.html#teaching

-- CHANGES

The latest version has some minor bug fixes, and some new
documentation.

The most important difference is that all the documentation files
are now in plain text and can be read in any editor or browser,
whereas previously many of them required either the Poplog editor
Ved/XVed, or an extension to Emacs, vedemacs.

Recent changes are described here:

    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/latest-poplog/CHANGES.txt
        main system
    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/latest-poplog/CHANGES-PACKAGES.txt
        included packages

The latest version is already installed as the 'new' version, not
the 'current' version, on our linux machines, but will become the
current version some time on Sunday. It currently identifies itself
as
    Sussex Poplog (Version 15.6301 Fri Aug  7 09:23:28 BST 2009)
    Copyright (c) 1982-2009 University of Sussex. All rights reserved.

but the date may change. The copyright is very liberal:
    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/copyright.html

-- EXISTING USERS

If you are a Poplog/Pop-11 user and you think this change could
disrupt your work, e.g. on a summer project, you can use the 'old'
version, as described below. Anyone who was using the *previous*
old version can still set it up by using this 'tcsh' command:

    source /bham/common/com/packages/poplog/Login/poplogin.veryold

It sets up poplog version 15.61, April 2007.

Let me know if this causes problems.

-- TRYING THE NEW VERSION IN ADVANCE

Anyone who wants to try using the new version before it becomes
current can alter the setup command in this file if you have it:

    ~/.SetupPoplog

or in
    ~/.login

from
    setup Poplog
to
    setup Poplog.new

then start a new login shell.

Alternatively, if you don't normally have poplog set up just give
this command in a tcsh shell.

    setup Poplog.new

then run pop11, ved, xved, prolog, clisp, pml as usual, or

    pop11 +eliza

for free therapy.

If you are a bash user try:

    exec tcsh
    setup Poplog.new
    exec bash

then the new version, and the above commands should work.

If you don't do anything, then, by Monday, unless some serious
problem turns up, 'setup Poplog' will get the new version.

-- IF YOU ARE A POPLOG USER AND DON'T WANT TO CHANGE

This tcsh command has already been altered to run the current
version (v15.62):

    setup Poplog.old

So, if that is in your login script (~/.login or ~/.SetupPoplog)
then the change over the weekend will not affect you. You can remove
the .old later.

-- Unix/Linux MAN (manual) files

Some more documentation is accessible on linux for UMS users using
this 'man' command

    man poplog

Some of the information may be more relevant to poplog on a private
linux machine than on our system, because installation directories
are different.

Let me know if you have problems, or join the poplog-users email
list here
    https://mailman.cs.bham.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo

Aaron
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs