This package is an implementation of the ECMAScript language specified by ECMA-262 Edition 3, better known as JavaScript.
Here is a link straight to the documentation.
Please don't assume Lisp is
Please don’t assume Lisp is only useful for Animation and Graphics, AI, Bioinformatics, B2B and E-Commerce, Data Mining, EDA/Semiconductor applications, Expert Systems, Finance, Intelligent Agents, Knowledge Management, Mechanical CAD, Modeling and Simulation, Natural Language, Optimization, Research, Risk Analysis, Scheduling, Telecom, and Web Authoring just because these are the only things they happened to list.
THE way to draw graphs in LaTeX
Per Rafael, tkz-berge.sty is the way to draw graphs in LaTeX.
PGF and TikZ
A DrScheme REPL Improvement
DrScheme’s REPL has always had sort of an annoying behavior where the HOME key (or arrows) do’t respect the REPL prompt (which is the ‘>’). This is now fixed; and in SVN.
IrRegular Expressions
IrRegex version 0.7.0 is now available here:
A fully portable and efficient R[456]RS implementation of regular expressions, supporting both POSIX syntax with various (irregular) PCRE extensions, as well as SCSH’s SRE syntax, with various aliases for commonly used patterns. DFA matching is used when possible, otherwise a closure-compiled NFA approach is used. The library makes no assumptions about the encoding of strings or range of characters and can thus be used in Unicode-aware Scheme implementations. Matching may be performed over standard Scheme strings, or over arbitrarily chunked streams of strings.
IrRegex is portable between R4RS, R5RS, and R6RS; and almost completely PCRE compatible. Very nice!
(via comp.lang.scheme)
Programming Language People
Sometimes it is helpful to know that programming language creators are people (celebrities?) just like anyone else.
Here are some pictures of programming language people.
Controversial or difficult but necessary
While reading a discussion on the R6RS ratification, I came upon a comment explaining that there were features under consideration that were considered to be “Controversial or difficult but necessary“.
It is a virtuous goal towards which all of us ought to work in both our personal and professional life.
The Soundex Algorithm
Soundex is a phonetic algorithm for indexing names by sound, as pronounced in English. The goal is for names with the same pronunciation to be encoded to the same representation so that they can be matched despite minor differences in spelling[1]. Soundex is the most widely known of all phonetic algorithms and is often used (incorrectly) as a synonym for “phonetic algorithm”. Improvements to Soundex are the basis for many modern phonetic algorithms
— Wikipedia Entry
(via Vijay Matthew)
Computers are a metamedium
The computer is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically. It is not a tool, although it can act like many tools. The computer is the first metamedium, and as such it has degrees of freedom for representation and expression never before encountered and as yet barely investigated. The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited.
— Alan Kay
I’ve never before heard it put quite so well.
(via R.P. James)