Lisp Help

Guido R
Guido R
in Programming and customization
Hi all,

I couldn't find any documentation for (defun) in the developer reference for V16.
Have I overlooked it?
I tried to find it via the 'contents', 'index' and 'search' buttons, but no luck.

Greetings.



Comments

  • Roy Klein Gebbinck
    Roy Klein Gebbinck
    It may help if you explain your goal. Judging from one of your other posts you want to port an existing Lisp application. This suggests that you have some Lisp experience and therefore do not need information about (defun).
  • Guido R
    Guido R
    Roy,

    I do indeed have some experience with lisp.
    To be more precise: I started using AutoCAD and programming in AutoLISP back in 1990. So I do indeed know about defun.
    I have also worked with common lisp and scheme.
    The application(s) I may have to port in the future also use the com and .net api (using Visual Studio C# and VB .NET)

    In a previous post I mentioned only (defun). But many other functions are missing as well.
    For example: (assoc), (cond), (cons), (princ), (progn)..., to name some of them.

    One can only conclude that the BricsCAD developer documentation is inadequate.
    It's not because some people don't need to have the defun function explained to them, that it shouldn't be documented.

    For the moment, I'm trying to find out if porting our applications will be feasible.
    I already found out that there's no lisp ide (no editor, no debugger...).
    And now I'm having a closer look at the developer documentation.

    Greetings.
    Thanks for your reply.

  • Roy Klein Gebbinck
    Roy Klein Gebbinck
    I agree that the BricsCAD Lisp documentation is limited. But the Lisp API is not. The atoms-family contains over 4000 items. And the BricsCAD Lisp implementation is highly compatible with AutoCAD. Your application may run without any modifications.
  • Roy Klein Gebbinck
    Roy Klein Gebbinck
  • Guido R
    Guido R
    Roy,

    I just received my license for the trial version of BricsCAD this morning and have started to port my stuff.
    A very simple way to get more information is to look up things in the AutoCAD Developer Network or in the AutoCAD forums.
    I know that, and where necessary, that's what I do.
    But in the long run, BricsCAD is going to have to do something about their developer documentation: just think about newcomers...
    Documentation is a very expensive & difficult thing to produce (for that reason, I hardly ever document my own code).
    I've already tested some lisp commands I've written, and they worked as expected without further ado.
    That at least, is very good news.
    Thanks again for the reply.
    See you.
  • Jason Bourhill
    Jason Bourhill
    Guido,

    I suggest that you download the LISP Developer Support Package available from the application area. This includes a help file that you can use offline. You'll see that BrisCAD has a lot of additional functions not available in AutoCAD. The VLE functions are worth looking through, and recently a large amount of Express Tools (ACET) functions have been made available. The interesting thing here is that the ACET functions ARE documented, as opposed to AutoCAD. You can request support too if you find an issue with them. These two things makes the ACET functions a lot more viable to use.

    From the application area you will also find that OpenDCL and DOSLib are available for BricsCAD.

    Regards,
    Jason Bourhill

  • Guido R
    Guido R
    Jason,

    Thank you for the reply.
    I'm going to have a look at the LISP Developer Support Package.
    I' ve already noticed the vle- and acet-functions.

    As to OPENDCL: I'm rolling my own.
    All forms and dialogs in my apps are written in .net

    I'm also making extensive use of LispFunctions written in .net

    Bye for now.

  • Bruce Fillmore
    Bruce Fillmore
    Guido,

    While BricsCad has no LISP editor or debugger, BricsCad itself has a sort or debugger built in, when an issue is encountered its cause and location is displayed at the command prompt,  AutoCad does not do this.  And the compiler can be run independent of BricsCad.  Personally I create my LISP in the AutoCad Visual Lisp Editor, while the editing session is ongoing I can open BricsCad and test file simultaneously.  This way I can ensure that all LISP will run on both platforms.  There are a few differences in results.
  • Guido R
    Guido R
    Bruce,

    I've also been thinking about such strategy.
    Only problem: on my system there is no longer any autocad (and happy about that, too).
    If need be, one can always use a poor man's debugger: beeping and princing to show where you are and what's there.
    As an editor I'm using Notepad++, which is good enough for me.
    I'll manage alright.
    Thanks for the reply.
  • Bruce Fillmore
    Bruce Fillmore

    Bruce,

    I've also been thinking about such strategy.
    Only problem: on my system there is no longer any autocad (and happy about that, too).
    If need be, one can always use a poor man's debugger: beeping and princing to show where you are and what's there.
    As an editor I'm using Notepad++, which is good enough for me.
    I'll manage alright.
    Thanks for the reply.


    Use plenty of numbered alerts, so when you test run you know how far you progressed until issue arose. :)
    Speaking of alerts the "vle-alert" is a great alert alternative, see documentation on application.
This discussion has been closed.