Welcome to the Genworks® GDL and Gendl® Environment ================================================ GDL1592 ================================================ Welcome to the Genworks® GDL and Gendl® Environment Startup ========= After some time, you should see a "GDL-USER>" command prompt. A web server also starts by default on port 9000 (or the next available port above 9000) of the local host, which allows you to visit, for example: http://localhost:9000/tasty If you accept the default robot:assembly, then click the hover-over "pencil" icon next to the robot in the tree, you should see a wireframe rendering of a simplified android robot. See "Troubleshooting" below if you experience trouble starting up. Updating ========= The function (update-gdl) will pull down a bootstrap file which knows how to fetch and install the currently available patches for this version of GDL. (Note: this is not yet functional in this release). Documentation ============= The following manual is currently available in PDF format: http://genworks.com/downloads/tutorial.pdf The following Video Playlist is available (YouTube): https://youtu.be/aoTbtGhSHkE Additionally, reference documentation is available "live" from your running system, at http://localhost:9000/yadd ================== Authoring GDL Code ================== Gnu Emacs ========== All things considered, Gnu Emacs is the most powerful, portable, and risk-free IDE (Integrated Development Environment) available for working with Lisp-based systems like GDL. Spending some time getting familiar with Gnu Emacs is perhaps the best small investment you can make. If you are new to Emacs, you can get a general Emacs Tutorial under the Help menu above. After completing the Tutorial, try to practice what you learned by forcing yourself not to use the mouse too much in Emacs. Touch-typing ability is definitely an asset for GDL development, but with auto-completion of symbols (possible with M-/ -- you'll know what that means after looking at the tutorial) it is possible to become a world-class GDL developer without having world-class typing speed. It is strongly recommended to map your Caps Lock key to be a Control key. This will allow you to use all the Emacs navigation keystrokes without constantly curling your left little finger down to the Control key. For Linux and Mac, this is easy to do in your System Preferences. For Windows, here are some resources which can help you do this: http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/disable_caps_lock/ Note that if you are running Windows in a Virtual Machine hosted under MacOS or Linux, it is sufficient to map the Caps Lock to to Control in the host system. Finally, please see the Genworks Documentation (URL below) for some screen-cast videos on using Emacs in the GDL environment. ============================== Learning GDL and Documentation ============================== Absolutely the best way to learn GDL is to dive in and start using it for small exercises and projects. The work-in-progress tutorial.pdf is published here: http://genworks.com/downloads/tutorial.pdf Other Documentation: http://www.genworks.com Then click the link for Documentation, which contains lecture slides and videos. Additionally, reference documentation is available "live" from your running system, at http://localhost:9000/yadd ========= Quitting ========= When you have had enough of using GDL with Slime, you should do two things: 1. Visit the *slime-repl ...* buffer with C-x C-& 2. Type ,q (just a comma then the letter "q") to quit the GDL session. This will not quit Emacs. 3. (optional) type C-x C-c (that's Control-x, Control-c) to kill the Emacs process and exit the window. 3. If you kept Emacs up and running, it is possible to restart the GDL session again with: M-x gdl ================= Customizing Emacs ================= If a file exists in your home directory called ".emacs-glime" this will be loaded upon startup. You can put any custom emacs-lisp code in this file to customize your startup (see below for an example to customize the color theme). You can always find out where Emacs thinks is your home directory's location by typing C-x d ~/ This should present the list of files in the home directory, and show its full name on the first line. Likewise, to visit your init file, type: C-x C-f ~/.emacs-gendl . Color Themes ============ GDL ships with the color-theme package for Gnu emacs: http://emacswiki.org/emacs/ColorTheme You can select any of the themes from color-theme with M-x color-theme-select (Click on the color theme you want to select then press ). To set a color theme automatically, put something like the following at the end of your ~/.emacs-gendl : (color-theme-bharadwaj) ========================= Emacs Keychord Reference ========================= The following is a reference for the Emacs keychords which are commonly used when working with GDL. They will be understandable after you have completed the Emacs Tutorial mentioned above. If you force yourself to use these for a few days, they will quickly feel natural. ;; ;; Backing out of a command (important! use this whenever you are lost) ;; C-g : quit the active command (use this if you ever get confused) ;; ;; Navigating Through the Buffer ;; C-n : next line C-p : previous line C-f : forward char M-f : forward word C-M-f : forward s-expression C-b : backward char M-b : backward word C-M-b : backward s-expression C-a : begin of line C-e : end of line ;; ;; Auto-completion ;; M-/ : complete word C-c ] : "super-bracket" -- close parens to enclosing toplevel. ;; ;; Copying, Cutting, Pasting, working with Lisp S-expressions ;; C-d : delete character M-d : delete word C-M-k : kill s-expression C- : begins a selection C-M- : selects current sexpression M-w : copies selection C-w : cuts selection C-y : yanks (pastes) the selection M-y : yanks previous C-k : kills current line C-x u : Undo! M- : removes all but one whitespace under point. M-\ : removes all whitespace under point. ;; ;; Indenting ;; C-M-q indents entire expression (with cursor on opening parenthesis) C-q indents and word-wraps a paragraph of text to reasonable line length. ;; ;; Working with Files & Buffers ;; C-x C-b : get list of open buffers C-x k : kills current buffer C-x b : visit other buffer (default is previous) C-x C-s : saves current buffer to file C-x C-w : saves current buffer to a new file C-x C-f : find file (i.e. file open) ;; ;; Dired (Directory editor) mode ;; C-x C-f to visit a directory, then for Directory Editor (Dired) Within Dired: d : marks file for deletion f : visits the file or directory ~ : marks all backup files for deletion x : executes pending commands (usually deletions) ;; ;; Windows and Frames ;; C-x 2 : split screen into two windows C-x 1 : make current window be the only window C-x 0 : close current window C-x o : change to next window C-x y : change to previous window C-x 2 5 : Open a new Frame (a new desktop window) C-x & : Jump to *gdl-devo* buffer ;; ;; Command-line Shortcuts ;; M-p : bring back previous command M-n : bring back next command ;; ;; Compiling and Loading from Buffer ;; C-c C-k : Compile Buffer C-c C-c : Compile current form (e.g. define-object or defun) C-x C-e : Evaluate Form (with cursor after closing parenthesis) Quicklisp ========= Quicklisp is a curated library manager which can automatically fetch CL libraries and their dependencies from the Internet. See http://quicklisp.org for more information on Quicklisp. the function (load-quicklisp) will load and initialize the supported version of quicklisp (which ships with the installation) and pre-register all Gendl-related packages so that Quicklisp will not try to fetch and reload these if you try to (ql:quickload ...) a system which depends on them. The version of quicklisp which ships with this release is the only supported version of Quicklisp (to ensure library compatibility, each GDL release is tied to a specific Quicklisp version). Note that depending on your installation, you may not have file permissions to write into the quicklisp directory in its default location, i.e. (merge-pathnames "quicklisp/" glisp:*gendl-home*) In this case, you can copy (copy, not move) the quicklisp directory to a writeable location of your choice, and specify a :path keyword argument to load-quicklisp, e.g: (load-quicklisp :path "~/quicklisp/") Note that it is a good idea to include the trailing slash in the pathname. After doing (load-quicklisp), you can test whether Quicklisp is functional by trying something like: (ql:quickload :cl-json) Emacs Initialization and Glime ============================== We have divided the emacs user initialiazation file into two files: ~/.emacs-gendl[.el] which is loaded when starting this emacs environment, and ~/.emacs-glime[.el] which is loaded only when starting the GDL-flavored Slime environment. In case you are wondering what "glime" actually is - this is Genworks' extension to Slime (Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs, which we use by default to interact with Gendl and GDL from Emacs). The idea of Glime is that when you type "(the ..." or ":objects ((my-object :type 'my-object ..." then the emacs mini-buffer will give useful and context-sensitive completion information similar to what it does now for standard Lisp functions. Glime already works now to some extent, but we feel it needs to be polished a bit more before loading it by default. You can load Glime at any time with: (load-glime) followed by: M-x load-file gdl/emacs/glime.el In due course we intend to have Glime polished a bit more so it does a better job filtering and formatting the auto-completions for messages and object inputs, at which point it will be loaded by default in our standard emacs initialization and we will rightfully be able to call the whole environment "Glime." Troubleshooting =============== Webserver Fails to serve on Port 9000 First of all, you may receive a message from your Firewall asking for permission to unblock services from the GDL executable. You should grant this permission. If you are unable to see the following URL: http://localhost:9000/color-map then it is possible your machine already has another process running on Port 9000. For example, some online gaming software will set up a proxy service on this port. If this is the case, then you can start GDL serving on a different port. To do this, try the following at the "gdl-user>" command prompt (using port 8888 as an example): (net.aserve:shutdown) (gwl:start-gwl :port 8888) Now try visiting http://localhost:8888/color-map If this works, then you can put these commands into the gdlinit.cl initialization file in your home directory.