Release Notes for Allegro CL 8.0

This document contains the following sections:

1.0 Introduction

This document is a copy of the release notes for release 8.0 of Allegro Common Lisp and related products provided with release 8.1. Many sections are divided into non-backward-compatible changes (that produce different behavior in release 8.0 compared to release 7.0) and changes unrelated to backward-compatibility. Note that a bug fix is not considered a backward-incompatible change even if it does result in changed behavior because the previous behavior was erroneous.

This document describes the changes, major and minor, from 7.0 to 8.0. Please look particularly at these sections:

• Section 6.1 New features in the base Lisp: this section describes new features.
• Section 6.2 Non-backward-compatible changes in the base Lisp: this very important section describes changes to Allegro CL which are not backward compatible. You may have to modify your source code in light of these changes.
• Section 8.2 Non-backward-compatible changes in Common Graphics: [Common Graphics is not available on all platforms] this section describes changes to Common Graphics which are not backward compatible. You may have to modify your source code in light of these changes.
• Section 9.0 AllegroStore not available in Allegro CL 8.0: the AllegroStore database product is not available in release 8.0. Instead, AllegroCache is provided as a database product.
• Section 2.0 Information on changes and new stuff since the 8.0 release: this section describes material added after the initial Allegro CL 8.0 release, along with other post-8.0 changes.

If you notice changed or unexpected behavior with an operator, variable, class, or facility, search for its name in this document to see whether there is an entry concerning it.

2.0 Information on changes and new stuff since the 8.0 release

This section describes features added after the initial release of Allegro CL 8.0. (This includes additions as of March 31, 2007. See the actual 8.0 Release Notes for later changes, if any.)

1. New features in SSL socket support. Allegro CL has for some time supported SSL (Secure Socket Layer) sockets. See the section Secure Socket Layer (SSL) in socket.htm. An update released in late March, 2007, enhances this facility to support processing of certificates. The argument lists to make-ssl-client-stream and make-ssl-server-stream have been augmented to support the new feature. New methods, get-ssl-peer-certificate, get-ssl-verify-result, and ssl-do-handshake have been added. get-ssl-peer-certificate allows accessing and working with X.509 certificates. A new x509-certificate class defines objects corresponding to X.509 certificates.
2. jLinker update has changes to jlinker-init and jlinker-listen. jlinker-init now has an end-function keyword argument which, if supplied, should name a function that will be called when jLinker stops. jlinker-listen now behaves differently when jlinker-init fails: before jlinker-listen would exit when jlinker-init failed. Now, the function specified as the value of the process-function is called and it is its responsibility to decide whether to stop or continue when jlinker-init returns a failure message. These changes were made in an update released in February, 2007.
3. Daylight saving time changes. As of a patch released in February, 2007, Allegro CL finds out whether daylight ssaving time is or ois not in effect by asking the operating system. The variable *daylight-saving-time-observed* is now ignored. (However, some operating systems have not been updated to reflect the new United States DST schedules which go into effect in 2007 (with DST starting on March 11, 2007). Allegro CL schedules have been updated. You can use the old system with the updated schedules if you set the unexported variable excl::*use-us-daylight-saving-time* to true. Then the variable *daylight-saving-time-observed* will have effect. But when your OS is updated to have correct DST information, you should use that.)
4. New rpc update. An update to Allegro RPC was released in January, 2007. The changes included adding a kill argument to client-exit, modifying client-exit to kill a process on a remote host, and revising symbol handling in remote references. The documentation was also updated, with significant changes particularly to the description of run-other-client. See rpc.htm for information on RPC in Allegro CL.
5. New :anynl value for eol-convention for input-streams. The function eol-convention returns and (with setf) allows setting the End of Line convention used by a stream. You may now set the value to :anynl, which will result in any standard end of line convention being read correctly on input (the UNIX convention of a linefeed, the DOS convention of a carriage-return linefeed, or the Mac convention of a carriage-return). See the description of eol-convention for details and a discussion of what is done for output files.
6. Variable net.uri:*strict-parse* allows parsing of some URIs that are non-compliant. RFC2396 specifies the format for URIs but many websites do not strictly follow its rules. The variable *strict-parse* controls how strictly the parser observes syntax rules and, when nil, allows parsing of many URIs which are actually non-compliant. See uri.htm for details of URI support.
7. New net.mail package and interface for parsing and validating email addresses. An update released about December 21, 2006 provides two functions in the new net.mail package: parse-email-address and valid-email-domain-p. The first (broadly following RFC2822) extracts the username and domain name from an email address while the second tries to validate domain names (because many things can go wrong with email, valid-email-domain-p is most useful when it says a domain is invalid). See The net.mail interface for parsing and validating email addresses in imap.htm for details.
8. excl:with-underlying-simple-vector exported: the macro excl:with-underlying-simple-vector, which allows access to the underlying data vector associated with an array, is now exported and documented. (It has existed as an internal operator for a long time in Allegro CL.)
9. New ISO 8601 date/time module: support for ISO 8601 specifications of dates and times has been added to Allegro CL in an update released in early August, 2006. See date-time.htm for details. The functions locale-format-time and locale-print-time have also been modified to accept date-time objects as well as universal times as arguments. (The description of locale-print-time has been updated to reflect that change and also to revise the field descriptor definitions (%F, %G, %g, and %P added, %U, %W removed) and the Modified Conversion Specifications (%OU and %OW removed), the removed definitions/specs were never in fact supported.)
10. New module provide PAM support on some platforms. The pam module, released in a mid-August update, provides a Lisp wrapper around the PAM API on Linux, Solaris, and some other unixlike operating systems. PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) is described in www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam/FAQ. See PAM support in Allegro Common Lisp in miscellaneous.htm for details. PAM is not supported on Windows and some UNIX platforms. The PAM documentation lists the platforms where PAM is not supported.
11. New FAQ replaces old FAQ. We have a new FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) document. It is only available online (so you will always see the latest version). It is located at http://www.franz.com/support/faq/. The version of our FAQ previously included with the documentation in the doc/faq/ directory has been discontinued and removed (all files now simply contain a link to the new FAQ).
12. New Emacs-Lisp-Interface command fi:insert-arglist (C-c i): the fi:insert-arglist command, when invoked after typing '(<fun> ', inserts the argument list template into the code being typed. See Argument lists in eli.htm for details.

    Also, a problem with using Gnu Emacs on Windows compiled with Cygwin has been fixed.

13. New optimized variants of read-line. In an update released around July 11, 2006, two new functions, simple-stream-read-line and read-line-into were added to provide optimized variants of read-line, with little or no consing and less copying of characters (because the target strings are provided in the function call). simple-stream-read-line allows (optionally) specifying a target string but will create a new string if necessary. read-line-into always requires a target string and will use it regardless. It is therefore always more efficient but it does require correct bookkeeeping to be used correctly. Both are documented on there own pages. The read-line-into page has numerous examples.
14. double-sided option for pop-up-printer-job-dialog. A new option, double-sided, has been added for printer support. See pop-up-printer-job-dialog.
15. Minor IP address handling upgrade. In a June, 2006 update, the function dotted-address-p returns true if its argument is a string in dotted IP address form. See Host naming in socket.htm where the dotted form is described with examples.
16. sys:update-allegro now allows specifying proxy username and password. This change is made in a June, 2006 update. There has long been a proxy keyword argument to sys:update-allegro, the function that downloads updates and patches for Allegro CL. This argument allows downloading when using a proxy. However, sometimes the proxy also needs a username and password. A new keyword argument, proxy-basic-authorization, allows these to be specified as well. See sys:update-allegro.
17. ntservice facility provided: an update released in early June, 2006 allows you to make your application a service on Windows. See Turning your application into a Windows Service in delivery.htm. There is an example (after the update is complete) in examples/ntservice/.
18. A jLinker release in early June, 2006. This update makes jLinker identical in Allegro CL 7.0 and 8.0. There are changes in jlinker-listen (new :abort value for the stop argument); jlinker-init (new report keyword argument); def-java-class (new possible value for the name); def-java-constructor (documentation clarification); jlinker-slot (new value for the key argument); and a new variable *jlinker-deprecated-warnings*. (Also minor changes in jarray-set, jdo-call, jmake-new, jcons, jmeth, jget-cons, jget-meth, and jarray-set.)
19. New rpc update. An update released in the Spring of 2006 made some modifications to the rpc module (see rpc.htm for a description of the module. The affected operators were client-end-all (new loop optional argument) and run-other-client (new line-limit keyword argument). Also, there were significant documentation changes to run-other-lisp and rpc-close.
20. New command-line argument +P. An update released in the Spring of 2006 added the +P command-line argument. If +p (lowercase p) appears on the command line, +P (uppercase P) undoes its effect. (+p may be present in the command-line resource for the executable. +P allows cancelling the +p is such a case.) See Command line arguments in startup.htm for a list of command-line arguments accepted by Allegro CL.
21. A SOAP update was released in late February, 2006. It makes minor changes and corrections. One documentation correction should be noted: the default for the :nillable option (to operators like soap-message-client) is :ignore (making it compatible with earlier versions). The earlier documentation update incorrectly said the default was :accept.
22. New support for constructing MIME messages. See MIME support in imap.htm for more information. See particularly the new function make-mime-part. send-letter, send-smtp, and send-smtp-auth have been enhanced to allow files or streams (as well as a string) as the value of the message argument. send-letter also now accepts an attachments keyword argument.
23. New support for pipe streams: See make-pipe-stream, make-function-input-stream, and with-function-input-stream. (The new pipe streams are somewhat more flexible than the one provided by pipe.)
24. New function base64-encode-stream. See the description of base64-encode-stream and see Base64 Support in miscellaneous.htm for information on Base64 and Base64 support in Allegro CL.
25. New ability to invoke Lisp within a bat file on Windows. You can now execute Lisp programs contained within a bat file on Windows so the bat file will invoke Lisp, run specified forms, and then exit (optionally pausing before exiting). The function lisp-to-bat-file supports this new facility. It writes an appropriate bat file when given a Lisp file of forms to execute and provided some additonal information (such as what image file to use). Also added are two new command-line arguments --bat and --bat-pause. (See Command line arguments in startup.htm for a list of command-line arguments accepted by Allegro CL.) This Tech Corner entry talks about the bat file feature and gives an example.

    Support for this facility was added with a patch released around 1/17/06. See sys:update-allegro for information on getting patches.

3.0 Fasl files are not-compatible between versions and operating systems

3.1 All pre-8.0 Lisp compiled files must be recompiled (old fasl files will not load)

fasl files (compiled Lisp files) created by releases of Allegro CL prior to 8.0 (including 8.0.beta) will not load into Allegro CL 8.0. All such files must be recreated by compiling the associated Lisp source files. An error will be signaled if Lisp attempts to load an older, incompatible fasl file.

3.2 Fasl files may be incompatible in different Lisps on same hardware

Fasl files created on Windows x86 cannot be loaded into Linux or FreeBSD x86 Lisps

The Windows and UNIX operating systems are too different. However, FASL files (for the same Lisp version) can generally be shared between different UNIX operating systems on the same hardware. The general principles are as follows. Note that incompatibility may creep in for reasons outside our control. If fasl files are incompatible, recompile on the target machine.

Fasl files will usually be compatible between platforms when:

• the architecture (hardware) is the same
• the calling convention is the same (that is, the method of calling functions and the registers they use for arguments are the same)
• the method for generating signals can be made compatible (this cannot be done for Windows and UNIX, so they are incompatible for this reason)

It is up to the user to ensure that there are no os-specific dependencies, or that features (i.e. #+/#- ) did not cause essential code to be excluded or extraneous code introduced that would cause a problem on the crossed architecture.

4.0 Release Notes for installation

1. >Version 8.0 uses the 7.0 installation procedure: installation is described in installation.htm.
2. The distribution includes 8 bit and 16 bit character images (this information is repeated from earlier Release Notes). Allegro CL has images that support 8 bit characters only, or 16 bit characters only. It is our expectation that most users will use the 16 bit images. Executables supplied with the distribution either have or do not have `8' in the name. Those with 8 in the name (mlisp8 and alisp8, e.g.) support 8 bit characters. Those without a number in the name support 16 bit characters. Image (dxl) files also come in 8 and 16 varieties. Again, 8 in the name means 8 bit character support. Character support for images and executables must match. Trying to start an executable with the wrong type of image fails.
3. No prebuilt Allegro Composer images in the distribution (this information is repeated from earlier Release Notes). To create an Allegro Composer image, start Allegro CL and load buildcomposer.cl. That will produce composer and composer.dxl, or composer8 and composer8.dxl. Allegro Composer is available on Unix only.
4. No prebuilt Allegro CLIM images in the distribution (this information is repeated from earlier Release Notes). To create a CLIM image, start Allegro CL and load buildclim.cl. That will produce clim and clim.dxl, or clim8 and clim8.dxl.

5.0 Release notes for specific platforms

Allegro CL 8.0 is known to work with the following minimal operating system versions. Allegro CL 8.0 runs on all operating system versions released (not in beta or pre-release form) as of December 1, 2005. See below for places to obtain information on operating systems released after that date.

Note that Allegro CL 8.0 does not run on Windows 98/Me or on Mac OS X 10.3.

32-bit platforms

• HP Tru64 UNIX 5.1 -- see Section 5.2 HP Alpha running Tru64: default stack size should be increased
• HP-UX 11.00 -- see Section 5.3 Notes of increasing the default maximum stack size on HP-UX 11 machines
• FreeBSD 4.x and 5.x
• Linux (x86), glibc 2.2
• Linux (PPC), glibc 2.3
• Apple Mac OS X 10.4 -- see Section 5.4 Mac OS X notes
• Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003
• IBM AIX 5.1
• Sun Solaris 2.8 -- see Section 5.1 OS patch needed for Solaris 2.8 on Sparcs

64-bit platforms

• HP Tru64 UNIX 5.1 -- see Section 5.2 HP Alpha running Tru64: default stack size should be increased
• HP-UX 11.00 -- see Section 5.3 Notes of increasing the default maximum stack size on HP-UX 11 machines
• Apple Mac OS X 10.4 -- see Section 5.4 Mac OS X notes
• Linux (AMD64), glibc 2.3
• IBM AIX 5.1
• Sun Solaris 2.8 on Sparc
• Sun Solaris 2.10 on AMD 64

Franz Inc. cannot maintain the same release schedule as the many operating system providers on the many platforms we support. Usually Allegro Common Lisp and all of its component parts will work on new Operating System versions that become available after release. But sometimes Allegro CL patches or operating-system patches, or installation tweaks, will be required before Lisp will run on an updated system.

Franz Inc. usually finds out about any such issues soon after new operating system releases appear and devises any necessary patches or compatibility procedures. We maintain current information about operating system versions on this web page: http://www.franz.com/support/osinfo.lhtml. We strongly advise you to check that page before updating your operating system. If we know that the new operating system is compatible, or is compatible with certain patches, you will find the information there. Similarly if it is known to be incompatible. If the new operating system is not yet listed it may be that it has not yet been tested.

5.1 OS patch needed for Solaris 2.8 on Sparcs

A problem with Solaris 2.8 where calls to run-shell-command can cause Lisp to hang is fixed by operating system patch 108993-18 (which supersedes the earlier patch 108827-36 for this problem). On Solaris 8, it can also be fixed by adding /usr/lib/lwp to the front of your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. No fix is necessary for Solaris 2.9.

The patch can be obtained from this Sun website: http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-26-49843-1.

5.2 HP Alpha running Tru64: default stack size should be increased

The default stack size limit on an Alpha is 2 Megabytes, which is too low for normal stack overflow handling. Doing

 limit stacksize unlimited

in a csh shell seems to allow up to 16 or 32 Mb, and users can run that command before running Allegro CL. (That command could be put into a .cshrc file.)

However, that only solves the problem for Allegro CL processes that are started from within that shell. You can also change the default for the machine as a whole by doing something like the following. (This procedure is provided as an example of what might work. Please check your Tru64 system documentation or contact your HP service representative for the precise instructions.)

The procedure described here is best performed by a system administrator or similarly trained person. The vmunix file created and copied at the end is the UNIX kernel. Modifying it incorrectly or corrupting it can have serious consequences.

1. Log in as root. You must be root (or have superuser privileges) to perform most of the following operations.

2. Change into the /sys/conf/ directory.

  prompt# cd /sys/conf

3. Edit the file whose name is the machine name, which we will call MACHINE_NAME, as follows. (Such a file typically exists after normal Tru64 Unix install. If the file does not exist, the System Administrator will have to create one.

Change the line 

           dfssiz         2097152
to
           dflssiz         8388608
or
           dflssiz         16777216

The value of dflssiz may already be different than 2097152, which is 2 megabytes -- (* 2 (expt 2 20)). The new suggested values are 8388608, which is 8 megabytes and a good value for 32-bit Lisps, or 16777216, 16 megabytes and a good value for 64-bit Lisps.

4. Run /usr/sbin/doconfig as follows (recall that MACHINE_NAME is the file in /sys/conf whose name is the machine name):

 prompt# /usr/sbin/doconfig -c MACHINE_NAME

You should see output similar to:

*** KERNEL CONFIGURATION AND BUILD PROCEDURE ***

Saving /sys/conf/MACHINE_NAME as /sys/conf/MACHINE_NAME.bck

Do you want to edit the configuration file? (y/n) [n]: n


*** PERFORMING KERNEL BUILD ***
	Working....Thu Oct  4 09:58:16 PDT 2001

The new kernel is /sys/MACHINE_NAME/vmunix

5. Copy the new kernel to / with a command like the following

prompt# mv /sys/MACHINE_NAME/vmunix /

6. Reboot the system.

5.3 Notes of increasing the default maximum stack size on HP-UX 11 machines

Increasing the default maximum stack size on HPUX 11 requires modifying kernel configuration parameters, then rebuilding the kernel. This process should be done by the systems administrator.

The file /stand/system is the kernel configuration file. The maxssiz and maxssiz_64bit tunable parameters need to be increased to at least 32MB each. If you don't have any references to maxssiz or maxssiz_64bit in your /stand/system file, then you can simply add these lines to the bottom of the file:

maxssiz         (32*1024*1024)
maxssiz_64bit   (32*1024*1024)

Otherwise, you'll need to modify the existing parameters so that they express a value >= 32MB.

After modifying /stand/system, the kernel needs to be rebuilt using the following command:

/usr/sbin/config -u /stand/system

The system will have to be rebooted for the changes to take effect.

5.4 Mac OS X notes

Allegro CL 8.0 is only supported on Mac OS X version 10.4 or later. It is not supported on versions 10.3 or earlier.

The Runtime Analyzer (see runtime-analyzer.htm) does not work properly on the 64-bit Mac OS X port (there is no problem on the 32-bit port).

Building shared libraries on Mac OS X

Building shared libraries on Mac OS X in foreign-functions.htm describes how to create a shared library suitable for loading into Allegro CL. We have determined that the -flat_namespace to the ld used to create the shared library is necessary, as shown in the linked section.

5.5 Heap start locations

When building large new images, it is often useful to specify Lisp Heap and C-heap start locations. See the discussion of the lisp-heap-start and c-heap-start keyword arguments in Arguments to build-lisp-image 2: defaults not inherited from the running image in building-images.htm. Here are the initial locations (called `bases') in Allegro CL 7.0 as delivered. Values are Hexadecimal integers.

6.0 Release Notes for the base Lisp

This main section contains three subsections (which have additional subsections): one on new features (Section 6.1 New features in the base Lisp), one on changes which are not backwards compatible and so may require code changes, (Section 6.2 Non-backward-compatible changes in the base Lisp), and one on miscellaneous changes Section 6.3 Other changes to and notes about the base Lisp).

6.1 New features in the base Lisp

We have added a number of new capabilities to Allegro CL. Here we give links to the documentation of the new features.

The features described in Section 6.1.1 Features added to Allegro CL 7.0 after the initial release of Allegro CL 7.0 were released originally as patches to Allegro CL 7.0, but after the initial release of Allegro CL 7.0. The features described in Section 6.1.2 Major new features in Allegro CL 8.0 are new in the Allegro CL 8.0 release.

6.1.1 Features added to Allegro CL 7.0 after the initial release of Allegro CL 7.0

Various additions to Allegro CL 7.0 were added after the original release of Allegro CL 7.0. We list them here. All are part of release 8.0.

1. New OLE/OCX interface: a new, high-level interface to OLE/OCX on Windows was released in early September, 2005. The documentation is in the revised ole.htm.
2. Update to an Allegro CL/SOAP API. There was a significant new SOAP release which included the following enhancements:
   • CLOS wrappers for SOAP structures
   • built-in definitions for many Schema types
   • new warning hierarchy
   • new condition hierarchy
   • access to element attributes in SOAP messages
   • attribute values may be computed when message is composed
   • top-level multiRef handling
   • multiple SOAP Body elements
   • access to encoding and content-type headers
   • complete access to all the message components
   • user extensions to WSDL code generators

   There are additional changes to SOAP in 8.0 not included in the 7.0 update.

3. Blowfish encryption update: The update (1) allows specifying the external format to be used when encrypting and decrypting; (2) adds support for CBC encrypting, for PKCS#5 padding, and zero (or null) padding for plaintext with no nulls; and (3) also adds new auxilliary functions hex-string-to-usb8-array and usb8-array-to-hex-string. See Support for Blowfish encryption in miscellaneous.htm.

   In 8.0, the default value for the external-format argument of blowfish-init is changed to :utf-8 (it was :default in release 7.0).

4. New prolog release: with new documentation prolog.html.
5. New functionality for retrieving DNS TXT records. The function socket:dns-query now accepts :txt as a value for the type keyword argument. When :txt is specified, the answer provided by socket:dns-query will be a list of one or more strings (because TXT records can be composed of multiple strings), or nil if there are no TXT records. See also dns.htm.
6. ftp-stream-file-mod-time and ftp-file-mod-time now convert the remote-path argument to Unix syntax pathname naming; map-over-ftp-directory now works on Windows. ftp-file-mod-time and ftp-stream-file-mod-time both take a remote-path argument which is a pathname namestring. ftp functions only understand Unix pathname syntax, using forward slashes to delimit directories. Windows uses backward slashes to delimit directories and functions like cl:directory called on Windows returns pathnames with backward slashes in their namestrings. ftp-file-mod-time and ftp-stream-file-mod-time now convert those namestrings to Unix syntax using the new syntax keyword argument to cl:namestring (see cl:namestring in implementation.htm). Functions such as map-over-ftp-directory, which call ftp-stream-file-mod-time, now also work correctly on Windows.
7. New :syntax keyword argument to cl:namestring converts backslashes into forward slashes. The cl:namestring function has a new keyword argument, syntax. The argument is ignored on Unix and Unix-like platforms. On Windows, when nil (the default), cl:namestring behaves as always and when :unix, cl:namestring converts back slashes in the namestring to forward slashes.

   This feature is useful for ftp functions since ftp only understands Unix pathname syntax (using forward slashes). Functions like map-over-ftp-directory called on Windows generates pathnames of the files in an ftp directory, but these generated pathnames use Windows syntax (with backward slashes delimiting directories). In order for these pathnames to be used in calls to other ftp functions, such as ftp-stream-file-mod-time, they must be first converted to Unix syntax. Users writing their own mapping functions for ftp directories may find this added feature of cl:namestring useful. See cl:namestring in implementation.htm.

8. Aodbc update: this update provided the ability to set the non-blocking flag in a database. See connect and db-non-blocking.
9. Oracle-direct update: this update provided some additional functionality for the Oracle Direct interface. See oracle-interface.htm.

6.1.2 Major new features in Allegro CL 8.0

Other new capabilities to Allegro CL are listed here, with links to the documentation of the new features. Some of these features have also been released as patches to Allegro CL 7.0.

1. AllegroCache: AllegroCache is a high performance, dynamic object caching database system. It allows programs to work directly with objects as if they were in memory while in fact the object data is being stored persistently. AllegroCache supports a full transaction model with long and short transactions, and meets the classic ACID requirements for a reliable and robust database. See the AllegroCache documentation (PDF files), located in the [Allegro Directory]/acache/doc/ directory: acache.pdf and acachetutorial.pdf.
2. :explain :inlining declaration: there are various :explain declarations which tell the compiler to print out information about what it is doing or trying to do as it compiles. These declarations are described in Help with declarations: the :explain declaration in compiling.htm and also see the new compiler-explanations.htm document. The new :explain :inlining declaration provides information about why inlining of functions succeeds or fails. See Inlining explanations in compiler-explanations.htm. There is an example in that section.

6.1.3 Other new features in Allegro CL 8.0

1. New -ee command-line argument and new function make-escaped-string: this argument is the same as the existing -e command-line argument but it will additionally process its companion argument to convert character triplets of the form %hh, where hh is a two digit hex value, to the character whose char-code is that hex value. This allows you easily to specify as a companion argument values containing spaces, backslashes, etc.. Because the conversion is not done until Lisp is ready to process the argument, earlier shell processing will not have incorrectly resolved the special characters before Lisp sees them. See Command line argumentsand Further description of the -e and -ee command-line arguments, both in startup.htm.

   The new function make-escaped-string will create converted strings suitable as companion arguments to -ee.

2. New macro with-native-strings*. This new macro allows nesting of calls to with-native-string.
3. New function system:constant-value: the function system:constant-value takes a form as an argument, and if the form has constant value, returns its value. An environment can be passed as an optional argument.
4. New function sys:ensure-portable-walking-environment. sys:ensure-portable-walking-environment returns an environment suitable for portable code walkers to use entirely within the ANSI Specification of Common Lisp.
5. New second optional argument to cl:macroexpand and cl-macroexpand-1. This second optional argument allows more choices in macroexpansion in different environments. See cl:macroexpand and cl:macroexpand-1 in implementation.htm for details.
6. New macro mp:with-message-interrupts-disabled: on Windows, even though a process may be waiting, it still typically watches for messages and processes operating system messages that require a response (because Windows expects threads to do this). However, there are some rare circumstances where this message handling should be suppressed. The macro mp:with-message-interrupts-disabled will do this.

6.1.4 Multiprocessing and OS threads in Allegro CL 8.0

The multiprocessing model was significantly changed in release 7.0. There are not major changes in release 8.0 compared to 7.0, other than bug fixes and internal improvements. See The new model for multiprocessing and OS threads in Allegro CL in version-70-release-notes.htm details of the 7.0 changes.

process-suspend-hook and process-resume-hook will go away soon

Currently a programmer can set a process's process-suspend-hook and be sure that whenever the process's execution is interrupted and another process allowed to run, the hook will get executed. Similarly, when a process regains control after another process has been running, its process-resume-hook, if any, will be run before its execution continues.

Unfortunately, suspend-hooks and resume-hooks cause problems for native thread implementations and other proposed enhancements in the multiprocessing model.

Therefore, these features will likely be removed in the next release. If you use these features, please contact [email protected] so we can assist you in providing alternatives when these features are removed.

6.2 Non-backward-compatible changes in the base Lisp

1. Meaning of ~/ on Windows changed. This change was made with an update released after Allegro CL 8.0 was released. Previously, the directory ~/ (the user's home directory) was the value of the HOME environment variable (if set) and C:\\ (if HOME was not set). In order to make Allegro CL consistent in this respect with other Windows programs, the value is now HOMEDRIVE/HOMEPATH (i.e. the concatenation of the value of the HOMEDRIVE environment variable, the string "/", and the value of the HOMEPATH environment valriable). The value of the HOME environment variable is used if HOMEDRIVE/HOMEPATH is not set. C:\\ is used if HOMEDRIVE/HOMEPATH and HOME are not set.
2. ACL_STARTUP_DEBUG support removed. Until support was removed with a 7.0 patch, Allegro CL would examine the environment variable ACL_STARTUP_DEBUG on startup and print startup information if it was set. This is no longer supported.
3. Second (non-standard) argument to cl:sleep removed. This optional argument to cl:sleep, which was documented as being for internal use only, has been removed. Any code which called cl:sleep with two arguments should be modified to call it with one argument only. Also, only non-negative arguments are accepted by cl:sleep. Passing a negative argument causes an error.

   cl:sleep is now effectively mp:process-sleep (with the whostate argument hardwired to "sleeping"). In earlier releases, there was a function excl:lisp-sleep. That function was removed in release 7.0. See cl:sleep and minimum sleeping time in multiprocessing.htm.

4. Change to the default value of the external-format argument to blowfish-init. The default value for the external-format argument of blowfish-init is changed to :utf-8 (it was :default in release 7.0). It is unlikely that this change will affect any code. The argument was only added by a patch in September, 2005. The sensible default is :utf-8 (which is the default for blowfish-encrypt and blowfish-decrypt) but the behavior prior to the argument being added was to use :default so the patch kept the same behavior. In 8.0, the more sensible default is used.
5. Environment name switching: the names of environments have been changed. What was in 7.0 a :compilation environment is now a :compiler environment and what in 7.0 was a :compilation-walking environment is now a :compilation environment. See environments.htm.
6. Environment variable name change: the variable sys:*compile-file-environment* is deprecated, and the preferred name is now sys:*compilation-unit-environment*. The old name does not have a value but does name a symbol-macro which causes the new name to be used.
7. Environment function replaced: the function sys:make-compile-file-environment is deprecated. Use the new sys:make-compilation-unit-environment instead. Calls to sys:make-compile-file-environment (which took no arguments) can be replaced with calls to sys:make-compilation-unit-environment with no arguments. sys:make-compilation-unit-environment accepts an optional argumen, which, when true, returns an environment suitable for compile and when nil (the default, returns an environment suitable for compile-file (as sys:make-compile-file-environment did).
8. The default value of *open-rename-function* now writes file using *default-pathname-defaults*. In earlier releases, when a file was written because open was called for writing to an existing file with :if-exists specified to be :rename, the function which is the initial value of *open-rename-function* would use the current directory to fill in missing parts of the renamed file's directory location, rather than using *default-pathname-defaults*. Since open used *default-pathname-defaults*, the result could be the new file and the backup in different directories when the value of *default-pathname-defaults* was different from the current directory (as returned by current-directory). In release 8.0, the renaming function does use *default-pathname-defaults*. This is a non-backward-compatible change although we suspect anyone who has noticed the behavior has written a renaming function to behave as the new default renaming function now does. See *open-rename-function*.
9. Revised handling of nested conditionals, new variables. The handling of nested #+/#- conditionals has been revised. A nested conditional is a form like (list #+allegro :allegro #-allegro #+foo :foo #-foo :default). Until this change, Allegro CL would evaluate that form (assuming :allegro is a feature and :foo is not) to (:allegro :default). With the change, it now follows other implementations and returns (:allegro). Also, before the change the form (list #+allegro :allegro #-allegro #+foo :foo) returned (:allegro) in Allegro CL but errored in other implementations. It now errors in Allegro CL as well.

   The issues are complicated. There are two new variables that affect this behavior: *sharp-plus-de-facto-standard-compatible* and *warn-on-nested-reader-conditionals*. The section The issue of nested conditionals in Allegro CL in implementation.htm discusses nested conditionals in detail. See that section and the descriptions of the two variables for more information.

6.3 Other changes to and notes about the base Lisp

1. New additional optional argument to make-random-state allows seeding with outside random values. make-random-state has an additional optional argument seed that allows specifying a value to use to seed the random number generator (it is effective only when the state optional argument is specified as t). See cl:random and cl:make-random-state in implementation.htm.
2. build-lisp-image now has a :require-search-list argument. This argument allows specifying a value for *require-search-list* (which instructs an image where to look for modules). The value defaults to the value of *require-search-list* in the running image. See building-images.htm, where build-lisp-image is fully described.
3. Certain build-lisp-image arguments can now get default values from environment variables. The c-heap-size, c-heap-start, lisp-heap-size, lisp-heap-start, newspace, and oldspace keyword arguments to build-lisp-image can get their default values from environment variables (named ACL_BUILD_[arg-name-with-underscores] -- e.g. ACL_BUILD_C_HEAP_START). See Arguments to build-lisp-image 3: defaults taken from environment variables in building-images.htm..
4. Changes to the sax parser. There have been some minor changes to the sax parser, described in sax.htm. The class lxml-parser has new normalize and package slots and parse-to-lxml has new normalize and class keyword arguments. The package argument in parse-to-lxml now defaults to the package value in the class that is the value of the class argument. Normalizing allows an element that contains only string content to appear as one contiguous string (at the cost of additional consing). Finlly, the pxml-version now accepts :query as a value for its optional parser-type argument: when specified, type of the enabled version of the parse-xml operator is returned.
5. :nat and :unsigned-nat foreign types. This change was actually added in release 7.0 but not previously documented. These types are described in The Syntax for Foreign Types in ftype.htm. "Nat" stands for "natural" and is intended to be the size of integer which fits into the natural word size of the machine - 32 bits on a 32-bit lisp and 64 bits on a 64-bit Lisp.
6. New compiler switch trust-table-case-argument-switch. trust-table-case-argument-switch is true when speed is 3 and safety is 0. If a case statement is suitable for compilation to a table-driven case statement (see the description for details), which is faster but unsafe, it will be compiled that way when this switch is true.
7. New function gets the environment of Lisp. environment return a list of the original environment when Lisp was started.

6.4 Base Lisp platform-specific information

There are no entries at this time. Information may be placed here in documentation updates after the initial Allegro CL 8.0 release.

7.0 Release Notes for CLIM

The CLIM manual has not been updated (other than minor corrections) for the 8.0 release. There have been no significant changes to CLIM functionality compared to 7.0, though there have been bug fixes and performance enhancements.

(Repeated mostly from 7.0 Release Notes.) The documentation for CLIM is in an online PDF file, clim-ug.pdf.

On Linux and FreeBSD, Allegro CLIM works with Open Motif 2.1 and 2.2 (2.2 was released in early 2002). Open Motif 2.2 is available at no charge from www.openmotif.org. Allegro CL 8.0/Allegro CLIM will work with either version. Redhat Linux 7.2 is supplied with Lesstif, a version of Motif that does not work with CLIM. See the Linux architecture specific information in the Allegro CL FAQ for information on how to install Redhat Linux 7.2 without lesstif and how to uninstall lesstif if already present. On all other Unix platforms, CLIM uses the platform-supplied Motif.

On Mac OS X 10.3, OpenMotif Motif 2.2.2 is required. CLIM will not work with version 2.2.0.

Certain CLIM demos on Solaris 64 bit give segv or otherwise fail when displaying over the network, language environment must be set to C. This is a problem when running any Sun GUI (such as the CDE environment or the Gnome 2.0 interface) on a Solaris64 machine. When bringing up the environment, set the language/locale to "C". (On the login screen, there's an "Options" button, which displays a menu that has a "Languages" submenu. Choose "C". Note: the default value is typically "en_US".) The "C" setting can process all of the 64-bit font sets. However, difficulties arise when displaying over the network. If you are displaying on the monitor of the machine running Allegro CL (and CLIM), the demos work as long as the language/locale is "C". They typically do not work when displaying on a monitor over the network. As of this writing, there is no fix for the problem.

8.0 Release Notes for Common Graphics and the IDE

There are few significant changes to Common Graphics and the Integrated Development Environment in 8.0 (those few are described in Section 8.1 Significant changes in Common Graphics). Work on Common Graphics and IDE support on Linux has progressed. Allegro CL 8.0 on Linux includes a preliminary version of Common Graphics and the IDE (similar to what was released for Allegro CL 7.0). Note that some destabilization may have occurred due to reworking some pieces of code in order to share more code with the new GTK port of Common Graphics and the IDE for Linux/Unix.

There were many significant changes in release 7.0. Users unfamiliar with those changes should look at the version-70-release-notes.htm.

The first subsection describes changes to Common Graphics and the IDE that are non backward-compatible. Please review this section and make whatever necessary changes to your code to obtain the desired behavior in release 8.0.

The second subsection describes other changes to Common Graphics and the IDE. These should not require code changes (please tell us if any do, because that may indicate a bug), but note that certain function and argument names have been deprecated in favor of new names, and that new code should reflect these changes, and old code should be revised at some point.

The section Section 8.5 IDE release notes and its subsections provide information about the IDE.

8.1 Significant changes in Common Graphics

New OCX control class and associated functionality

The new macro def-cg-ocx-control defines a Common Graphics dialog-item class for one of the OLE controls that was defined by a def-ole-linkage form. A newly-defined control could be added to the IDE's Components Toolbar as usual by calling add-to-component-toolbar. A couple of known remaining problems: (1) The value of certain properties will be an interface object, and so it is not feasible to modify the value at this time. (2) There is not yet a way to return a value in an "in-out" parameter of an OLE method.

Two new controls: lamp and html

• New lamp widget class. The lamp widget class implements the lamp widget. There are a number of associated generic functions implementing aspects of lamp functionality.
• New HTML control. There is a new html-widget dialog-item plus an html-browser dialog for adding HTML browsing capabilities to Common Graphics apps. It uses Microsoft's WebBrowser OLE control, which is also used by Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, there appears to be no way to search for text in the displayed HTML.

8.2 Non-backward-compatible changes in Common Graphics

1. All cg/ide packages are locked. This makes things more like release 6.2 and earlier when the symbols were all defined in the cg package, which was locked. In 7.0 there was less locking because the child packages had been created but inadvertently not locked. This may cause user methods that specialize on built-in classes to cause package lock warnings or errors that did not occur in 7.0. Such an error generally indicates that you should be specializing on your own subclass rather than on a built-in class.
2. draw-curve renamed draw-bezier-curve. The new name is more descriptive and draw-curve too easily conflicted with user function names. See draw-bezier-curve.
3. range-equality-test deprecated: the function which is the value of range-equality-test is no longer used by Common Graphics code. (The function was used to compare old and new values of the range of a dialog-item to see whether there was really a change.) on-change-test is now used for that purpose.
4. save-selection-when-unfocused deprecated: the Windows code that implemented save-selection-when-unfocused has not been supported by Microsoft for some time. There is no practical way to implement the behavior when nil in GTK. The default is true (the text stays selected). Specifying it to be nil may or may not be effective and is not recommended.
5. The "context menu key" (vk-applications) will now call pop-up-shortcut-menu by default. Previous the default behavior was to do nothing. See vk-applications.
6. Some textures are now actually bitmaps. A handful of built-in textures are now pixmaps rather than textures. This was necessary on GTK, but is now true on all platforms for consistency. The pixmaps are white-texture, black-texture, gray-texture, light-gray-texture, and dark-gray-texture. This may require some code changes. If you had passed the value to copy-pixels-to-stream, for example, then you would now need to pass it to copy-to-stream instead. This entry was not included in the originally released version of these Release Notes.

8.3 Functionality to handle differences between Windows and GTK

For complete information on the differences between Windows and GTK, please see cggtk-relnotes.html.

Common Graphics and the IDE now run on Windows and Linux with GTK. Certain differences between the two operating systems and windowing systems mean that some things do not work the same in Windows as in GTK and vice versa. The functionality listed here allows tries to handle the differences. Some of the variables/operators/etc. only available on one of the two platforms.

Mozilla support

The system needs to know the directory where the GTK control supplied by Mozilla to support the html-widget resides. (On windows, the widget is implemented in another way.) It may not be practical to search for the location automatically. See mozilla-library-path, *mozilla-library-path*, and find-mozilla-gtk-path.

Event handler processes

Because Linux currently does not use native threads and Windows does, on Windows, all windows handle events in their own thread associated with the window while on Linux/GTK, there is one event-handling thread. default-application-window-subkey, *use-single-cg-event-handling-process*, and *single-cg-event-handling-process* allow distinguishing behavior when necessary. cg-process-wait should be used on GTK instead of process-wait in event handlers. See also process-pending-events-if-event-handler.

Miscellaneous

• Linux has a built-in hand cursor, which is the value of hand-cursor. That variable is nil on windows. (find-cursor :hand-cursor) works correctly on both,
• Linux pixel size issues: because Linux/GTK seems not to have a reliable notion of pixel size, the functions pixels-to-points, points-to-pixels, and font-pixel-height are provided. They work on Windows but are usually not necessary.
• Timer resolution on Linux/GTK: see *cg-timer-resolution*.
• Check marks in menus: on Linux/GTK: you must specify at creation time whether a menu-item will ever be checked. See checkable.
• Modal dialogs: when displaying a modal dialog, the owner window is usually disabled. On GTK, this make take too long. *modal-dialogs-disable-owner* handles this.
• f10 key: it requries special handling on Linux.GTK, see handle-f10.
• Scroll increments: the new function scroll-increment is needed on Linux/GTK. It works on Windows but there is essentially the same as user-scroll (which does not work on Linux.GTK).
• Using the IDE parent-window: issues of mixing windows from various applications are more complex on Linux/GTK than on Windows. See the functions use-ide-parent-window, maximize-ide, ide-exterior, and top-ide-window, and the classes ide-parent-window, ide-child-window, and ide-owner-window. The IDE menu item View | Maximize IDE (Linux/GTK only) is related.

8.4 Other changes in Common Graphics

1. New variable *show-console-on-standalone-error*. The variable *show-console-on-standalone-error* (actually added in a 7.0 update) controls whether the console window is automatically shown when an error is signaled in a standalone Common Graphics application that was generated from a project in the IDE.
2. New function special-windows-directory. The function special-windows-directory determines the paths of certain Windows directories (such as the My Documents directory).
3. New keyword argument to load-pixmap. The function load-pixmap has a new make-unique-name keyword argument to ensure that the function does not create a name for the pixmap (from its file name) that is the same as the name of a cached pixmap.
4. on-print event handler can now be nil. The on-print property of a widget may now be set to nil like other event-handlers, in which case Common Graphics will default the value to princ-to-string. This avoids confusing errors that could otherwise happen if a user assumes that this property could be nil like other event-handlers and then CG funcalls nil on an object to print.
5. transparent-pixel-value argument to generate-mask. The transparent-pixel-value argument to generate-mask may now be nil. When it is, it takes the value of the upper-left pixel of the pixmap as the value to make transparent.
6. Multi-picture-buttons and masked pixmaps. multi-picture-buttons now handle masked pixmaps. Previously if a pixmap that has a mask was specified as the pixmap of a button-info, the transparent area of the mask was not drawn in the multi-picture-button's background color.
7. Autosizing list-views. The list-view function auto-size will no longer truncate a column header string if all of the strings in the body of the column are shorter than the header string.
8. New tabs-are-draggable property. If you turn on the new tabs-are-draggable property of a tab-control, and the single-line property is also true, then the user can rearrange the tabs within the tab-control by dragging after clicking left on a tab. In the IDE, the Editor uses this to allow you to change the order of the editor buffers. The Debug Window also allows you to change the order of any additional listeners that you've created there with the View | New Listener command.
9. New variable *event-loop-processes*. *event-loop-processes* is a list of all processes that are currently inside a call to event-loop, and which therefore can handle Windows messages.
10. New function message-box: the message-box function displays a simple message dialog using the platform's low-level utility to do so.
11. Change to font-equal: the function font-equal will now return true if the family field of one font is nil but the other is not. This compensates for the fact that the family field (which typically has no effect) sometimes gets "filled in" and sometimes it does not.
12. move-window-into-parent applied to top-level windows: the function move-window-into-parent now works for top-level windows.
13. The initial-name argument of ask-user-for-new/existing-pathname. ask-user-for-existing-pathname and ask-user-for-new-pathname now accept pathname objects as well as namestrings as values for the initial-name argument.
14. Default for link-color: the link-color property defaulted to blue for a rich-edit dialog-item but to red for a rich-edit-pane; now it is blue for both.
15. delete-command undeprecated: delete-command is now undeprecated because it passes the command down to a descendent window (like copy-command and the others) before it calls delete-selection. (It was deprecated in 7.0.)
16. Clicking on a text-edit-pane whose parent is a child window. Due to an apparent Windows quirk, clicking on a text-edit-pane whose parent is a child window did not expose the parent window. A Common Graphics method has been added to cover for that anomaly.
17. draw-string-in-box obeys vertical justification when wrap-p is true: draw-string-in-box now handles the case where wrap-p is true and vertical-justification is :center or :bottom. The text had always been top-justified when wrap-p is true.
18. grid-widget cell-box obeys vertical justification: grid-widget check-box cells (see check-box-column-mixin) now obey its cell-vertical-justification method (previously it always acted as if the value was :top).
19. Bug with grid read-cell-value interacting with AllegroCache is fixed: a bug was fixed where drawing a grid cell could break badly if its read-cell-value method accessed an Allegrocache slot in client-server mode. Waiting on the socket stream for a reply had allowed further messages to be handled, which could make a nested access to the object during scrolling, for example. read-cell-value and write-cell-value now suppress handling further messages until they return. An application's custom redisplay-window method could have a similar problem, in which case it should wrap a call to mp:with-message-interrupts-disabled around the code that does a process-wait.
20. sort-grid is now robust against missing widget-window: sort-grid no longer breaks if the grid-widget has no widget-window at the time. The sort-column property may now be specified with a :sort-column initarg. A grid-column name may now be passed to sort-grid as documented, rather than only a grid-column object.
21. New generic function cell-widget: a grid-widget application may define methods on the new generic function cell-widget to use the pre-defined cell widgets in arbitrary cells rather than only in particular grid columns for each type of widget.
22. New button-fills-cell property for static-text-and-button-column-mixin. The static-text-and-button-column-mixin class has a new button-fills-cell property that causes the button to fill the grid cell, with the text inside it.
23. Function that is the value of the button-function property of static-text-and-button-column-mixin instances now takes six arguments. If an application uses the static-text-and-button-column-mixin (for grid-widget columns), then the function that is the value of the button-function property should now take two additional arguments for the row-number and column-number (making six arguments in all). For backward compatibility, the Common Graphics code will still handle old functions that do not take these arguments, but all button-function functions now should officially accept them. So a button function could now be defined like this:

    (defun my-button-function
      (grid-widget data-object row column row-number column-number)
      ...)
    

    Or this alternative would work in both 8.0 and 7.0 and earlier:

    (defun my-button-function
      (grid-widget data-object row column
    	       &optional row-number column-number)
    

24. New function make-message-window and macro with-message-window. make-message-window creates a window suitable for displaying as a message window. with-message-window creates and displays such a window while code is run.
25. New function import-pixmaps. The new function import-pixmaps makes it easy to convert a set of .bmp pixmap files into lisp source code for embedding the pixmaps into the single image file of a delivered application.
26. A Common Graphics window may now be larger than the screen if desired. After creation, an application's track-limits method (if any) can constrain the size of the window as before.
27. Rich-edit functionality: the functions rich-edit-get-color, rich-edit-get-font, toggle-bold, toggle-italic, toggle-underline, toggle-bullets, left-justify, center-justify, right-justify are used by rich-edit-multipic widgets and menu-bars on rich-edit-dialogs. (These were avilable but not documented in 7.0.) Also see funcall-menu-item-with-rich-edit.
28. draw-to-x-y: like draw-to, draw-to-x-y draws from the current position to a location, but the location is specified with coordinates rather than a position.
29. drag-and-drop-mouse-moved: allows added code to be run when the mouse is moved during a drag.
30. New keyword argument for set-selection. set-selection has a new keyword argumentscroll to scroll the selection into view if needed. This entry was not included in the originally released version of these Release Notes.

8.5 IDE release notes

1. The IDE Help facility now can use an instance of the new CG html-browser dialog, to display IDE help inside the IDE rather than in a standalone HTML browser program using invoke-private-html-dialog. You can return to the old behavior if needed by setting the new use-cg-html-browser ide configuration option to nil. In the new browser you can, for example, select a code example and then invoke the IDE's Tools | Incremental Evaluation command on it directly, rather than first copying the example code to the editor. One disadvantage is that there is no string search in the CG HTML control (because Microsoft's WebBrowser OLE control does not appear to provide it).
2. New use-cg-html-browser configuration option. When the use-cg-html-browser option is true, help is displayed in the Common Graphics html-browser. This is more reliable and allows using IDE menu commands directly on the help page but (because of apparent limitations of the associated OCX widget) does not provide a string search capability. If you try to search, you will get a dialog that allows you to display the text in a third-party browser which supports such searches. If you set the value to nil, then the third party browser will be used all the time.
3. Changes to the behavior of save-options-to-user-specific-file on Windows: the function save-options-to-user-specific-file, which allows personalized prefs.cl files (with personal options settings) on multi-user machines, now uses Windows-specific directories like My Documents or Personal on Windows, rather than using the value of a HOMEDRIVE or HOMEPATH environment variable.See also special-windows-directory which determines the path of such directories. Also the default value of save-options-to-user-specific-file is now true.
4. Trace dialog faster, can restrict function traced: the Trace Dialog displays several times more quickly that in earlier releases. The inhibit-trace-for-object option allows trace to be disables in the event-handler process of specified windows.
5. IDE configuration option ide-html-history: ide-html-history allows saving of previously-viewed HTML pages.
6. Inspector displays changed property values in a bold font. A property value will now be displayed in a bold font in the inspector if it is not equivalent to the programmatic default value for that property. This highlights values that you've changed, as well as some sample values that you probably want to change for widgets placed onto forms. A read-only value will never be bold. A handful of properties are never shown bold because they generally don't have meaningful default values and are more distracting than useful when made bold; these exceptions include the properties child-p, device, tab-position, left, top, width, height, dialog-items, and pixmap-use-handle.
7. The File | Save command is now implemented for the Runtime Analyzer Results dialog. You can now save displayed analysis outline to a text file as well as saving the history. See the description of the Runtime Analyzer Results dialog. There are now two buttons on that dialog: the new Save to File and the older Save button, now renamed Save to History.
8. Save command on Class Browser. The Save command is implemented for the Class Browser outline, to save a class hierarchy as indented text to a text file.
9. The Class Browser dialog now uses a multi-picture-button rather than a tab-control. This was mostly for compatibility with the GTK port, where the tab-control cannot have multiple rows of tabs. Though the set of choices is the same, the new buttons display icons rather than text, so you may need to learn which button is which by holding the mouse cursor over the buttons until their tooltips appear.
10. More things can be searched backwards. Searching backward now works in item-lists, list-views, the inspector, and the tree grapher. (This had worked only in text windows like the IDE editor.)
11. Help on widget sublcasses: invoking help on a user-subclassed widget on a form will find the help for the built-in superclass.
12. Help command improvements: the Help command is now included reliably on the right-button shortcut menu of the inspector.
13. Shortcut menus. The shortcut menu for a form window is now accessible on the title-bar and menu-bar, in case widgets cover the entire form interior.
14. Changing the default package (in the Project Manager dialog) of an existing project should now be less troublesome, but it is still far better to decide on the package name when first setting up the project (especially before creating any form windows).
15. Handling non-existent package in a project: if you type the name of a non-existing package into the Project Manager dialog, it automatically creates a package of that name. This new package had used the excl and cl packages, even though the code that is generated for the project does not make the project package use those packages. That could lead to errors loading the project into a later lisp session when the project package would no longer use those packages as it had initially. So the project manager no longer makes the automatically created package use those packages.
16. Source code colorization. Source code colorization is no longer done in an IDE editor buffer if the buffer has been saved to a file and the file does not have one of the common extensions for lisp source code (.cl, .lsp, or .lisp).
17. open-files-in-gnu-emacs mode: when using the open-files-in-gnu-emacs mode, the IDE's Save All command will tell emacs to save all of its unsaved buffers.
18. Compiling a project: when you compile the current project, if it has multiple subprojects and the multiple subprojects all in turn have a common subproject, then that common subproject will be compiled only once rather than once for each subproject that has it as a subproject.
19. Some symbols no longer exported from cg package. A handful of overly-short IDE symbols were exported from CG to avoid a problem with an app using the symbols as local variables that end up in the IDE package, which is not available in a standalone application. The symbols are still exported from the ide package as before, and most of them are project accessor functions that are probably rarely used by users. The symbols are: project, projects, libraries, module, modules, module-p, verbose, loaded, partners, and followers.
20. Optional arguments to full-compile-project: the optional arguments of full-compile-project are now keyword arguments to match the similar function compile-project. Usually you would use the menu command rather than calling this function programmatically, but if you do call the function with any of its optional arguments then you will need to change the call to pass keyword arguments instead.
21. Lost IDE windows: if an IDE window gets "lost" by being moved outside of the visible screen area (perhaps programmatically), then the Window List dialog's Show button will move it into view (in addition to selecting the window as usual).
22. Moving to the beginning of a definition in the IDE editor: in the IDE editor, the gesture to move to the beginning of the definition (alt-uparrow in host mode or control-alt-A in emacs mode) will now move to the beginning of the previous definition when the text cursor is already at the beginning of a definition. If there is no definition that begins before the text cursor, it will move to the top of the file. Previously it did nothing in these cases. The new behavior emulates the similar command in emacs.
23. Missing project files: when there are missing project files while opening or running a project, you will now be given the opportunity to locate the files with the file dialog.
24. Missing modules in a project: when generating a standalone application from a project, and it fails because a needed CG module was not included, the error dialog will now mention the particular module and offer to automatically add it and try the build again.
25. Names of editor buffers: it's easier to find the name of an IDE editor buffer that you're looking for when using the editor's pop-up menu of all buffers (control-B in the default editor mode). It now displays the pathname-name by itself at the left, and sorts by that name rather than by the whole pathname.
26. New IDE configuration option use-ide-parent-window. There's a new configuration option to use a single parent window for the IDE, called use-ide-parent-window. It's on by default on GTK because owner window support is not good there, but is NOT on by default on Windows because child windows cannot have menu-bars in Windows, and form windows therefore will not show their menu-bars. The new option has not been tested rigorously on Windows, but you can change it by evaluating (setf (use-ide-parent-window (configuration *ide-system*)) t) in the IDE, and then restarting the IDE.
27. Project package now used when a project is run. When doing a Run | Run Project or running a standalone application that was made from a project, the value of *package* will initially be the project's default package. (This is not done, however, by Run | Run Form because the form runs asynchronously in an existing IDE Listener process.) Formerly the package property of a project was used only for writing an in-package form to any new code files that the project system generates.
28. Help menu now has Write a Bug Report item. The Help menu now has a Help | Write a bug Report item for use when there is no backtrace showing (the Debug Window after an error also has a bug report button). The new menu item lets you choose any subset of processes, to add their backtraces to the bug report.
29. maker-function now uses interior argument instead of exterior argument. When a form window in a project is saved, it will now generate the maker-function so that it has a new interior parameter with a default value that is equal to the form's current interior, and the exterior parameter will no longer have a default value. This will cause the running window to be created (by default) with the same interior on machines or operating systems where the title bar height or border thickness are different. This avoids, for example, buttons at the bottom of a dialog being partly clipped off when a generated application is run on a different machine that has a larger title bar height. One possible drawback to this design change would be if an application positions multiple windows that are made from forms so that their exteriors are adjacent or spaced by a certain amount. In that case, the application could pass the exterior argument to the maker-function explicitly. Or it could create each window in :shrunk state, then move or resize it as needed once its exterior is known, and then expose it.
30. New navigator examples for cell-widget and windows with multiple panes. See the Examples tab of the Navigator Dialog.
31. Some changes to alignment lines and snapping on forms. When dragging a widget (or block of widgets) on a form, alignment lines and snapping (see snap-to-components) will no longer be done between the top of a moving widget and the bottom of a non-moving widget, or vice versa, or between a left side and a right. Alignment and snapping are now done only between two top sides, two bottom sides, two left sides, or two right sides. The cases that were removed are generally not useful and cluttered things up. Also, the alignment lines should now reliably be drawn so that they extend to encompass all of the widgets that are currently aligned with the moving widget(s), rather than only some of them. Alignment lines and snapping will also be done between a moving widget (or block of widgets) and their former position, to make it easy to move the widgets only horizontally or only vertically.

8.5.1 Opening projects from releases prior to 8.0

Allegro CL 7.0 projects should open without problem in Allegro CL 8.0. For projects from releases prior to 7.0, see the version-70-release-notes.htm

9.0 AllegroStore not available in Allegro CL 8.0

AllegroStore is not available in Allegro CL version 8.0. Users who wish to continue using AllegroStore should use version 7.0.

There is a new database product, AllegroCache. See Section 6.1.2 Major new features in Allegro CL 8.0.

10.0 Release notes for SOAP

Major Additions or Revisions:

• Added support for nillable attributes for SOAP elements. The nillable option, when non-nil, adds the "xsd:nillable='true'" attribute to the element (see Element Definition in soap.htm).
• Recognize all Schema components (some Schema features are still ignored, but will no longer signal errors).
• New generic function wsdl-generate-code allows application programmers to modify the code generated by make-client-interface and make-server-interface.

Other changes include:

• The generic function define-soap-element now has a nillable keyword argument which marks elements as nillable.
• encode-wsdl-file has a new target-package keyword argument.
• New function soap-new-environment resets the SOAP environment.
• New function soap-make-fault creates an encoded fault instance.
• New stream argument to decode-wsdl-source allows input to come from a stream.
• New xml-syntax, class, and init keyword arguments to decode-wsdl-file, decode-wsdl-source, decode-wsdl-string, and decode-wsdl-at-uri. xml-syntax allows specifying whether to insist on strict compliance with the standard. class allows specifying a subclass wsdl-file-connector for the connector. init allows specifying make-instance arguments when creating an instance of the subclass.

11.0 Release notes for Allegro RPC

There are new RPC functionality allowing users to manage multiple Lisp images. See Running several communicating Allegro CL images in rpc.htm.

The re-connect keyword argument to make-rpc-client can now have the value :connect. If specified, when a re-connect attempt fails, the function will try a new connect. rpc-open-client is also affected since it may use clients made by make-rpc-client.

12.0 Release notes for jLinker

Jlinker in ACL 8.0 adds significant new functionality. A native Java interface allows the Lisp and Java parts of an application to share the same address space. Calls between Lisp and Java are comparable in speed to foreign function calls.

Arguments in calls to Java are converted using the information in the Java method signature. Consequently, calls to make-immediate-object are now redundant (but harmless).

New Jlinker Native interface (JNI)

There is now JNI support in the Jlinker. The new interface is described in the jlinker.htm and can be used instead of the socket interface. The jlinker JNI interface depends on the availability of the libjvm shared library in the Java installation. We have tested the jlinker JNI interface on some of the machine and operating system combinations where we have found a suitable Java distribution.

The status on various platforms is as follows:

• Windows: tested and working with Java 1.4.2 or later
• Linux x86 - tested and working with Java 1.4.2 or later (32-bit ACL and Java).
• Solaris - tested and working with Java 1.4.2 or later (32-bit ACL and Java)
• Mac OS X - Native (JNI) mode is disabled.
• Other UNIX - we have not located a suitable Java, hence not tested.

Non-backward-compatible change

1. Change to initial value of *jlinker-error-p*: the default value of the variable *jlinker-error-p* is now t. In previous versions, the default value was nil.

New functionality

The following variables and operators are defined:

• jclass-paths (function)
• jget-properties (function)
• jget-property (function)
• with-java-environment (macro)
• *jlinker-init* (variable)
• *jni-library* (variable)

jLinker documentation is in jlinker.htm.

Other jlinker changes

• New keyword arguments to jlinker-init. jlinker-init has new keyword arguments (classpath and jar) to specify the classpath and the jlinker.jar file location. Jlinker no longer modifies the CLASSPATH environment variable.
• On Windows, Jlinker can examine the Windows Registry to locate Java components. In typical installations, the user does not need to customize anything in order to use Jlinker.

13.0 Release notes for AllegroServe

No notes at this time

14.0 Release notes for IMAP and SMTP, XMLutils

No significant changes to these utilities

15.0 Release notes for The Emacs/Lisp interface

No significant changes.

16.0 Availability of CLX for Allegro CL

CLX (Common Lisp X) provides an interface between Common Lisp and the X window system. All versions of Allegro CL include a compiled version of CLX with the distribution. The fasl file is code/clx.fasl, loaded by evaluating (require :clx). The Allegro CL products CLIM and Allegro Composer use CLX. Users wanting low-level access to an X server in Lisp may also want to use CLX. CLX is not supported by Franz Inc.

The sources to CLX are supplied with the regular Allegro CL distributions in the contrib/clx/ directory. Note that during installation, you are asked whether you wish to install the contrib/ directory and the default is not to install it. The contrib/ directory is not included in the Trial distribution, but Trial users can download the CLX sources from the Franz Inc. website as described next.

The sources to CLX are also available on the Franz Inc. web site (www.franz.com), at the location ftp://ftp.franz.com/pub/clx/.

17.0 Release notes for Orblink

No significant changes.

Appendix A: Tightening of ANSI Conformance in Allegro CL

There were many changes in release 7.0 tightening Allegro CL's compliance with the ANSI spec (based in large part on the work of Paul Dietz, a user of Allegro CL who has been developing an extensive test suite for ANSI Common Lisp). There have been a few additional changes in 8.0, though none of significant user-visibility. Users interested in this project should see Tightening of ANSI Conformance in Allegro CL and its subsections in version-70-release-notes.htm.

Copyright (c) 1998-2009, Franz Inc. Oakland, CA., USA. All rights reserved.
Documentation for Allegro CL version 8.1. This page was not revised from the 8.0 page.
Created 2009.7.29.