The current state of documentation.

[Daniel L. Weinreb <dlw at MIT-AI>]

In response to the many pieces of mail I have receive recently asking
about documentation of various things, here is the current state of the
documentation of the Lisp Machine software.

The only published material that exists right now is the Lisp Machine
Manual, Second Preliminary Edition.  This was written over two years ago
and so is not really up-to-date, but most of what it says is accurate so
long as you ignore chapters 20 through 23 inclusive.  There are a lot
of new things that are not in this manual, though.

A new Lisp Machine Manual is being produced.  We are in the initial
proofreading stage, and are working hard on it.  We will try to get this
published as soon as possible.

Flavors are considered part of the Lisp Machine Lisp language, and so
they will be documented in the new manual.  The Flavor chapter of the
new manual has been given to the AI Publication people, to be published
as A.I. Memo #602, so that we can have it ready without waiting for the
entire manual.  With luck, copies will be availible sometime soon.  If
you are really in a hurry, you can :DOVER AI: LMMAN; FLAVOR PRESS to
get a copy.

The Window System is not part of the language, and is in fact such a big
subsystem that it will be documented separately from the Lisp Machine
Manual.  Some basic documentation is availible for printing; you can
:DOVER AI: DLW; WINDOC PRESS.  This is PRELIMINARY documentation; it is
missing a lot of useful stuff and it has only been proofread once and
may contain mistakes.  But until there is something better, it will have
to do.  It concentrates on explaining the concepts of the system and
telling you what messages you can send to existing flavors of windows
and what flavors you can mix together to create new flavors.  It does
not tell you how to write new flavors of window, though.

There is also a document that explains the user interface to Lisp Machine
system programs and the window system.  It is availible for printing, too:
:DOVER AI: LMWIN; OPERAT XGP.

Another free-standing document explains how to use menus, multiple-choice
windows, choose-variable-values windows, and such things.  This will
eventually be merged with the rest of the Window System documentation.
Right now, you can get it by :DOVER AI: LMWIND; CHOICE XGP.