[4-6] What is Dylan?

Dylan is a new Object-Oriented Dynamic Language (OODL), based on
Scheme, CLOS, and Smalltalk.  The purpose of the language is to retain
the benefits of OODLs and also allow efficient application delivery.
The design stressed keeping Dylan small and consistent, while allowing
a high degree of expressiveness. Dylan is consistently object-oriented;
it is not a procedural language with an object-oriented extension. A
manual/specification for the language is available from Apple Computer.
Send email to dylan-manual-request@cambridge.apple.com or write to
Apple Computer, 1 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142.  Include your
complete address and also a phone number (the phone number is
especially important for anyone outside the US). Comments on Dylan can
be sent to the internet mail address dylan-comments@cambridge.apple.com.

The mailing list info-dylan@cambridge.apple.com is for any and all
discussions of Dylan, including language design issues, implementation
issues, marketing issues, syntax issues, etc. The mailing list
announce-dylan@cambridge.apple.com is for major announcements about
Dylan, such as the availability of new implementations, new versions
of the manual, etc.  This mailing list should be *much* lower volume
than info-dylan.  Everything sent to this list is also sent to
info-dylan.  The newsgroup comp.lang.dylan is gatewayed to the
info-dylan mailing list.  

Send mail to the -request version of the list to be added to it.
You can also send an email message to majordomo@cambridge.apple.com
with "subscribe info-dylan" or "unsubscribe info-dylan" in the body,
and likewise for the other lists, mutatis mutandis.

Apple hasn't announced plans to release Dylan as a product.  

The directory cambridge.apple.com:pub/dylan contains some documents
pertaining to Dylan, including a FAQ list.

======== THOMAS ========

Thomas is a compiler for a language that is compatible with the
language described in the book "Dylan(TM) an object-oriented dynamic
language" by Apple Computer Eastern Research and Technology, April
1992. Thomas was written at Digital Equipment Corporation's Cambridge
Research Laboratory. Thomas is NOT Dylan(TM) and was built with no
direct input, aid, assistance or discussion with Apple.

Thomas is available to the public by anonymous ftp at
       crl.dec.com:/pub/DEC/Thomas
       gatekeeper.pa.dec.com:/pub/DEC/Thomas
       swiss-ftp.ai.mit.edu:/archive/Thomas

The Thomas system is written in Scheme and runs under MIT's CScheme,
DEC's Scheme->C, and Marc Feeley's Gambit.  It can run on a wide range
of machines including the Macintosh, PC compatibles, Vax, MIPS, Alpha,
and 680x0.  Thomas generates IEEE compatible Scheme code.

A ready-made version of Thomas 1.1 interpreter built upon MacGambit
2.0 as a double-clickable Macintosh application is available by
anonymous ftp from cambridge.apple.com:/pub/dylan/gambit/ as
the file thomas-1.1-interp.hqx.

For discussion of Thomas, send a note to
   info-thomas-request@crl.dec.com 
to be added to the mailing list. 

DEC CRL's goals in building Thomas were to learn about Dylan by
building an implementation, and to build a system they could use to
write small Dylan programs. As such, Thomas has no optimizations of
any kind and does not perform well. 

The original development team consisted of:
          Matt Birkholz (Birkholz@crl.dec.com)
          Jim Miller (JMiller@crl.dec.com)
          Ron Weiss (RWeiss@crl.dec.com)
In addition, Joel Bartlett (Bartlett@wrl.dec.com), Marc Feeley
(Feeley@iro.umontreal.ca), Guillermo Rozas (Jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu)
and Ralph Swick (Swick@crl.dec.com) contributed time and energy to the
initial release.

======== Marlais ========

Marlais is a simple interpreter for a language strongly resembling
Dylan. It is available by anonymous ftp from
   ftp.cis.ufl.edu:/pub/Marlais
   cambridge.apple.com:/pub/dylan/Marlais
   travis.csd.harris.com:/pub/ 
Currently runs on i386 and i486 (OS/2 or Linux), IBM PC/RT, IBM
RS/6000, HP9000/300, HP9000/700, DECstations (Ultrix), SGI (IRIX),
Sony News, Apple Macintosh (A/UX), Sun3, Sun4, Vax (4.3bsd and
ultrix), m88k (Harris Nighthawk running CX/UX), MIPS M/120, Sequent
Symmetry, Encore Multimax.  Contact Joe Wilson <jnw@cis.ufl.edu> or
Brent Benson <brent@ssd.csd.harris.com> for more information.

================

The Gwydion Project at CMU is developing an innovative new software
development environment based on the Dylan language (and, in the
process, will make available a very high-quality implementation of
Dylan). This project includes many of the same people responsible for
CMU Common Lisp. (In Welsh mythology, Gwydion is the uncle of Dylan
and nephew of Math.) A Mosaic page describing the project goals, how
they fit in with the Dylan language, and copies of the Dylan language
manual and latest approved design notes is available as
   http://legend.gwydion.cs.cmu.edu/gwydion/
For more information, write to gwydion-group@cs.cmu.edu.

Mindy (Mindy Is Not Dylan Yet) is a Dylan-like language from the
Gwydion Project. Mindy is intended for use as a development tool while
work on the "real" high-performance Dylan implementation progresses.
Mindy is available by anonymouse ftp from legend.gwydion.cs.cmu.edu as
the file /afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/gwydion/release/mindy.tar.gz.
Send bug reports to gwydion-bugs@cs.cmu.edu; support will be minimal.