USerial Library — v0.1.2010.12.26 December 27th, 2010
Patrick Stein

I am putting together a networking library atop usocket for use in a multiplayer Lisp game. So far, I have implemented a library for serializing data into a byte buffer.

Here is a simple example of serializing some things into a buffer:

(make-enum-serializer :opcode (:login :run :jump :logout))
(make-bitfield-serializer :login-flags (:hidden :stay-logged-in))
 
(serialize* (:opcode :login
             :uint32 sequence-number
             :login-flags '(:hidden)
             :string login-name
             :string password) buffer)

You can unserialize those bits into existing places:

(let (opcode sequence-number flags login-name password)
  (unserialize* (:opcode opcode
                 :uint32 sequence-number
                 :login-flags flags
                 :string login-name
                 :string password) buffer)
  ...)

You can unserialize them into newly-created variables for use within a body:

(unserialize-let* (:opcode opcode
                   :uint32 sequence-number
                   :login-flags flags
                   :string login-name
                   :string password) buffer
  ...)

Or, you can unserialize them into a list:

(let ((parts (unserialize-list* (:opcode 
                                 :uint32
                                 :login-flags
                                 :string
                                 :string) buffer)))
  ...)

You can find out more about the serialization library on my unet page.

CL-Growl patched for CCL April 29th, 2010
Patrick Stein

Alexandre Paes submitted a patch for my CL-Growl library so it now works with CCL (aka. Clozure, formerly OpenMCL), too.

Here is the source tarball: cl-growl_1.1.2010.04.29.tar.gz and the corresponding GPG signature: cl-growl_1.1.2010.04.29.tar.gz.asc. For other ways to access this code, see the CL-Growl page.

Thank you, Alex!

CL-Growl client library released April 12th, 2010
Patrick Stein

Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X. You run a Growl server on your machine. Then, applications can send notifications that will be displayed on your desktop. Growl supports a thin network protocol called Growl Talk that programs can use to send notifications to the Growl server (and hence, to your desktop).

Growl is incredibly useful for any program that operates asynchronously with the user. If you want to be notified when some portion of your job completes or when there is a critical error in your web application, Growl is a great tool to have at your disposal.

I wrote an implementation for Common Lisp of the client protocol. Here is a simple example of how you might use it:

(let ((growl:*growl-default-app* "My Lisp Application")
      (growl:*growl-default-host* "localhost")
      (growl:*growl-default-password* "my-growl-password"))
  (growl:register :enabled (list "Warn" "Error")
                  :disabled (list "Info"))
  (growl:notify "Program starting up..." 
                :notification "Info")
  (unless (connect-to-database ...)
    (growl:notify "Cannot connect to database!" 
                  :title "Critical Error!"
                  :notification "Error"
                  :sticky t
                  :priority 2)))

For more complete usage information and to learn how to obtain the library, see the CL-Growl web page.

Parser Generator released April 9th, 2010
Patrick Stein

A few weeks back, I described an XML Parser Generator that I was working on. At the time, it could generate the parser it used itself. Now, it’s got Objective-C support and Lisp support. (The Lisp support is slightly better than the Objective-C support right now. With the Objective-C backend, you can create arrays of structs, but not arrays of strings or integers.)

Here is the Parser Generator home page.

Animal Artwork and More Languages in iPhone Spelling App March 29th, 2010
Patrick Stein

I just finished up some animal artwork for my iPhone Spelling Toy. I also added translations for Japanese and German (in addition to the English, French, and Spanish that were already there). After I double-check the translations, I will get it uploaded to the App Store.

If you have any expertise in Spanish, French, German, or Japanese, I’d appreciate any feedback you can give me about the words I chose in those languages. Would they be the word one would think of when shown the picture? Thanks, in advance.

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