create menu references programmatically

Hi,

I am currently trying to implement my Ocean menu item in the CIW window
and have a problem because I need to create unique references for the
menu items. A non-working skeleton is shown below to illustrate what I
want. (Actually I want to traverse a directory structure and look for
ocn suffixes, but that is for later). I somehow have to make the
oceanMenuItem below unique. In Tcl I would have done it like this

for {set i 0} {$i < $arg1} {incr i} {
set oceanMenuItem$i [hiCreateMenuItem \$oceanMenuItem$i ....
}

just to illustrate what my problem is. I need to automatically make
variable names, and that is something which I do not understand how to
do with SKILL yet.

(defun SABfillMenu (arg1)
(for i 0 arg1
(setq oceanMenuItem (hiCreateMenuItem
?name 'oceanMenuItem
?itemText "MenuItem"
?callback "printf(\"MenuItem\")"))
(hiAddMenuItem sabOceanMenu oceanMenuItem)))

 

You should be able to do that with gensym.

Yours,

 

Great,
learned something new today.

 

(this will generate a unique symbol from the 'root' you pass in argument)

also, one can use

stringToSymbol( sprintf(nil "menuItem%s" i) )

for example

stéphane

 

Ah, that's how they have renamed intern (you can see that I'm more
used to Common Lisp than skill).

Yours,

 

Skill is based on Franz Lisp.

And I would use concat() rather than stringToSymbol( sprintf() ):

concat( "menuItem" i )

-Pete Zakel
()

Eggnog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English. Many
people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from. The first syllable
comes from the English word "egg", meaning "egg". I don't know where
the "nog" comes from.

To make eggnog, you'll need rum, whiskey, wine, gin and, if they are in
season, eggs...

 

I went over to www.franz.com to see for myself what its all about, and
it is probably not something that an engineer like me, who like to play
around with tools on his spare time, will get a license for. I have had
several discussions over lunch on what language is the better to use as
glue in EDA applications. Lisp is a language that I am not so familiar
with as I do not use emacs as my editor and it is a way of thinking that
I am comfortable with.

I doubt that it is possible to have an "evaluation" version of SKILL
which somebody like me can install on his Linux machine at home to play
around with to get comfortable with the language since tool integration
is not my main task.

That's why languages like Tcl with their BSD license fit so well as
glue: I can "practise" the language at home and then do the real stuff
at work. Cadence do offer Tcl as glue for some of their digital
simulators, but I am working on analog. The nice side effect of Tcl is
Tk, which make it very convenient on Windows PC's where it is a lot
easier to work with GUI elements than the command line.

I have geda installed at home and they also use some kind of lisp,
guile, but I found that it is almost impossible to use the little I have
learned in SKILL to be able to use guile. The only thing is the use of
parenthesis and the reverse polish notation which is strict in guile.

I once thought that the computer was there to serve people, but soon
realized that we live to serve the matrix.

Well, time to get back to my symbols ...

 

Whilst SKILL is based on Franz Lisp, the Lisp provided by Franz Inc is not...
They supply a Common Lisp (Allegro Common Lisp) whereas Franz Lisp predated
Common Lisp:

http://www.idiom.com/free-compilers/TOOL/Lisp-4.html

That's the trouble with a language as old as Lisp - where the
"standardisation" came rather late in its life. Too many variants were out
there by the time Common Lisp (and SCHEME) came along.

And then Cadence also allowed a more conventional language entry (infix
operators, etc) to avoid scaring off engineers who weren't familiar with Lisp.

Regards,

Andrew.

 

Damn, is this something like "GNU is Not Unix": Franz is Lisp but not
Franz Lisp. I would probably not be able to see the difference anyway.
I'll probably leave the can of worms securely closed ...

 

Ah yes. I've thrown all my tin openers away for this precise reason ;-)

Andrew.

 

At some point I thought that the idea of an infix-friendly Lisp would be
a friendly entry for non-lispers. In the mean time I have found that
hard-core lispers often use lisp because of the RPN just like some
people love HP calculators with that ENTER button.

Maybe Cadence also offer courtesy copies of their software not just the
Function Quick Reference? (Dream on dude)

 

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean. I'm not going to copy any
software from my company computer to my home computer if that is what
you want to say. I like my job too much to risk anything like that.

If Cadence motivate their users in any way to take interest in their
main work tool on the spare time by setting up some kind of program to
allow this I would welcome this. My life is covered by German law so my
employer own anything I invent, even on my spare time, so there is not
much danger that I will use any such employee-spare-time-hacking
licenses to make a second living during the night. But it would make it
much more easy for me to try out features of my main work tool in peace
so that I can increase my productivity during paid work hours.

Maybe it is different in other countries.