[Gardeners] Gardeners Resource Directory progress

[Michael J Forster]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 12:29:28PM -0800, Michael J Forster wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 12:23:45PM -0800, Peter Seibel wrote:
> > On Dec 15, 2005, at 11:56 AM, Michael J Forster wrote:
> > 
> [...]
> > > I think one person should compile and post an initial list of URLs
> > > and one-line summaries, rather than everyone spraying their Google
> > > hits for "lisp" at the mailing list.  Then--in one thread--we can
> > > all sift through, refine, and add to the list until we're satisfied.
> > >
> > > I'm willing to do this if no one else is.  Peter?
> > 
> > You said the magic words: "I'm willing to do this". Go for it. To  
> > keep it simple, why don't you send to the mailing list a Lisp list of  
> > this form:
> You said the magic words: "I'm willing to do this". Go for it. To
> keep it simple, why don't you send to the mailing list a Lisp list of
> this form:
>
>   '((:url "http://www.lispniks.com/cl-gardeners/"
>      :description "CL Gardeners project. Group devoted to improving
> the Common Lisp Landscape.")
>    (:url "http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/"
>     :description "Practical Common Lisp, online version of the
> introduction to Common Lisp by Peter Seibel.")
>     ...)
>
> Groovy.  I have work to attend to for the remainder of the day, but
> I will submit a list later in the day tomorrow.

Quick update.  Sorry for the delay.  Tied up with work until earlier
this morning.

I started by skimming several of the Lisp "hub" sites (ALU, Paul
Graham, cliki, vendors, open source implementations, the Common
Lisp Directory & KB, and popular blogs) to distil a set of categories:

* faqs
* history
* books
* on-line references
* articles
* tutorials
* implementations
* libraries, examples & tools
* applications
* organizations & user groups
* people
* events
* mailing lists, newsgroups & blogs
* advocacy, selling & success stories
* consultants
* jobs


Obviously, the categories could be sliced and diced differently,
and they can be revised later.  For now, I just need a structure
to guide my harvesting efforts.  Of course, suggestions are welcome.

Next, starting again with the "hub" sites, I've been conducting a
breadth-first search for topics and links and tagging them with
the categories.  I've modified Peter's suggested list structure
accordingly.  For example,

'((:url "http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/"
   :description "Practical Common Lisp, online version of the
   introduction to Common Lisp by Peter Seibel."
   :categories ('books))
  (:url http://paulgraham.com/booklinks.html
   :description "Paul Graham's Lisp Links: Books"
   :categories ('books))
  (:url "http://paulgraham.com/onlisp.html"
   :description "On Lisp- By Paul Graham (1994) is a comprehensive
   study of advanced Lisp techniques, with bottom-up programming
   as the unifying theme."
   :categories ('books))
  (:url "http://paulgraham.com/acl.html"
   :description "ANSI Common Lisp combines an introduction to Lisp
   programming, and a convenient, up-to-date reference manual for
   ANSI Common Lisp."
   :categories ('books))
  (:url "http://paulgraham.com/lisphistory.html"
   :description "Paul Graham's lisp history links"
   :categories ('history))
  (:url "http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/lisp.html"
   :description "History of Lisp, John McCarthy"
   :categories ('history))
  (:url "http://wiki.alu.org/History"
   :description "ALU Wiki lisp history links"
   :categories ('history))
  ...)

After one pass, I've collected approximately 120 distinct links.
My objective here is not to simply list the obvious sites, but to
excavate interesting links buried within--to flatten the hierarchies.
Then, we can create multiple hierarchical navigation paths for our
own purposes.

I'm away until Sunday evening.  I'll take a moment to post what I
have then and continue from there.


-Mike



--
Michael J. Forster
Shared Logic Inc.