Chaitanya,

Sorry I couldn't answer yesterday. I saw 2 mail messages from you, but
my broadband connection was down and couldn't read them. Looks like
you might have lost a lot of chances this weekend to get your problem
fixed.

The problems you ran across -- and would continue to run across --
installing ucw on Windows are bound to be very difficult. I must tell you
that I spent almost one week -- from the beginning of trying to install
the software in such a way that I could get keep up to date with ucw
and keep one unchanging installation of software that did everything ucw
did at about 22 April (i.e. 2 complete, independent installations) --
getting as many as possible of the tutorial examples to work and getting
my own applications to work. I spent only one day trying to figure out
how to write the application I wanted to write. Mind you, I have not
attempted to install a decent Lisp system on Windows in about a year.
My attempt at automating the job seemed to be a waste: people at
Wipro were still unable to get it to work. I think there might have been
a networking problem involved.

This is real-world, bleeding-edge (not just leading-edge), super-powerful
Lisp software.

What Lisp are you using?

I don't know if you can do it on Windows. I don't think I'd even try.
Most of the advanced stuff begins on some Unix variant, and most of
it either on OS/X with OpenMCL or on Linux with SBCL. If you don't
want to pay for software, I think you have only 2 choices on Windows:
CLISP and LispWorks.

What is sometimes recommended in unapologetic terms is that if
you want help on the #lisp channel you had better use SBCL. The
reason is that the SBCL developers hang out there -- and I guess
they are pretty dominant there. They are the ones who are working
on a highly portable, free-software Common Lisp implementation,
after all! SBCL is starting to work on Windows, but I don't know
if it is ready to use by us noobs.

Another rule of thumb is to always try the latest version (even
development version) of everything before asking help on it.
People will soon learn who you are -- even if you hide behind
nicknames -- and ignore you if you do not heed this rule.

Don't even think of learning Lisp if you don't want to learn
emacs (or a variant) too. ;-) Ha, ha, only serious! You're missing
a big part of the whole reason for using Lisp if you don't use
emacs. SBCL is nice also because it includes the best
integration with SLIME (another package you must have)
and, thus, emacs. By the way, I prefer the xemacs branch
of the emacs family. I think you will too.

What I would recommend is that you first install Debian GNU/Linux
on a partition of your PC. A Debian disk costs about Rs. 200. You
might need a set of 3 disks. I can courier you a set of 3 for Rs. 100
(pay me when you come to Bangalore or buy my a couple espressos).
I believe Windows XP lets you partition an already-running system
and create a new partition. After you install Debian, most package
installation for Lisp development (I would say all installation of any
package that hasn't died of bit rot) is very easy (as long as you
are not behind a firewall or Internet proxy). Most mainstream
Lisp packages will install via
    $ apt-get install package-name'
or (in a Lisp with ASDF installed)
    (asdf:oos 'asdf:load-op :package-name)
If you do this:
    (asdf:oos 'asdf:load-op :asdf-install)
then you can download and install many packages with a single
operation from standard places on the Web, using the form
     (asdf-install:install :package-name)
Summary: with Debian and ASDF-INSTALL, most packages
only require a single line to download and install -- with no
DLL Hell or RPM Hell problems, i.e. there will be no
interdependency problems between packages like one
package requiring version X of FOO and another package
requiring version Y of FOO.

I used to have a set of 2 CDs just devoted to Lisp that I would
give people interested in Lisp, especially those who didn't have
broadband connections. But now a lot of the interesting stuff is
hopelessly out of date (after about 2 or 3 years). There is also
LispBox. I don't know if LispBox works on Windows yet, but I
would be interested to work on getting it to. (Google for lisp box
and look at about the first 4 hits.)

Do you have a good Internet connection? This stuff will be very
painful without it. I suffer with anywhere from about 2 kBps (at
work) to 55 kBps (at home). (b = bits; B = bytes.)

If you want to try doing it on Windows, you can try a shortcut to find
tar files containing released versions of the packages ucw is dependent
on. I believe if you get the latest tar file for each package you'll be
all right. But for some packages you will probably still need svn, darcs,
or cvs. I'm not sure svn and darcs have been ported to cygwin, in
which case you'll have to install and set up a whole C toolchain for
Windows -- and all schedules go out the door! You can install
wget, tar, and xemacs (with emacs Lisp code) installed under cygwin
(www.cygwin.com). Cygwin will give you something of a
rudimentary programmers' workbench reminiscent of a full Linux
distribution. Try to use svn (subversion), darcs, or cvs instead of tar
whenever you can (and if they are available under cygwin).

Well, I've rambled because I don't have 2 hours to spend to
write down this stuff systematically. But I think it's all here.

I hope after seeing this daunting bunch of software you need
that you'll still go ahead.

Good luck!!!

Tom




--
Lisp humour:

LISP> (setf god (symbol-value god))
Warning:  Declaring GOD special.
Error:  GOD is unbound.