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Top Document: comp.cad.autocad AutoLISP FAQ (part 1/2) - general Previous Document: News Headers Next Document: [1] Where can I find AutoLISP routines on the Internet? See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge AutoLISP will be definitely supported in future releases. VB was introduced to simplify Office Automation: ACAD <-> Excel/Access Both languages have advantages and disadvantages. You should take a look at both. VB seems to be more graphical and AutoLISP more logical. The object concept of VBA seems to be easier to learn, but you cannot run commands like in AutoLISP. The new VBA (>= R14.01) is extremely fast. See also [5.2] The future of AutoLISP already is Visual Lisp. For VLISP see [5.3] URL's: http://www.autodesk.com/vlisp, http://www.autodesk.com/develop/devres/visual/faq.htm, also [0.1] below. [0.1] What changed with AutoCAD 2000? The name :) No, there's much more, but you may call it Release 2000, R15 (though 15 is the version number and not the release number), A2000 or abbrevated A2K. The new Visual Lisp kernel (formerly "Vital Lisp") replaced the old xlisp-based AutoLISP kernel. What problems should you expect with Visual Lisp in R2000? (only the bad news). At http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/autocad/docs/r2000-news.txt I compiled a white paper. The major points are: Stricter error checking on loading, ACAD.LSP vs ACADDOC.LSP, You cannot/need not compile to ARX anymore, Incompatibilities AutoLISP - Visual LISP: Lisp functions are atoms no lists anymore, Protected symbols, Better exception handling, Pathname of the loaded VLX?, vl-export-symbol -> vl-doc-set, long acad symbol table names: EXTNAMES ActiveX automation, Variants and SAFEARRAYs, FAS4 cannot be loaded on R14. [0.2] Why cannot I create ARX anymore? With AutoCAD 2000 you cannot do that anymore as with ViLL or VLISP 4. Instead you compile to VLX (Visual Lisp Extension), which has basically the same functionality as the old Visual Lisp/Vital Lisp ARX, with the following differences: * You'll have to (load) the app. Before you had to (arxload) it. - Pro: Initialization is easier. The VLX doesn't abort completely on any error while loading. Before the whole ARX crashed with mysterious errors. - Pro: VLX are much smaller because they don't carry the whole Lisp environment, the VLRTS, along. Instead there's only one environment, VL.ARX, distributed with acad itself. So you can ship much smaller applications. - Contra: With loaded VLX there's no easy way to get the pathname of the app. Before it was possible with (arx) or (vl-exe-filename) * VLX has the option of seperate or common namespaces. With seperate ARX you had only the option of seperate namespaces (in fact completely seperate lisp environments). - Pro: This means that you can now choose the fastest and most secure compilation mode (LINK, DROP) and still keep common namespaces. (most of my apps benefit from this. I seperated my apps into one main module and several smaller ones) - Pro: ARX is only compatible per release, thus completely incompatible! VLX is new and therefore compatible only to newer releases (R16,...) but as lisp application it is by far more compatible than a ARX app. * Loaded ARX apps with (arx) return the pathname, loaded VLX apps with (vl-list-loaded-vlx) only a symbol, no path. This is a design flaw. You don't need ARX modules anymore. This is a feature, no bug. User Contributions:Top Document: comp.cad.autocad AutoLISP FAQ (part 1/2) - general Previous Document: News Headers Next Document: [1] Where can I find AutoLISP routines on the Internet? Part1 - Part2 - Single Page [ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ] Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: rurban@xarch.tu-graz.ac.at (Reini Urban)
Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:11 PM
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