Subject: New Lispcore>Library package: MesaTypes
To: Lispcore^, Lispsupport, Sheil, Cooper, Purcell

Announcing a new Lispcore>Library package: MesaTypes

By Tayloe Stansbury with help from Richard Burton.

This package introduces three new clisprecordtypes which allow you to describe any block of bits with an arbitrarily nested datatype.  You can define multidimensional, nonstandardly indexed arrays with multi-word elements; records with multi-word fields; and multi-word types.  Special accessfns cover up the necessary \BLTs and LOCFs.  Appropriate create methods are automatically provided.  The package also provides a number of macros for manipulating instances of such types.  

Anyone who wants to use graceful datatypes to describe some arbitrary chunk of memory (e.g. ethernet, rs232, nsfiling, any file system)  will probably find this package useful; most of the 1108 file system now depends on it.  People translating Mesa system code into Lisp will find it particularly useful.

This message is stored as Lispcore>Library>MesaTypes.tedit.  Proper external documentation of this package will follow release of the 1108 file system.  Extensive examples of its use can be found in the first few pages of stansbury>newdlionfs>dlionfs.

-- Tayloe.