How to Get Loom

LoomLicense

Loom® software is the intellectual property of the University of Southern California. It is not in the public domain. The University of Southern California makes the Loom software available under an open source license. For details see the Full license terms. The license is also available as a text document or a PDF document.

For more information about Loom itself licenses, etc. send E-mail to loom-forum-owner at the domain isi.edu or regular mail to:

    Ms. Kary Lau
    USC Information Sciences Institute
    4676 Admiralty Way
    Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695
    USA
The Loom project can also be reached via:
    Telephone:  +1 (310) 448-8722
          FAX:  +1 (310) 822-0751

Loom System Requirements

Loom requires a Common Lisp compiler to function properly. We do not supply executables or such a compiler. Loom can be expected to function properly in an ANSI-compliant Common Lisp. We have tested Loom using the following Common Lisp compilers and platforms:

Other Lisp systems may work as well, but we have not done testing. Newer versions of the lisp systems from these vendors should work, although that may not be true for Lucid Common Lisp. We have not tested Loom with CMU Common Lisp, but we have user reports that Loom works with version 18b and 18c, but the sources as available on this site might require that the feature :CMU17 be added to the *features* variable in order for Loom to setup the packages correctly. This must be done each time before loading or compiling Loom.

Source Code

Loom is distributed as source files which must be compiled using a Common Lisp compiler. (See System Requirements above.) Several versions of Loom are available. The current released version is 4.0. The software is available in several formats on this page as well as via anonymous ftp from isi.edu in the pub/loom directory.

These source distributions do NOT include the patches. You will need to download them as well.

Loom 4.0 Source
   Installation instructions
   Release notes
Unix tar file (5 MB)
Gzipped Unix tar file (1 MB)
Macintosh disk image (1.5 MB)

Loom 3.0 Source
   Installation instructions
   Release notes
Unix tar file (4.7 MB)
Gzipped Unix tar file (1 MB)
Macintosh disk image (1.4 MB)

Loom 2.1 Source
   Installation instructions
   Release notes
Unix tar file (4.5 MB)
Gzipped Unix tar file (1 MB)
Macintosh disk image (1.4 MB)

Patches

From time to time ISI will release patches to fix bugs and enhance Loom functionality. Those patches can be downloaded from here.

Loom 4.0 Patch Files: Level 74 from 05-May-2004
Lisp source file
Gzipped Lisp source file
pathnames.lisp upgrade to properly support CMUCL 18. Place in the top-level Loom 4.0 directory. Lisp source file
Loom 3.0 Patch Files: Level 191 from 23-Jul-2003
Lisp source file
Gzipped Lisp source file
Loom 2.1 Patch Files: Level 243 from 11-Sep-2002
Lisp source file
Gzipped Lisp source file
Defsystem upgrade for Loom versions prior to 4.0 to properly support Macintosh Common Lisp version 4.3.5 and 5.0 and CMUCL 18. Place in the top-level Loom directory. Lisp source file The Loom 4.0 distribution already includes this file.

Ontosaurus

Ontosaurus is an HTTP server for Loom knowledge bases. It is not self-contained software. Ontosaurus requires version 3.0 or 4.0 of Loom (available above) and CL-HTTP version 70.23 (or higher) from the MIT AI Lab.
Ontosaurus 2.0 Source
   Installation instructions
Unix tar file (6.3 MB)
Gzipped Unix tar file (3.0 MB)
Macintosh disk image (3.3 MB)

Ontosaurus 2.0 Source Code Only. Smaller download if you already have an earlier Ontosaurus.
Unix tar file (2 MB)
Gzipped Unix tar file (300 kB)

Ontosaurus Patch Files:
Version 1.9 Lisp Source File (3 kB)
Version 2.0 Lisp Source File (11 kB)

Utilities and Hacks

This is a small collection of little utilities and hacks that may make it easier to use Loom in your lisp environment.

outliner.lisp contains a small utility function print-concept-outline, which will print an ASCII outline of a concept hierarchy. There is also a function print-context-list which will print an alphabetized list of the contents of a context to a Lisp stream.

acl-prompt.lisp contains a macro loom-prompt for Allegro Common Lisp, which will print a prompt showing the current Lisp package and Loom context.

mcl-prompt.lisp contains a function loom-prompt for Macintosh Common Lisp, which will add the current Loom context after the current Lisp package in the minibuffer or package placard.

mcl-loom-graph.lisp contains code for Macintosh Common Lisp that will draw a subsumption graph for Loom concepts. The graph-concept function, which will create a new Macintosh window and draw a concept hierarchy in that window. Requires the grapher.lisp code that is distributed with MCL.


Loom is a registered trademark of the University of Southern California.

Information
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Systems Division Loom Home Page