I believe Dismal V1.5 is missing a key file for running dismal. Per the description, the package should include a file called dismal-mode-defaults.el, however this is not available in the elpa.gnu package repo. I was able to work around this issue by acquiring a previous version of Dismal from my advisor and manually loading that file. Without that, I am unsure if I could get this package running. Per the Git records at http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/elpa.git/log/?h=externals/dismal, it looks like that file was deleted in update below. I think this may have broken the package and I'm hoping to find out why that file was deleted.

author	Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>	2013-06-06 16:20:37 -0400
committer	Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>	2013-06-06 16:20:37 -0400
commit	554819b2d3c2e3d4494845a23deffd7245349a56 (patch)
tree	c4b11570454318e4dba291c1732f18e8dc639a58
parent	18a2365ebc31e03bce64aa45227a5e6f5e869bad (diff)
download	elpa-554819b2d3c2e3d4494845a23deffd7245349a56.tar.gz

General cleanup for GNU ELPA

Once I got the defaults loaded, I also am running into issues during testing (dis-test-dismal). It initially runs, however, the test fails when trying to insert a simple math equation into a cell:

dis-edit-cell-plain((+ 2 3))

While running the test, the process fails with the message: "dismal-set-cell-internals: Symbol’s value as variable is void: index". I believe this may be due to some effect of the outdated heaps.el package, however Frank's version of Dismal (Dismal V1.4 running on Emacs 25.X, on MacOS) runs fine. I'm using a Windows computer so that could play a role. When tracing the test through the debugger, it fails immediately following a call to heap-empty with the info shown below. I'm still figuring out the debugger, and I don't have a more thorough printout of the trace at the moment.

Debugger entered--entering a function:
* command-error-default-function((void-variable index) "" dismal-set-cell-internals)
recursive-edit()
;;Debugger cleared most of its text once the void variable error occurs, so the excerpts from immediately before the error are below this line and the output from the debugger is above.
* heap-empty([dismal-address-compare 1 0 [nil]])
* heap-member((3 . 0) [dismal-address-compare 1 0 [nil]])
* dismal-invalidate-cell((3 . 0))
* dismal-set-cell-internals(3 0 (+ 2 3) nil)
* dismal-set-cell(3 0 (+ 2 3) nil)
* dismal-edit-cell((+ 2 3) nil)

I'm an EMACS novice (I generally work on the experimental cognitive psychology side of things while my labmates are more focused on using ACT-R for cognitive models), and so I may have made some missteps here, but I've been working with Frank during some debugging and still not having any luck so I'd appreciate any and all help you could provide on these issues. Thanks so much!

Best regards,

Jacob D. Oury

Doctoral Candidate in Informatics

Applied Cognitive Science Lab

Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology