Add some Q&A for the FAQ page chosen from answered questions already on the web.

[masinter]

I know there was an issue "Want a FAQ page", but that kind of begs the question of "How should I ask questions?".

People ask questions in lots of places -- good or bad.
If we don't have a canonical place for people to ask questions or anyone gathering and responding to questions, we won't be able to add to this section. People ask questions on StackOverflow. Or on Libera Chat. or Lisp-romania Discord.
We're not ready for a FAQ and maybe just remove it. If we ever have enough people asking questions that we need one, we could just comment this one out.

[masinter]

asking CoPilot What are some Frequently Asked Questions about Interlisp

However, I found some general information and discussions about Lisp and its dialects, including Interlisp12. Here are some common questions that people often ask about Lisp languages:

What is Lisp? Lisp, originally styled LISP, stands for list processing. This family of programming languages is the second-oldest programming language that’s still in use, beaten by Fortran by only one year2.

What are some dialects of Lisp? There are many distinct dialects of Lisp; many are still being used today. Here are just a few examples of Lisp dialects: Common Lisp, Arc, AutoLisp, BBN Lisp, Chicken, Clojure, Emacs Lisp, Ikarus, Interlisp, Racket2.

What is the difference between Common Lisp and Interlisp? Common Lisp and Interlisp are two different dialects of Lisp. One of the main differences is that Common Lisp has lexical scoping, which MACLisp and Interlisp didn’t have1.

How to use Lisp? Lisp is a functional programming language that is used in a variety of situations. It was originally designed for artificial intelligence work and has been used in projects as diverse as aircraft design and Grammarly, the online text processing service2.

If you have any specific questions about Interlisp, feel free to ask! 😊

[masinter]

let's stuff the FAQ with general introductory questions... and maybe some harder ones. The Interlisp discord

https://discord.com/channels/1129446509268697190/1141981846813540472

has some FAQs also

[masinter]

The FAQ that is there now as https://interlisp.org/project/faqs/ are really questions and answers about running Medley. The FAQs suggested here are more about the context and history.

So I propose moving project/faqs.md to software/faqs.md and linking it in (or integrate them into the software/using-medley/ and then taking the Q&A here as a history/faqs/

I still think a FAQ is mainly a place to put things that don't fit easily into the documentation and anything long deserves its own section.

[masinter]

track Stackoverflow for questions about Interlisp?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78645353/write-text-i-o-stream-to-file-with-interlisp-medley

for example...

[pamoroso]

I submitted PR 233 to link to our GitHub discussions board so that new users can easily access the communication channels we control and monitor.