Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Lisp X Server (was Re: GWM and Other things)
Message-ID: <22675@news.Think.COM>
Date: 20 Jun 89 21:40:15 GMT
References: <8906201951.AA01028@wscad4.local>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Reply-To: barmar@kulla.think.com (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 30

In article <8906201951.AA01028@wscad4.local> uejiowh@wscad4.crd.ge.COM writes:
>I just swa the announcement and it sounds interesting - a window manager on the
>X Window System with a built in LISP Interpreter.   But how about a server 
>with a LISP Interpreter?

What would this mean?  I'm using an X Server on a Symbolics Lisp
Machine, so it has access to a Lisp interpreter.  But what would the
server want to do with it?  An X Server simply implements operations
defined in the X protocol, and none of them involve interpretation.  I
suppose you could define an X protocol extension that would make use
of the Lisp interpreter.

Actually, I suspect you're trying to invent a way to give X the
expressive power of NeWS.  NeWS has the ability to download PostScript
procedures to the server and then have it execute them.  For instance,
this would allow you to download all the workings of a pop-up menu, so
that the client would only have to say something like "mark (Item1)
(Item2) (Item3) MenuChoose", and the server would pop up the menu,
wait for the user to choose something, and then return the choice to
the client (in X this has to be done on the client, usually in a
widget library).  For those of us who prefer prefix polish to reverse
polish it would be nice if there were a Lisp window system of this
sort (maybe the CLIM work being done by ILA, Symbolics, Lucid, and
Xerox will include something like this).

Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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