Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!FRLRI61.BITNET!mvm
From: mvm@FRLRI61.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ti.explorer
Subject: (none)
Message-ID: <8910121146.AA01819@lri.lri.fr>
Date: 12 Oct 89 11:46:22 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: inet
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 36


Having received no replies whatsoever for my last note, I would like to
know something. Is anyone using tbi?
One could benefit a lot from using it for developping simple
interface (ex: support for reading PICT files and benefit from the mac
art software, support for color, support for consistent macintosh look
and feel etc.). But on the other hand, it looks like few people take
advantage of the tbi. There could be two explanations :

1) compatibility with the explorer
2) having to understand inside macintosh to program with the tbi (god
help us)

It seems that even simple things (or at least, things that really ought to
be simple), such as using SFGETFILE to get the
standard mac dialog in order open a file and read it with the lisp reader,
turn out to be rather painful to achieve
because of incompabilities in philosophy (ex: HFS likes referencing
a directory with a unique ID called iovrefnum while the explorer likes
referencing it by its name). It is my belief that a lot could be made to
make tbi easier to use and more integrated in the lisp environment.
Comments anyone?

A second thing that I would be interested in, to take better advantage of
the mac side, is a simple way to call routines on the mac written in
a conventional language (ex C and Pascal). Ideally, I'd like to be able
to call soft written under lightspeed but I'd settle for MPW. I know there
is a way to do that with RPC, but frankly I dont understand enough about
RPC to do it and I dont have the time to invest to learn it (specially
considering the low quality of the doc that comes with it). Now, how
hard would it be for people who understand RPC (ex: TI) to write a clean
foreign function interface from lisp that lets you call C functions
and exchange data? There are instances of clean FFI (for example, the one
in Apple/coral Allegro CL, the one from procyon, the one in Frantz CL
and even the one in LUCID CL. Am I the only one who feels that something
like that would be useful?