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From: Paul.Birkel@K.GP.CS.CMU.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Common Lisp and the XToolkit
Message-ID: <1987.11.12.14.53.33.Paul.Birkel@K.GP.CS.CMU.EDU>
Date: Thu, 12-Nov-87 10:06:41 EST
Article-I.D.: K.1987.11.12.14.53.33.Paul.Birkel
Posted: Thu Nov 12 10:06:41 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Nov-87 18:39:08 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 37

Now that CLX is finally arriving at our site I have been giving
some thought to writing applications. For X10 we used a foreign
function interface to Xlib, and a second one to the Sx toolkit.
Both worked reasonably.

Since CLX bypasses Xlib entirely, talking to the server itself,
it is not immediately  obvious how to use the XToolkit.

	a) A foreign function interface, bypassing CLX for the
		most part. Dave Rosenthals' "hello world" example
		shows the advantages to be gained by programming
		at the XToolkit level.

	b) Replicating portions (or all) of the XToolkit functionality
		in Common Lisp on top of CLX. At our site we already
		have the necessary "server" functionality for dispatching
		on XEvents.

Folks here seem to lean towards the latter, but no definite plans
for actual widgets have been forthcoming. Certainly there is room for
some implicit (explicit anyone?) attempts at agreeing on what the next
level above CLX might look like. CLOS anyone? Or are we still at the
stage of trying out CLX, running in 10 different directions for a while,
and then assessing the relative merits of each approach?

Have any other sites given this much thought? What do they think and
what are they doing about it? Are there any partial implementations
in an alpha release phase? Care to get me to alpha test it?

	Paul A. Birkel
	Dept. of Computer Science
	Carnegie-Mellon University
	Pittsburgh, PA.  15213

	pab@K.CS.CMU.EDU

	(412) 268-8893