Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!ukc!its63b!aiva!jeff
From: jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Explorer (vs. Sun) Experience ?
Message-ID: <401@aiva.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 5 May 88 19:13:15 GMT
References: <3470003@wdl1.UUCP> <11061@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: jeff@uk.ac.ed.aiva (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: Dept. of AI, Univ. of Edinburgh, UK
Lines: 19

In article <11061@mimsy.UUCP> nau@frabjous.UUCP (Dana Nau) writes:
>On the Lisp machines, Lisp is thoroughly integrated with the operating
>system, and as a result, you can quite easily do things with windows,
>menus, editing, debugging, etc., that would be pretty painful to do in
>Lisp on the Sun.  For example, if I want a pop-up a menu on the explorer,
>I simply call a built-in Lisp function, giving it the menu title and menu
>entries, and telling what should be done for each menu entry.  That kind
>of thing is substantially more difficult on the Sun.

I would think you could just call a built-in function, etc.  This seems
more a question of what libraries are available than an inherent advantage
of Lisp machines.

Nonetheless, it is true that such things are easier at present on Lisp
machines.

Jeff Dalton,                      JANET: J.Dalton@uk.ac.ed             
AI Applications Institute,        ARPA:  J.Dalton%uk.ac.ed@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk
Edinburgh University.             UUCP:  ...!ukc!ed.ac.uk!J.Dalton