Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!CPSWH.CPS.MSU.EDU!sticklen
From: sticklen@CPSWH.CPS.MSU.EDU (Jon Sticklen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.xerox
Subject: Re:  Loops -> PCL
Message-ID: <8904071541.AA12645@cpswh.cps.msu.edu>
Date: 7 Apr 89 15:41:28 GMT
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eric,
  we have a project in progress to do a port of several software systems
written in buttress loops to CL/PCL. but we are not taking the direction
you are suggesting (some translator functions). instead we are trying
to build some of the functionality
of LOOPS at the meta level in PCL. our applications
involve graphics (browsers) as well, so what we hope to do is to isolate
machine dependent windows in a few pcl objects, then end up with an
environment that is very much like LOOPS, but which is really PCL and CL -
and is portable to other platforms. (our first platform will be
SUN/Envos because in essence the machine dependent windowing is the
easiest there. we are moving on then to SUN/FranzAllegro and MAC/Allegro.)
  i may be the only one in the world that thinks this way, but i think
that the mental model of programming that PCL promotes is not optimal.
at least in relation to the mental model of LOOPS. with generic functions,
one looses all the sense of a set of cooperating agents working on a problem,
and all the cleanliness of objects owning methods. hence, we are doing what
we are doing. as i say, i am almost surely in a minority. 
  
  i'm very interested to know if anyone else shares my thoughts, and is
trying to go at a move over to PCL the way we are.

	---jon---