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From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Unix Lisp Environments (why the slow evolution)
Message-ID: <40285@think.UUCP>
Date: 8 May 89 01:26:18 GMT
References: <7802@zodiac.UUCP> <40215@think.UUCP> <7820@zodiac.UUCP>
Sender: news@think.UUCP
Reply-To: barmar@kulla.think.com (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 50

In article <7820@zodiac.UUCP> jdye@ads.com (John W. Dye Jr.) writes:
>In article <40215@think.UUCP> barmar@kulla.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin) writes:
>>The solution to this is coming soon.  International Lisp Associates
> ************

Correction gratefully accepted.  That was an arrogant remark.

>A solution to this is coming from ILA.  Another from Sun, Another from
>Franz inc.  Lucid, of course, has their own solution (independent of Sun's
>solution).  Then there is Coral Common Lisp etc...  
>
>I dont know which vendors belong to ILA.  Obviously symbolics does.
>Does Sun? Lucid? Franz?

ILA is not a consortium, it is a third-party Lisp software vendor and
consulting firm (made up mostly of ex-Symbolics employees).  Up to
now, their products have been targeted primarily to Symbolics
machines.  In the case of Y-Windows, however, they've been working
closely with Symbolics to bring the power of Dynamic Windows to other
Lisp environments.

>Im pretty sure Sun and Franz wouldn't be happy with a re-implementation
>of Slimebolix windows.  Will that window system be CLOS based? 

Y-Windows (and Symbolics's Dynamic Windows) is NOT a window system.
It is a window-based user interface management library.  It provides
object-oriented typed I/O, output recording, dialogs, structured and
device-indepenent graphics, and other very high-level operations.

Yes, it is implemented using CLOS.

>The problem here is a recursive version of the window-systems problem.
>Now, instead of having to write environments that target a specific
>window system, we will be writing environments that target specific
>window-system-independent LISP window systems.   Deja Vu.

So what's the problem with this?  Without standards at the high level,
everyone has to reinvent things.  Currently, the Xlib world is way
ahead of the CLX world because they've got lots of standard widget
libraries; we don't even have a portable way to put up a pop-up menu!
Y-Windows is a very good Lisp widget library, and it has the advantage
that it isn't X-specific the way the popular X widgets are (Sun is
apparently doing a similar thing with their Xview toolkit, which works
with both X, NeWS, and SunView).

Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar