Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!AI.MIT.EDU!gillett From: gillett@AI.MIT.EDU (Walter E. Gillett) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: Motif from LISP Message-ID: <9002230230.AA01112@rice-chex> Date: 23 Feb 90 02:30:32 GMT Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background) Organization: The Internet Lines: 113 Return-Path: Date: Thursday, 22 February 1990 09:30:41 EST From: Brad.Myers@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu To: "Walter E. Gillett" Subject: Re: Garnet In-Reply-To: <9002212335.AA06198@wheat-chex> Garnet is a comprehensive user interface development environment for CommonLisp and X/11 we are developing at CMU. It is free, and there are already some copies floating around MIT. Like the other toolkits, Garnet is also policy-free, and we do *not* have any Motif widgets created yet, although Garnet makes it easy to create widgets, so it would not be hard to create an interface that LOOKS like Motif, but the widget set would not be called by applications like Motif's. It would be nice if someone created a Motif widget set for Garnet, but nobody has volunteered. If you are interested in doing this, we would like to help support the effort, but we do not have the resources to do it. The MIT people who have Garnet are: Steve Strassmann MIT Media Lab 20 Ames St. Cambridge, MA 02139 617-253-0664 straz@media-lab.media.mit.edu Kum-Yew Lai Research Scientist Center for Coordination Science 1 Amherst Street, E40-141 Cambridge, MA 02139 Tel: 617/253-8410 E-mail: KY@XV.MIT.EDU Duane Boning boning@caf.mit.edu Phone: 617-253-0450 The formal announcement of garnet is below. Please let me know if you have further questions. Brad A. Myers School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 (412) 268-5150 bam@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Announcing the Availability of Garnet: Generating an Amalgam of Realtime, Novel Editors and Toolkits The Garnet research project in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University is happy to announce the release of our toolkit for general use. The Garnet Toolkit helps to implement highly-interactive, graphical, direct manipulation programs for X/11 in CommonLisp. These programs typically have a number of graphical objects (up to about 2500) on the screen that can be manipulated by the mouse and keyboard. Typical applications of the Garnet toolkit include: drawing programs such as Macintosh MacDraw, iconic file manipulation programs such as the Macintosh Finder, box and arrow diagram editors such as graphs and PERT charts, graphical programming languages, board game user interfaces, simulation and process monitoring programs, user interface construction tools, some forms of CAD/CAM programs, etc. The Garnet Toolkit does not help with text editing (except for small labels or property-sheet fields). Important features of the toolkit include: * Coverage of the entire user interface, including the contents of the applications' windows. * Look-and-feel independent, while still providing a high-level of support. A set of "widgets" is provided for those who do not wish to define a look-and-feel. * An object-oriented architecture using a prototype-instance model. * Constraints integrated with the object system, so that any slot (instance variable) of any object can be declared as a "formula" which will be re-evaluated whenever there is a change in any other objects it references. * Automatic graphic object updating. Graphical objects are retained and remember their position on the screen. Whenever any property changes, they erase and redraw themselves, along with any other damaged objects. * Separation of input handling from graphics programming, through the use of "interactor" objects, which encapsulate interactive behaviors. * Hiding all of X/11. The programmer using the Garnet Toolkit never makes Xlib (CLX) calls or receives Xlib events. In the future, high level tools including a sophisticated Interface Builder, called Lapidary, will be released. Garnet is implemented on top of the CLX interface to X/11, and will work in various environments including IBM RTs using CMU CommonLisp and Suns using Lucid CommonLisp. There is very little implementation-specific code, so porting to other platforms should be simple. Garnet does NOT use CLOS or any existing X toolkit (such as Xtk or Motif). The toolkit comes with debugging tools, complete reference manuals, and a tutorial. Garnet is being developed under a grant from DARPA. Papers about Garnet have appeared at OOPSLA, SIGCHI, and UIST. Garnet source and binaries are available for free, but you need to have a license from CMU. Send requests (including a physical mail address) for additional information or a license to: Brad A. Myers School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 (412) 268-5150 brad.myers@cs.cmu.edu