Make LispM code FREE (fwd)

[eric dahlman]

Mike McDonald writes:
 > > > 	So how come there is so little interest in free CLIM???
 > 
 >   Because most people don't know what they're missing!
 > 
 >   Well, the CLIM spec doesn't require Silica and since I couldn't find
 > any docs on it, I'm not implementing one. I'm implementing what's in
 > the spec. As for status, it's coming along once again. (I was diverted
 > for a few months by a pretty young lady!) I have the basic panes
 > (composite-pane, vbox, hbox, ...) implemented and with frames, frame
 > managers, ports, grafts, mediums, sheets, events, and regions. I
 > haven't implemented graphics (next), command tables, or presentation
 > types yet. I'm hoping to have enough done in a couple of weeks for
 > release 0.1 of it. (Better make that 0.0001!) Presentations and widget
 > will probably be left for last. My goal is to be able to get a simple
 > listener up so people can start writing commands.

As far as I can tell the sheet protocols and the different issues
involving grafts and the such fall under Silica.  I have the paper on
Silica by Rao and my impression was that these protocols in the CLIM
spec were Silica.  I could be wrong it wouldn't be a first.  The
benefit is that if this portion of the system is well isolated it
would be possible to take the CLIM implementation for say CLX and
remove the CLX dependencies and use it to implement a version for say
Windows.  Then code written for one system would also work seamlessly
on another.  And as far as the Lisp OS effort is concerned we would
have a better chance for involving outside efforts in the effort.  I
for one have not made up my mind as to whether I could sell everyone
on having a Lisp OS computer on their desk.  However, if I could do all 
my development on a LispM and then ship the resulting ap "Lobotomized
for Windows End Users(TM)" I would be a happy camper. 

 > 
 >   If you think you might be interested in helping test it, I suggest
 > you get a hold of the spec and start reading it, particularly the
 > parts on presentation types and commands. Then people can start
 > writing all of those useful commands like :Show Directory! And :Show
 > File! And :Load System! And ...

When you have something running let me know and I'll have a look at
it. I would be very willing to put some time towards these parts of
the system.  I may be a bit naive about this whole thing but looking
at the CLIM spec there seem to be several large orthogonal protocols
that could be implemented by different people in relative isolation
once the system's basic framework is in place.
 
It would be really nice if everyone could have the experience of
working with a Dynamic Listener like on the Symbolics machines since
this would make a lot of these issues clearer.  The system you are
describing with presentation types and command tables would more than
satisfy the shell crowd.  And it would work fine on a textual basis.
One possible glimpse of kind of what we are talking about is the
"presenting listener" that Franz is including with the latest Emacs
Lisp interface beta.  It is still buggy for me under Xemacs 20.4
Solaris but it does have the ability to "present" objects to an emacs
buffer and later "accept" them back.

> 
 >   Mike McDonald
 >   mikemac@mikemac.com
 >