Why LispOS?

[Kragen]

On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, Chris Bitmead wrote:
> Rodrigo Ventura wrote:
> >     Chris> I guess the point is, why are you so concerned about accessing
> >     Chris> UNIX devices?
> 
> I consider accessing UNIX character based files and devices as
> the moral equivilent of you programming in Xlib compared to
> Motif. Yeah, it does the job, but it is a very very low level API
> to have to muck around using, it's slow,complicated and prone to
> errors to have to code. To continue the Xlib/Motif analogy, to
> write something in Xlib takes millions of lines of code that
> would take 100 lines with Motif.

Well, providing a high-level interface is fine.  Until Linux comes out
with a new sound driver, which happens to have a new ioctl I need to
use to activate a niftysupercool feature of my new sound card, but
unfortunately that ioctl is not supported in your Lisp interface.

I should point out that many Motif programs contain Xlib calls.

We need low-level access.  You can build high-level tools on a
low-level substrate, but you cannot effectively do the reverse.

Kragen