A Summary of Project so far [Re: Kernel LISP - how low down can it go?]

[Martin Cracauer]

Patrick Logan writes:

>     Dwight> For the user interface, CLIM will certainly be important,
>     Dwight> as will X (CLX?). Beyond that, there has been no more
>     Dwight> detailed discussion.
> 
> Gack. X? Only as a temporary measure, eh? 

My reason for proposing X11 was

1) You can use the Video card drivers of the XFree project. Modern VGA
   cards are so complex I can't imagine we want to double that effort. 

2) You can use LispOS remote, as a whole or parts of it.

Of course, using the XFree server requires to run a nearly full Unix
kernel. But if you don't want that, you could use you LispOS
environment on a remote X11 display.

> I have to follow the links
> to current free CLIM implementations. 

There is the "Free CLIM effort", at
http://www.cons.org/free-clim/

> I remember there was one about
> 7-10 years ago that was fairly far along. I guess in those days it was
> a Genera-clone, not a CLIM clone.

This was expresswindows, a Dynamic Windows clone. You can find a
version adapted to current free CL implementations on the Free CLIM
page above.

> There are two or three GUI/graphics projects to replace X with
> something more ideal on Linux. Maybe these are known to this list as
> well.

I know only about VGAlib, but then I'm a FreeBSD user :-)

Let us know more about the alternatives. As ugly as X11 sometimes is,
I think that efficiency is sufficient on today's machines and that the
advantage of remote usage is worth some trouble.

"Display Ghostscript" is upcoming (see www.gnustep.org), in my opinion
a very interesting alternative to using Xlib for a new GUI
framework. It is using X11 as a front end, if I'm not mistaken, so
that doesn't change the requirement anyway.

Martin
-- 
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Martin Cracauer <cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de>
http://cracauer.cons.org
Fax +49 40 522 85 36