Re: Needed: Info on LISP X based toolkits

[Mike McMahon <MMcM@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>]

    Date: 5 Oct 88 19:50 PDT
    From: lanning.pa@xerox.com

    The history of o-o programming and window environments are closely coupled.
    With lisp we can do much more that duplicate some other conception of a UI
    toolkit.  But this will take time and effort.  CLOS is a new and unique
    language; it is elegant, powerful, efficient (well, maybe), and fun.   We
    have not had enough experience to understand what the "correct" style of
    programming in CLOS is, or know how it will change the way we think about
    programming.  What is needed is not a premature UI toolkit standard based
    on some impoverished language's notion of programming, but a long-term
    effort by a large community to try to understand what CLOS really is, what
    it is really good for, and what it says about the ways to construct such a
    system.

I wonder how the word "standard" crept into your discourse.  Or rather,
why you think the existence of one standard precludes all others.  The
beauty of a reasonable, low-level standard like X and its direct CLX
analogue is that you can have platform hardware independence and
peaceful coexistence of a multitude of toolkits, or standards if you
prefer.  Whoever told you that you had to program your user interfaces
in CLUE lied to you.

CLUE gives a reasonably straightforward implementation of X toolkit
intrinsics for application writers who are familiar with those to use
today.  This is valuable while other ideas are worked out.

In my opinion, CLOS is not new and unique, although it shows
considerably more rigor and maturity than its predecessors.  It will
indeed be interesting to see how its application within a larger
community of programmers develops into an accepted (correct) style.

>From my experience with the use of similar LISP based object systems for
UIMS construction, I have come to believe that the use of object
orientation to implement widget operations or window dressing is
considerably less profound than some of the higher level generic
behaviors.