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[teskridg@NMSU.Edu: future MCL]


       I've seen the announcements, but have never seen what it can do.  How
       does it compare to CLIM in terms of functionality?

    I don't have a copy of CLIM so I cant really comment on how they compare.  I do
    know that GARNET has a great variety of features that are commonly used by
    application developers.  I've used GARNET on a couple of projects and have had
    no complaints or missing features.


I'm using CLIM and very satisfied.  I am often surprised by how much it
does.  It's the kind of software that impresses me very much.  Also,
it's very deep.

Some of its features are:
 - a very strong link between application objects and their visual
appearance on the screen (you don't know how useful this is until you've
used it, but after, you can't live without it)
 - presentation types for easy and modular input/output
 - abstractions for interfaces (text styles, inks,...) independant of
the host but linked to what the programmer really wants (cf emphasizing
rather than writing in bold, cf +flipping-ink+...)
 - good drawing capabilities (with COLOR)
 - AUTOMATIC INCREMENTAL REDISPLAY
 - command management (a good abstraction for all user actions, for all
kinds of actions,... predefined input editor,...)
 - high level output capabilities (automatic table and graph generation)
 - integrated help system
 - low level features like pointer manipulation,...
 - output to postscript stream (means the postscript code is
automatically generated if you write to these kinds of streams)


Some of the things missing, to my point of view are "undo" capabilities
(as in GINA), more close to the host look and feel (but I suppose it's
the goal of CLIM 2, which I have not seen yet).


More globally, CLIM seems pretty clean and well designed to me.  Also,
the specs for CLIM 2 clearly define the protocols to the differents
layers of CLIM for easy programmer access and I like that.

Vincent Keunen
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