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Re: The cost of CLIM and its future
>
> Could somebody suggest a way that us Lisp companies get to stay in
> business?
Sorry, but you'll get no sympathy from me on that score. Stuffing yet
another Lisp window system down the user's throats and then claiming
that it's costing you too much to support just doesn't sit well. I
view CLIM as something the big Lisp companies are promoting as a way
to drive some of the smaller companies out of the market. On my really
cynical days I think that this was done with malice aforethought, but
most of the time I'm willing to be more lenient. The reality is that the
cost of developing and supporting CLIM is exhorbitant, and I'm not
convinced that ILA, Symbolics, Franz, Lucid or Harlequin have gotten
anything close to their communal investment back. I also don't think
it's hurt Ibuki, Venue, Raindrop, Gold Hill, or Procyon (now Franz' PC
division) that much that they don't have CLIM. When CLIM was first
announced it seemed to be something that people asked their vendors
for, but at this year's AAAI I can't think of anyone who really wanted
it when talking to me at the Venue booth, and only a couple of people
even asked if we implemented it.
I used to think CLIM was really neat, but after porting my code
through too many incompatible releases I've given up on it. I still
think it incorporates some *really* spiff ideas in terms of window
toolkits. It's really too bad that the folks developing C and C++ systems
haven't adopted some of it's ideas, since that's what we end up having to
interface with.
...arun
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Arun Welch
Lisp Systems Programmer, Lab for AI Research, Ohio State University
welch@cis.ohio-state.edu
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