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Re: reducing time overhead of text display (in 1.1)

    Date: Wed, 22 Dec 1993 13:27 EST
    From: Scott McKay <SWM@stony-brook.scrc.symbolics.com>

	Date: Wed, 22 Dec 1993 11:51 EST
	From: kanderso@BBN.COM

	...
    
	CLIM has magic in it.  In fact, things like

Very definitely.

Although, I'll agree programmer friendliness isn't the only important
thing to consider, it isn't irrelevant either.

My boss here was considering whether `AI' may be needed to assist a user
in selecting the appropriate software module from  among many different
but similar procedures under certain circumstances (for the Guide to
Available Mathematical Software system).   I suggested it might
be possible to do it the `straightforward' way, if we were able to
present the options and relevant questions in a more comprehensible
fashion (ie user interface).  I was able to cobble together a mockup
for test cases in a couple of days using CLIM.  I was able to
construct a whole GAMS client, including access to the server w/ TCP,
database and application frame in about a week.  
  The Lisp client will probably never be the `official' version for
reasons at most indirectly related to lisp.  But, my boss was
impressed. :> And the C + X programmers working on the `real' client
were a bit amazed ("How did you do _that_!?!?!" "It's all in
`presentations'!")   And, they are all happy to have an opportunity for
fast prototyping & test-bed for new ideas.

So, a minor success story, and profuse thanks for all of you who thunk
it up and made it work.

Leading up to...

    I get good performance out of CLIM for many things, and rarely resort to
    what can rightly be called tricks.  My suggestions to "implement your
    own class of output record" really isn't trick either.  

It seems to me that I have a prime candidate for this kind of treatment.
My application has a sort of `outline' pane; Sort of like the lispm's File System Ed.
There are a list of items with indented sub-items with ...  
Each can be opened & closed.  Each is a presentation of some sort and
takes up _exactly_ 1 line of display. [some do have presentations as
parts, though] 

Fine, but some items have ~1000 sub-items.  This gets pretty slow for
redisplay, especially considering at most 20-30 are on the screen at any
time!

Finally, I'd like to have some finer control over scrolling.  At times I
need to make a particular item visible:  open it & it's superiors and
then scroll the pane to the right place.

Am I right that this is a natural candidate?  
Is demo;custom-records.lisp the best textbook for now?  Or are there
even built in things that will help here?

Sorry for the naive, open-ended questions,  but I'm still unlearning TV
and DW; haven't had much chance to learn the finer points of CLIM!

  bruce
  miller@cam.nist.gov
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