Re: Q: Clisp on Dos or Linux?

[nils@guru.ims.uni-stuttgart.de (Cornelis van der Laan)]

Bjoern Hoeflin wrote:

> I will begin soon with my master thesis and I have the following problem:
> I will have to use the hybrid knowledge representation system COLAB which has
> been developped here (DFKI at the University of Kaiserslautern) on a PC (386 or 486). To run COLAB on a PC forces us to use a Lisp-Dialect available for PC, 
> like CLisp. The decision, whether to use the Clisp version under DOS or under
> Linux (which has not yet been installed in the Enterprise where I will make the master thesis) depends on the fact how difficult it is to write a nice, inter-
> active User Interface with it. Therefore I have the following questions:
> 
> 1. Which user interface toolkits for Lisp-Systems, which are freely available
> can be used under Clisp with DOS and which under Clisp with Linux
> (for example: CLX, CLUE, Garnet, XIT, ... or the corresponding tools under DOS/
> Windows)? Information about experience with such a toolkit would be also very 
> useful.

You can use all CLX based toolkit interfaces in CLISP with an OS that 
supports socket connections to an Xserver. This need not exclude DOS
but (guess what...) it will be painful to get DOS/CLISP to do that.
You'd need to look into network drivers like KA9Q, build the proper
interface into CLISP, debug it etc etc. And then: still no X server
around, since those run best on UNIX boxes and are quite expensive
for DOS boxes, although available...

> 2. Are there any publicly available hypertext browser and hypertext editors (an interface to clisp is not strictly required) and/or a cross-referencer under DOS or Linux?
> 
> I know that Linux seems to be the more promising OS, but is has the disadvantage, that in order to make COLAB run on another PC one has to install first the 
> whole Linux-System (with very much hd-capacity needed). That's why I would like 
> to gather also some information about Clisp under DOS.

What is DOS other than big P**? Go Linux or get a decent Unix box.
And take all others with you.

Another option might be to contact Franz Inc for getting a version of
Allegro Common Lisp including CLIM (the Genera like window interface)
for PC/Windows. This isn't free and it might be not cheap but does
run under DOS and the sources are portable to other platforms that
support CLIM like Sparc, RS6000, MacIntosh etc etc. (Email me for
more concrete information.)

> 
> Thanks in advance for any help.
> 
> Bjoern Hoefling (hoefling@dfki.uni-kl.de)
> 
> 

Not much help but then, you didn't pay for it either :,-)

Nils

PS: I don't reformat those broken lines above, instead, Bjoern:
please get used to post/mail with a maximum line width of 70 chars.

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Cornelis van der Laan -- nils@ims.uni-stuttgart.de
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