X-windows, CLX interface for MCL?

[Dan Cerys <cerys@BBN.COM>]

   From: Mick O'Donnell <mick@isi.edu>
   Date: 25 Jan 92 04:43:55 GMT

   Anyone know of a CLX (Common lisp X-windows standard) interface for
   MCL. We want similar commands for our Sun Common Lisp and MAC lisp
   code.

Mick,

Do you really want to run using X windows on the Mac (esp for local
applications)?  You probably wouldn't be happy with it's performance.  CLX
is the low-level CL interface to X windows, great for implementing toolkits
on top of X, but it's nothing an application guy would want to spend a lot
of time with.  There are some excellent portable Common Lisp toolkits out
there, some of which rely on CLX as a substrate.  I'd encourage you to take
a look at CLIM, since it has commercial implementations available on both
Lucid and MCL.  CLIM uses whatever window system(s) that may be available:
X on Lucid, and QuickDraw (and potentially X) on the Mac.

CLX Details, in case: CLX is a very portable Common Lisp interface to X
Windows.  It's basically all vanilla CL that will run on anything.  The one
implementation detail it requires is some kind of way of opening a stream
interface to an X server.  The MCL support for this isn't in the distributed
version of CLX, but it should be a simple task using the mactcp interface
to MCL.  Please share the code if you do it.  CLX lives in the standard X
distribution from MIT or can be FTP'd from export.lcs.mit.edu.

Dan