RE: MCL 2.1

["pierce" <pierce@at-mail-server.vitro.com>]

David Moon writes:

>> It might be interesting to compare XVT and CLIM on such dimensions
>> as quality, cost, ease of learning, standardness, support, etc., and also to
>> see about making XVT available in Lisp.  Operating systems aren't language 
>> specific so why should user interface management systems be?

It would be very nice if Lisp users could take advantage of user interface
management systems other than CLIM such as XVT, MacAPP or Open Interface. Since
Apple doesn't distribute MCL sources, a solution would require either using
AppleEvents which would probably be too slow, or loading the user interface
management system into LISP by either loading code resources into MCL or using
the MCL foreign function interface.  

Converting a user interface management system into a multi-segment code
resource would be very difficult since the code resource would have to be
careful to setup and restore the A5 register.

I would like to see one of the following two things happen.

1) Apple could provide a MCL interface to MacApp in the form of a CLOS class
library.  Apple would still need to provide a mechanism so that users could
develop hybrid applications by extending these classes in either LISP and C++.

2) Apple could distribute parts of MCL sources in the form of a library with
some assembly glue so that users could link in a user interface management
system of choice and develop their own interfaces with a mixture of C++ and
LISP code.

Encouraging the development of hybrid programs would eliminate some of the
obstacles to using LISP for delivery, and therefore psoitively impact the size
of the Lisp user community.

-Jonathan