Re: MCL 2.1

[Vincent Keunen <scosysv!keunen@nrbmi1.nrb.be>]

    Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1992 21:02+0200
    From: lynch@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu

    [...]

                   I'd *guess* that many others like me are LISP hackers
    working on a Mac (rather than Mac hackers working in LISP)

It is my case also and I would believe also the case for a great part of
MCL users.  For all these people, conformance to standards or to-be
standards (cltl2, clos, mop, clim,...) is of the highest importance.  I
also believe that a number of people are porting already developed
products/projects from other machines and/or will port MCL developed
code to other lisps.  So standards and cross platform issues are very
sensitive ones.

Of course, Apple doesn't want to promote other platforms.  So a good
think for Apple would be to add value specifically for MCL (I'm thinking
about the MCL CD, quicktime and other toolboxes support, development
environment quality,...).  But all this has to come after or on top of
the standards.

One example:

Suppose there is a standard for user-interfaces called CLUIS (CL user
interface standard).  Then MCL should support CLUIS.  The interface
designer (in its current state) is not very useful if it directly generates
MCL specific code.  However, it is a great tool and a big plus for MCL
compared to other development platforms.  So what would be very
important to me is to have the interface designer generate CLUIS code
(since the interface designer would only run in MCL, it is to Apple's
advantage because it might motivate some to develop portable lisp code
for machine x on MCL).

Now, what if CLUIS would be renamed CLIM ?    ;-)

That's only my opinion and I might not be aware of other important
issues, so please excuse me if this seems inconsistent...


Vincent