views and streams

[straz@cambridge.apple.com (Steve Strassmann)]

 >Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp.mcl
 >From: kardank@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Kardan Kaveh)
 >Subject: views and streams
 >
 >I am curious as to the advantages gained from making views subclasses of
 >streams.  I'd also be curious to hear of any particular uses this feature has
 >been put to by developers.

The original thinking behind this was to make trivial output
really trivial:

? (setq ww (make-instance 'window))
#<window "Untitled" #xE88599>
? (print "hey there!" ww)
"hey there!"

Back in the days before whizzy multimedia graphics were
everywhere, many people used windows just as alternatives to
the listener for logging or tracing output, just to reduce
clutter in the listener.

I'm not saying it's necessarily a great idea now, of course.