Report on Symbolics CLIM plans, January 1990

[mark@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.SYMBOLICS.COM, khs@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.SYMBOLICS.COM]

In June of 1989, Symbolics and Lucid announced plans to support the
Common Lisp Interface Manager (CLIM), a powerful object-oriented user
interface management system.  This is Symbolics' report on our progress
and intentions, and our understanding of the intentions of other
vendors.

The CLIM standard was created to solve two principal problems in Lisp
applications development: the difficulty of implementing powerful user
interfaces using current low-level window systems and toolkits, and the
difficulty of making applications portable between different computers
and operating systems.  CLIM provides a uniform software interface from
Lisp to the existing capabilities of popular window systems and
toolkits, and also provides higher-level facilities with which to
implement powerful user interfaces.

Symbolics intends to release a preliminary version of Symbolics CLIM in
June of this year.  An early version of this product is now in beta test
at several Symbolics sites, running on Symbolics CLOE, a Lisp
environment for Intel 80386-based personal computers.  Symbolics CLIM
will be available for Symbolics CLOE and for Genera, the Symbolics
operating system for its Ivory and 3600 series of computers.

The initial Symbolics product will emphasize the quality and performance
of CLIM's advanced presentation-based facilities.  It will not emphasize
specialized user interface development tools, as is our ultimate intent.
Also, since the original announcement, Symbolics customers have
emphasized the importance of compatibility with their existing
applications that use Dynamic Windows.  Symbolics will continue to
support Dynamic Windows.

Franz, Inc. has recently announced that CLIM will be available on its
Allegro Common Lisp product in April of this year.

Lucid intends to support CLIM in the same timeframe.  According to Teddy
Rosenberg, Vice President of Marketing for Lucid, "Lucid has been a
proponent of CLIM from the beginning, as has Symbolics.  As the product
nears completion, we are putting in place our plans to distribute it and
to provide front-line support of CLIM for Lucid Common Lisp users."

Richard Karash, Vice President of Marketing for Symbolics, says,
"Symbolics understands that advanced technology alone is not enough to
ensure customer success.  Therefore, we are pleased to hear of Lucid's
intent to provide front-line support for their CLIM products.  We share
this committment and believe that this will accelerate the acceptance of
CLIM as an industry standard."

Pricing, configuration, and support options for Symbolics CLIM have not
been finalized.  For advance quotes, contact your Symbolics sales
representative.