[Openmcl-devel] Lisp User Interface LUI

[Alexander Repenning]

I can't say that I am huge fan of C++

Based on all the input so far I would conclude on the Mac side to  
continue with LUI by building a shallow Cocoa wrapper on Macs (e.g.,  
using generic names: details in diagram below) and building the same  
class hierarchy  on Win and implementing it on top of the win32 api.   
I am not sure that much is to be gained by adding a layer between win  
api and Lisp. C++ as intermediate layer could be ugly and other tools  
that based on scripting languages (e.g, Ruby) could be slow.

Once we have a good FFI for CCL win would it really be that hard to  
access the win api directly?

not sure this diagram makes sense out of context:

instead of


On Jan 14, 2009, at 4:40 PM, Gary Byers wrote:

> If it's possible (license-wise) to bundle QT wih CCL - and desirable
> to do so - the next step (or at least a step that'd have to be taken
> at some point) might be to try to figure out things like "what is this
> C++ thing ?  how does one arrange to correctly call C++ methods and
> have lisp code called from C++ code ? can one define new C++
> (sub)classes at runtime and define methods on them ?"
>
> There may be other questions that're more relevant.  Any time that
> I've tried to understand C++ at this level, my eyes have glazed
> over and I've gotten a bad headache.
>
> Since many language implementations (those that aren't C++) often
> (a) face similar issues and (b) know how to interpoperate with C
> if not C++, many C++ libraries offer a C API to at least some
> (possibly large, possibly not) subset of their functionality.
> Sometimes (I think that it's fair to say "often", but that
> view may be skewed by a small sample size) the C bindings lag
> a version or two behind the wrapped C++ library's functionality,
> and in some cases the project that maintains the C bindings
> stagnate (the maintainers complain of blurred vision and
> painful headaches ...)
>
> I've seen (on this mailing list, maybe 5 years ago) some
> lisp<->c++ code that someone was working on; all that I
> remember of it was that it was suprisingly simple, clean,
> and elegant (as if the author didn't realize that what
> they were doing was hard ...).  I think that we tried to
> contact them a few years ago but their email address had
> changed.
>
> I don't know enough about QT to have an opinion of whether
> it'd be a good choice as a cross-platform GUI toolkit for CCL.
> It'd be good to at least be able to "here's some FFI stuff
> and maybe some stuff on top of that, so anyone who wants
> to try using QT from CCL can at least do so", and the same
> is true for wxWidgets and other GUI and non-GUI C++ libraries
> and toolkits.
>
> Unfortunately, we aren't there.  It might indeed be the case
> that getting there (to the point of useful C++ interoperability)
> isn't incredibly difficult, but the symptoms of C++ exposure
> (dread, revulsion, nausea) are certainly real even if they
> may not be well-founded.
>
>
>
> On Wed, 14 Jan 2009, Raffael Cavallaro wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jan 7, 2009, at 8:43 PM, Alexander Repenning wrote:
>>
>>> QT is probably one of the most successful cross platform tools.
>>>
>>> I am not sure if CCL could just bundle QT given its license. On the
>>> Mac it may be hard to mix QT with native Cocoa
>>
>>
>> It's recently been announced that the next version of QT (4.5) which
>> is due out in March will be released under the LGPL. This is good  
>> news
>> for those wanting to use it with CCL because they will both use
>> essentially the same license:
>>
>> <http://www.qtsoftware.com/about/news/lgpl-license-option-added-to- 
>> qt>
>>
>> regards,
>>
>> Ralph
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Raffael Cavallaro, Ph.D.
>> raffaelcavallaro at mac.com
>>
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>>
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Prof. Alexander Repenning

University of Colorado
Computer Science Department
Boulder, CO 80309-430

vCard: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/AlexanderRepenning.vcf


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