[Openmcl-devel] default directory

[Glen Foy]

On May 4, 2009, at 4:19 AM, R. Matthew Emerson wrote:

> I think we do need some sort of CLOS-y interface to Cocoa that
> abstracts out the need to worry about running stuff on the proper
> thread, takes care of appropriately retaining and releasing Objective-
> C objects, does something about the lisp string to NSString hassle,
> and so on.
>
> Easy GUI is an experiment in that direction.  I am not using Easy GUI
> when developing code for the IDE, but I do hope that as we all get
> more experience programming Cocoa in CCL, we'll be able to identify
> and implement good abstractions for various aspects of Cocoa and put
> that code somewhere, whether that be Easy GUI or somewhere else.


That sounds good to me, but I would argue that a more immediate need  
is better debugging support for Lisp code that is called from the  
Cocoa thread.  Currently, if there is an error, we have no backtrace,  
other than a listing of the last objc function that was called, and no  
access to the inspector.

If the callback code is complex, this is a real problem.  Littering  
code with print statements is tedious and will only get you so far.

I have have no idea how difficult it would be to add this, and rather  
suspect that if it was easy, it would already have been done. But it's  
sure would be nice.


-Glen