[Openmcl-devel] A plug for nx1-combination-hook

[Rainer Joswig]

Am 08.09.2009 um 01:10 schrieb Glen Foy:

>
> On Sep 7, 2009, at 4:49 PM, Rainer Joswig wrote:
>
>> I would make my IDE user interface more like Apple Mail or iTunes.
>> One basic element is 'live search'. 'live search' mixes well with
>> Lisp, since we have a running Lisp image that can be queried.
>> Another element is 'windows with some basic panes': overview,
>> hierarchies, ... Libraries are large we need to find and navigate
>> effectively. We need custom searches into the source or the live
>> image.
>>
>
>
> "Live search" is a terrific idea.

But also saved 'live searches' searches. I use that in iTunes (music)  
and Aperture (photos) a lot.

 From a UI standpoint, search now is one of the dominant user  
interfaces.
Think of the success of Google: small and lean UI  +  clever  
algorithms to rank the results. If we want some information on the  
web, often we search.

Same applies now for the personal computer (and even things like the  
iPhone which now has a search screen). Some people no longer put their  
mail in folders, they just search for them if they need it. If you  
need a presentation file, then spotlight (Apple's search) is often the  
interface.

We have now lots of Lisp files with lots of classes and functions, and  
if we look for a particular function we might want to use effective  
search. In MCL I used the Search Files dialog with the appropriate  
wild-case pathnames to search a bunch of files for a string. That was  
pretty quick - given that the number of files was smaller than today  
and MCL was/is quite effective for that.

Then there is all the data that is loaded into a running Lisp.

That reminds me that there was/is a spotlight Lisp Metadata Importer  
plug-in from Lemonodor ( http://lemonodor.com/archives/001232.html ).  
Might be interesting to revive it, put it as a Clozure CL contribution  
into the CCL distribution and have a small UI for CCL to use it. The  
web page shows examples, one now can search for, say, Lisp defmacro  
definitions which have some name for the macro and combine it with  
other constraints (opened, modified, created, ...)

Regards,

Rainer Joswig


Rainer Joswig, Hamburg, Germany
http://lispm.dyndns.org/
mailto:joswig at lisp.de