[Openmcl-devel] we need more aliens and beggars on the list who use GUIs

[wws2 new]

For several years now I have been following this discussion and the state of CCL with anticipation.  Recently I have gotten most of my non-GUI MCL code to run on CCL without much effort other than pathname junk, and have been blown away by the fact that CCL is for the most part 50-100 times faster.  

For a couple years I have been hoping for just a little more attention to the GUI side of CCL, something like the old MCL quickdraw file is more or less all it needs, but that has been very slow in coming.  Okay it needs something like FRED too, but that GUI Layer seems like a precursor to me.  My point is the list of things needed for a basic abstract GUI layer is pretty short.  As far as I can tell from discussions on the list, some users seem to be close to reproducing large chunks of Quickdraw-like functionality.  So it seems possible for a nice abstract GUI layer to take shape.  

I think one of the reasons that this has not been a priority is that everyone that uses CCL seems to be very comfortable using all the UNIX-like features, whereas GUI functionality comes from users who want FINDER like behaviour.  For example, the thing I have not done, and want to avoid doing, is all the updating from trunk, swank, upper lower lisp emacs stuff that makes this list tick at present.  That makes me a sort of alien on this list, but I like to use stable releases that look like an application (so I use 1.4) and allow me to write or port applications which include GUIs.  So I hope that CCL will eventually become this platform.  

Now to be honest that makes me a beggar.  I need you guys who know all the Objective-C blah blah to make the abstract GUI Layer.  I can help define what it should do (quickdraw.lisp is a good start), but writing it would not be in my ability-set.  Nevertheless I hope you realise you need me to beg.