[Openmcl-devel] Graphical User Interface

[Walker Sigismund]

Wow what a response!   I am so grateful.  And Happy!  It is fantastic to see there is real interest and support in a CCL GUI.   I am impressed by and thankful for the funds some of you can contribute.  Besides my code I can put in around 5K.  Along with the 100’s from others, it seems like a serious round of GUI development is fundable and would result in tangible and useful outcomes.

Ron, as you point out, a lot depends on what makes for a ‘Proper’ GUI?   I do not know a lot about openGL, but it sounds like it strives to provide an abstract layer.  I note that OpenGL has windows, textures and polygons which is more or less all I seek.  It looks like a subset of OPEN GL is all I need, or rather I have code for some of what it strives to achieve.

Open GL has matrices, for example, which I do not consider GUI per se, although I do use matrices for the transformations required for 3d modelling (so I have written all the dot product type code required).  Mostly my chart and 3d routines expect data to be in a matrix.  But plots can also be created from a list of functions, for example something like (graph-F ‘(Standard-Normal Binomial …) from-here to-here in-x-steps using-Arg-L replacing-nth &key ….). 

Personally, I want a GUI that runs in LISP and has an abstract layer of windows, views, and drawing commands in various colors, shades and fonts along with menus-items, check-boxes and such for interaction with the user, as well as something like a spreadsheet widget for presenting data.   

With those basic building blocks in MCL, I have built a rich and powerful set of tools that meets my needs for financial and mathematical analysis.  Or just my amusement, for example using the same tools to create 3d topographic maps of Colorado and the Grand Canyon and then fly around them.  Contributing my libraries of code won’t add any value unless it can run in the new GUI.   The code has been developed since 1985 which is both a sign of the hours that went into creating and using it.  It is also a sign of its potential over-complication but I have cleaned it up some in the last months, but also finished half-completed things and added new features.  

I sent Andrew Shalit and Clozure some screen shots a few days ago.  Andrew, if you think they would be useful, perhaps you could post those so that others can have a look?  I can provide a few more if it would be useful.  



> On 19 Apr 2021, at 16:01, Ron Garret <ron at flownet.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Apr 18, 2021, at 11:37 PM, Walker Sigismund <w.sigismund at btinternet.com> wrote:
> 
>> ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;  HOW MUCH INTEREST IS THERE IN A PROPER GRAPHICAL INTERFACE FOR CCL?
> 
> That depends on what you mean by “proper”.
> 
> I have a lot of interest in ensuring the longevity of CCL one way or another, and one thing I would really like to see is a GUI that does not depend on MacOS, i.e. something that runs in a browser or OpenGL.  The fact that not a single person other than me has stepped up to fund an M1 port indicates that the writing is on the wall for CCL on MacOS.  :-(
> 
> rg
>