[Openmcl-devel] “Prehistoric” MCL

[mikel evins]

My memory is that the UI framework in Object Lisp and, later, CLOS, was much easier and more convenient to work with than other ways of building classic Mac user interfaces. One reason is that you could build up a UI interactively in real time by evaluating Lisp expressions at the Listener. After the transition to CLOS, you could make a working window that responded appropriately to mouse events by saying

  (make-instance 'window)

I don't remember the exact Object Lisp syntax, but it was similarly simple.

The Mac got threads in System 7, in the form of the Thread Manager. If I remember right, MCL/CCL didn't get thread support until the OpenMCL fork, though you could have used MCL's toolbox interface to talk to the Thread Manager before that.

Before OSX the Mac system was a cooperative multitasking system using what is nowadays called green threads.

> On Mar 5, 2022, at 1:18 AM, Tim McNerney <mc at media.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for pointers to the “digital orphans” web museums. 
> Which brings me back to my other question…
> Some of us remember that building a “well behaved GUI” for the Mac was a pain to code.
> Did ObjectLisp and successors make this any easier with their OOness?
> Could I implement widgets that responded to mouse clicks “on their own,”
> or was there always editing of the dreaded “main event loop” for each new widget?
> Some examples, if handy, would be good fodder for conversation.
> Lastly, when did MacOS get full-fledged threads?
> Or, since I’m taking to MCL devs, when did CCL start supporting threads?
> 
> --Tim
> 
>> On Mar 4, 2022, at 13:23, Jeremy Jones <jaj at clozure.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks Gene! They appear to have disk images of lots of old stuff.
>> 
>> They even have MCL 1.3 (pre-CLOS)!
>> https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macintosh-allegro-common-lisp <https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macintosh-allegro-common-lisp> 
>> 
>> I've been wanting to play with Object Lisp. A weekend project! 
>> 
>> 
>> On Fri, Mar 4, 2022, 11:37 AM Gene Z. Ragan <gene at semitone.audio> wrote:
>> The Macintosh Garden is a nice resource for classic software releases.
>> 
>> https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macintosh-common-lisp-20 <https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macintosh-common-lisp-20>
>> https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/pearl-lisp <https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/pearl-lisp>
>> https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macintosh-allegro-common-lisp <https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macintosh-allegro-common-lisp>
>> https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/xlisp <https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/xlisp>
>> 
>> You may be able to find what you are looking for there.
>> 
>> Gene
>> 
>>> On Mar 3, 2022, at 10:26 PM, Tim McNerney <mc at media.mit.edu <mailto:mc at media.mit.edu>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Motivated by my recent purchase of a refurbished Mac Classic (*),
>>> I am searching for a couple of types of “prehistoric” software. 
>>> 1) 68000 MCL that runs in 4MB of RAM and a tiny B/W screen. (**)
>>> 2) examples of early Mac apps written in MCL with decent UIs.
>>> 
>>> (*) With a BlueSCSI SSD instead of a fragile HDD.
>>> 
>>> Is the rumor true that Coral Software delivered a complete Common Lisp 
>>> compressed onto a single 9cm floppy? (3 1/2”)
>>> 
>>> (**) I’m not looking for one of these physical floppies. 
>>> 9cm floppies were notorious, even brand new, of not being archival. 
>>> Some sort of disk image would be better. 
>>> 
>>> --Tim
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>> 
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