<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On Apr 5, 2010, at 9:38 AM, wws2 new wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">Perhaps I am simply advocating (and begging) that those that go for more should define a layer like I advocate that opens up the basic functionality of PORTABLE COMMON LISP. I would like to see an intermediate layer that is not all carbonised and cocoafied, except in the handful of files that defines the lisp functions for (open-graphics-window #@(200 400)) and (draw-line window #@(10 10) #@(190 390) *red-color* *grey-texture) and (place-menu window :items (list (list "Red" *red-color*) (list "Blue" *blue-color*)) :action #'(lambda (self) ...)) and related event handlers. As well as the rest of the handful, namely Urwerk and Open-Westream with standard idioms for (file-date ) (directory ) (alias-file-p ) and (get-data-from-url ... ).<br><br></span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I think we basically already have this. We called it LUI the Lisp User Interface. It is part of XMLisp - you don't need to use the XML if you don't want to. LUI is a layer that has been implemented in Cocoa, previously in Carbon and also Franz Window API. LUI works on Windows as well on top of CCL using Cocotron. Cocotron is a pretty large subset of Cocoa for Windows. You can run the same source on Macs and PCs. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">I think that if LISP is to remain relevant and rejuvenate itself, it must gather its many forces to define that intermediate level. Perhaps an academic on the list should organise a LISP conference on it. The language experts should gather pen and paper for a new standard that sets LISP ahead again. Or perhaps, since I believe that the original Human Interface Guidelines that lead to it have not been surpassed by cocoa and osx, all we need to do is adopt quickdraw lisp and cocoa-ise it. It seems to me that someone who knows cocoa and carbon should just change traps to something in cocoa that works.<br><br></span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Quickdraw is dead. Cocoa is doing pretty well these days especially because of iPhones and perhaps now the iPad. MCL is a nice legacy tool. It is time to let go.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">The danger otherwise is that we merely build planned obsolescence into our applications, rather than isolate it in a layer of our applications, which are otherwise conducted in LISP rather than java, carbon, or cocoa or xml... all of which will have and deserve much shorter lifespans.</span></blockquote></div><div><br></div><div>I do not want to go here but the entire Lisp versus other kinds of discussion, e.g., S-expressions versus XML is just a waste of time. The landscape of computation has changed for good. We have to deal with it.</div><div><br></div><div>Alex</div><div><br></div><br><div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Prof. Alexander Repenning</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px">University of Colorado</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px">Computer Science Department</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px">Boulder, CO 80309-430</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">vCard: <a href="http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/AlexanderRepenning.vcf">http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/AlexanderRepenning.vcf</a></font></p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span></span></span></span>
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