Newbie FAQ #2: Where's the GUI?

darcs get http://common-lisp.net/project/cl-o...darcs/cl-opengl
darcs get http://common-lisp.net/~crhodes/clx
http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~u...xman/index.html
http://www.cawtech.demon.co.uk/clx/simple/examples.html

..or..

http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/

..or..

use html/js for UI
http://www.weitz.de/hunchentoot/ ..etc..

combine with ajax/comet if needed .. i'm working on a lisp back-end for
doing this http://code.google.com/p/symbolicweb/ .. don't get excited
though; i've quit WoW, but there is a chance i still might not be able to
"finish" this

..or..

don't write your UI in lisp

--
Lars Rune Nøstdal
http://nostdal.org/

Jonathan Gardner wrote:
> On Apr 1, 12:29 pm, vanekl <va...@acd.net> wrote:
> 
>
>
> As a guy who writes web apps for a living,...

Ah, good. You have been assigned to the Open AIR project:

http://gitorious.org/projects/hunchncells

You can do the WebKit integration. You'll love the license.

> ...I am hoping and praying that you aren't right.
>
> Life would really, really, really suck if all we had was HTML and
> javascript.
>

Wrong attitude. The Lisp trick is to wrap/enslave the beasts so well you
forget they are there and can live in a fantasy matrix where you think
that is Lisp you are coding.

eg, I forgot I was using Tk/C behind Cello until you asked about it, I
thought I was doing Lisp/OpenGL.

kenny


--
http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/

"In the morning, hear the Way;
in the evening, die content!"
-- Confucius

On Apr 1, 8:40 pm, Jonathan Gardner <jgard...@jonathangardner.net>
wrote:

> I mean, *within* the lisp community. You know, people that go, "SBCL
> rocks. CLISP sucks. Don't use CLISP." Those kinds of guys. You guys
> are either too nice to each other, or you get your kicks watching
> people struggle to learn the hard way what everyone already knows.
>

I think we grew out of that kind of name-calling.  Trying to promote
the language is not well-served by picking fights between
implementations.  The Dylan experience tought us that much.

But: "what everyone knows": is that there is no free lunch.  You
either pay (in money or time) for something, or you're a leech.  In
large communities most people get away with leaching, but that does
not work in small communities.  Cl is a small community.

So my advice is: don't be a leech (I am not saying you are, yet):
either pay for something, or pick one and contribute.

Finally:  i know this is a technical newsgroup so whining about free
software is on-topic, but remember what matters: tigers are going
extinct while we piss our lives away arguing about software, what is
wrong with us?

On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:14:07 -0700, Tim Bradshaw wrote:

> Finally:  i know this is a technical newsgroup so whining about free
> software is on-topic, but remember what matters: tigers are going
> extinct while we piss our lives away arguing about software, what is
> wrong with us?

Don't forget about our dear cousins:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4202734.stm

Yes, the world is changing. What is going to happen? Soylent Pink for
girls! Soylent Blue for boys!

Maybe we or someone else makes humans extinct and the cycle starts again.

--
Sohail Somani
http://uint32t.blogspot.com

Jonathan Gardner wrote:
> On Apr 1, 12:29 pm, vanekl <va...@acd.net> wrote: 
>
> As a guy who writes web apps for a living, I am hoping and praying
> that you aren't right.
>
> Life would really, really, really suck if all we had was HTML and
> javascript.
>

MS isn't dropping another 100 mill upgrading their browser
just because they feel they got this sudden urge to become
standards compliant. More is at stake than that.

If you want something to pray about, pray that Mozilla comes
out of round 3 of the browser wars intact.


(defun browser-wars (round users adversary-1 adversary-2
&optional popcorn)
(format t "Browser Wars, Round ~a~%" round)
(game-on adversary-1 adversary-2 users popcorn))

(browser-wars 3 *world*
(make-browser :org mozilla :brand ff3 :tactics 'standards
:bus-model 'open-source :proxy-for 'google)
(make-browser :org MS :brand IE8 :tactics 'fud
:bus-model 'proprietary :proxy-for 'windows-desktop))

C-x C-e

--
HTML5 or bust.

vanekl wrote:
> Jonathan Gardner wrote:
> 
>
> MS isn't dropping another 100 mill upgrading their browser
> just because they feel they got this sudden urge to become
> standards compliant. More is at stake than that.
>
> If you want something to pray about, pray that Mozilla comes
> out of round 3 of the browser wars intact.

You'll be praying over its grave -- Himself has switched to Safari for
Windows.

k

--
http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/

"In the morning, hear the Way;
in the evening, die content!"
-- Confucius

Ken Tilton wrote:
>
>
> vanekl wrote: 
>
> You'll be praying over its grave -- Himself has switched to Safari for
> Windows.
>
> k

Webkit is the dark horse.

I'm especially interested in the new embedded fonts.
I want beautiful typefaces in my browser w/o having
to download gifs.

But the buzz I'm hearing is that Safari can't be
customized like FF, so I'm hesitant to try it.
When Apple tried to sneak an install of 3.1 onto
my computer, that clinched it. No soup for Apple.

On Apr 1, 11:23 am, Jonathan Gardner <jgard...@jonathangardner.net>
wrote:
> Where's the GUI?

It's a good question, to which I do not know the answer -- I don't do
much GUI work.  But here's another candidate for your list, one I'm
curious about :

wxCL: http://www.wxcl-project.org/language/en/

-- Scott

On Apr 1, 10:22 pm, Scott Burson <FSet....@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 1, 11:23 am, Jonathan Gardner <jgard...@jonathangardner.net>
> wrote:
> 
>
> It's a good question, to which I do not know the answer -- I don't do
> much GUI work.  But here's another candidate for your list, one I'm
> curious about :
>
> wxCL:http://www.wxcl-project.org/language/en/
>

wxCL certainly looks enticing. I'll give it a go when I give up on Qt.

On Apr 1, 7:00 pm, vanekl <va...@acd.net> wrote:
> Jonathan Gardner wrote: 
> 
> 
>
> MS isn't dropping another 100 mill upgrading their browser
> just because they feel they got this sudden urge to become
> standards compliant. More is at stake than that.
>

I happen to believe that we write web apps today only to satisfy
Windows users. See, Windows is so insecure you can't download and run
software on your computer. There is no jail, no security measures in
place to keep applications from messing with each other and with the
OS.

People feel comfortable running webapps because they seem to be more
secure. But I know enough to say that they aren't secure, even with
Firefox. They can't be made secure without the same measures it would
take to make the OS secure.

Firefox may be a better OS than Windows, but it is certainly lacking
compared to what I know about Linux.

Soon, it will no longer be the case that the majority of users are
running Windows. When people get onto a decent platform with a decent
security model, we'll all download and run apps without thinking about
the security implications. It won't be possible for joe user to run
any application that can destroy his machine or even hurt another app,
no matter how hard he tries.

(Using Windows, it drives me nuts that I have to get admin permission
to install stupid programs. What in the world do they need permissions
to mess with my OS for? I just want to put songs on to my iPod,
dammit.)

But more importantly, webapps are terribly restrictive. You can only
do certain things, and you can't do those things well. Some of the
ideas that webapps have forced onto us are good---throwbacks to the
days of thin clients. But as an author of many webapps, I can't tell
you how many times I have run into the limitations of the webapps--
even with AJAX or what-have-you. They simply are not enough to get the
job done. Some things, yes. But never everything, and I'm always
sacrificing the user experience to fit the model of web app
programming. This is not right. It's not the future of software.

> If you want something to pray about, pray that Mozilla comes
> out of round 3 of the browser wars intact.
>

Someday everyone will wake up and wonder why web browsers are running
web apps when those same apps run on your desktop at a million times
the speed with a million times more features and a million times the
simplicity.

One day, you'll have a document reader that reads any document
anywhere on the internet with cross-referencing and you'll have a app
launcher that can find and launch any application anywhere on the
internet. The two will be different tools.

We'll look back at the 1990's and 2000's, wondering why we wasted our
time trying to do something useful on such a terribly restrictive
platform.

> HTML5 or bust.

HTML5 is simply (1+ HTML4). I don't like the direction of this,
recursively speaking. Might as well write a linux emulator on Windows
and have people download that instead of building it piecemeal.

In short, I don't buy that we should all be writing web apps. Let's
write real apps.