Is there any support for screen management in common lisp?
At the very least, is there a clear screen function?
Rob Lewis
University at Buffalo BITNET: ·····@sunybcs.BITNET
Internet: ·····@cs.Buffalo.EDU
From: Paul Frederick Snively
Subject: Re: Screen management in Common Lisp?
Date:
Message-ID: <30881@cup.portal.com>
[Question about screen management in Common Lisp deleted]
No, there are no standard screen-management facilities in Common Lisp per se,
because Common Lisp strives to be very portable, and you just can't know how
such a thing would make sense across all different types of I/O devices. For
example, my Macintosh is, from the bottom up, a windowing machine with a
single-button pointer device and one of several different kinds of keyboards
(some with control keys and some without, some with a numeric keypad and some
without, etc.)
What would "Clear Screen" mean on my Macintosh?
Lest I paint too gloomy a picture for powerful, standardized I/O under Common
Lisp, let me point out that there are a variety of (admittedly competing)
"standards" for Common Lisp: CLX (essentially XLIB for Common Lisp), CLUE
(the Common Lisp User Environment), and CLIM (the Common Lisp Interface
Manager). Oops--I almost forgot Common Windows, the interface that
IntelliCorp provides with KEE on Lisp machines such as the Explorer.
My personal opinion is that your best I/O bet is to hope that your Lisp
interfaces well to the underlying OS and its libraries so that you can take
advantage of whatever your platform is capable of. Also remember that #+ and
#- are your friends when it comes to keeping your code portable.
Hope this helps,
Paul Snively
Software Terrorist, MacDTS
Apple Computer, Inc.
·····@acsu.buffalo.edu (robert w lewis) writes:
>
> Is there any support for screen management in common lisp?
>At the very least, is there a clear screen function?
In standard Common-Lisp there is no support for screen managment. What you can
do is to use the system-call interface of the Lisp you use and call the Unix
clear function, e.g., in KCL/IBCL
(system "clear")
If you use Allegro or Sun-CL you have to look into the manual to find the
appropriate function.
There is a standard extension to Common-Lisp - CLX- that allows you to build
X-based interfaces in Common-Lisp. E.g., the Allegro Composer is built on CLX.
acl on lictor has CLX available.
Hans