From: Chris Richardson
Subject: Lisp BOF at the 5th Annual Technical Conference on the X Window System
Date:
Message-ID: <CER.91Jan7113705@fiona.Franz.COM>
We would like to organize a Lisp Windowing birds of a feather session
at the upcoming 5th Annual Technical Conference on the X Window System
which will be held in Boston, Massachusetts from 14th to 16th January
1991.
The BOF will be held Tuesday evening (15th), 8pm to 9:30pm, in Salon H/I/J/K.
It is intended that the BOF will provide a forum for users, implemementors
and vendors to discuss their experiences and points of view.
If you would like to participate in the BOF please let me know.
If you would like to make a short presentation about
either your experiences implementing or using a Lisp User Interface
toolkit or simply your point of view please send me a brief outline.
--
-----
Chris Richardson, Franz Inc. 1995 University Avenue, Suite 275
···@Franz.COM (internet) Berkeley, CA 94704
uunet!franz!cer (uucp) Phone: (415) 548-3600; FAX: (415) 548-8253
From: Niels Mayer
Subject: WINTERP BOF (was Re: Lisp BOF at the 5th Annual Technical Conference on the X Window System)
Date:
Message-ID: <6436@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
In article <················@fiona.Franz.COM> ···@Franz.COM (Chris Richardson) writes:
>We would like to organize a Lisp Windowing birds of a feather session
>at the upcoming 5th Annual Technical Conference on the X Window System
>which will be held in Boston, Massachusetts from 14th to 16th January
>1991.
>
>The BOF will be held Tuesday evening (15th), 8pm to 9:30pm, in Salon H/I/J/K.
For some unknown reason, the WINTERP BOF was scheduled to occur at the same
time, and same date as the LISP BOF. This is unfortunate since there is a
strong intersection of interests between the two BOF's.
WINTERP (please don't pronounce it WINTER-PEE unless you like yellow snow :-)
is a Widget INTERPreter that uses XLISP and the XLISP object system to
provide a high-level, fully interactive interface to the OSF/Motif widget
set. WINTERP is useful as an application prototyping environment -- I use
it to interactively create widget-based graphical UIs for programs in the
same way that people use gnuemacs to create text-based interfaces. WINTERP
can also be embedded in applications requiring end-user tailoring of the
application functionality and extension of the application user interface.
The WINTERP BOF will be of interest to:
(1) People interested in Motif bindings to Lisp.
(2) People interested in UI languages with object orientation
(WINTERP allows Motif widgets to be subclassed and extended
within the language).
(3) People interested in delivering hybrid programs that consist
mostly of C (for efficiency & speed), with an embedded
lightweight Lisp interpreter as a prototyping/extension language.
(4) Those believing that Common Lisp is not a suitable platform
for delivering portable applications with good multiprocessing
performance on Unix workstations.
For more information, here's the blurb announcing the WINTERP BOF:
--------------------
Subject: WINTERP B.O.F. at 5th Annual Tech. Conf. on the X Window System
I'm posting this note to announce that there will be an informal "birds of
a feather" session on the WINTERP OSF/Motif Widget INTERPreter at the
upcoming 5th Annual Tech. Conf. on the X Window System. The conference is
happening at the Boston Marriott Copley Place in Boston, Massachusetts,
14-16 January 1991. I figured that since I'm attending this conference, I
might as well get together with any current or prospective WINTERP users.
The BOF will be held on Tuesday, January 15 8:00 PM to 9:30 PM.
In the "Provincetown/Orleans room" of the Mariott.
I'd like to use this session as an informal information exchange:
* For interested folks to find out more about WINTERP.
* To get input on desired features and improvements.
* Discuss upcoming plans for WINTERP (e.g. the real soon now
WINTERP 1.1 // Motif 1.1 release)
* Exchange ideas on how people are using WINTERP for application
prototyping.
* Find out how people are using WINTERP as a platform for building
customizable/extensible applications.
* Discuss issues: WINTERP vs. UIL, WCL, Tcl, Builders, UIMSs, etc.
* etc.
If you are planning on attending, please reply by e-mail to
·····@hplabs.hp.com (or {decwrl,sun,etc}hplabs!mayer). If you want, you may
also suggest further topics for discussion.
PS: for further info on WINTERP, see the proceedings of Xhibition '90 (pls
ignore formatting and spelling errors introduced by ICS), or see the
proceedings of the EXUG First European X Conference (Sept 1990).
PPS: The following is a blurb introducing WINTERP and telling you how to
get this software:
--------------------
WINTERP: An object-oriented rapid prototyping, development and delivery
environment for building user-customizable applications with the OSF/Motif
UI Toolkit.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WINTERP is a Widget INTERPreter, an application development environment
enabling rapid prototyping of graphical user-interfaces (GUI) through the
interactive programmatic manipulation of user interface objects and their
attached actions. The interpreter, based on David Betz's XLISP, provides an
interface to the X11 toolkit Intrinsics (Xtk), the OSF/Motif widget set,
primitives for collecting data from UN*X processes, and facilities for
interacting with other UN*X processes. WINTERP thus supports rapid
prototyping of GUI-based applications by allowing the user to interactively
change both the UI appearance and application functionality. These features
make WINTERP a good tool for learning and experimenting with the
capabilities of the OSF/Motif UI toolkit, allowing UI designers to more
easily play "what if" games with different interface styles.
WINTERP is also an excellent platform for delivering extensible or
customizable applications. By embedding a small, efficient language
interpreter with UI primitives within the delivered application, users and
system integrators can tailor the static and dynamic layout of the UI,
UI-to-application dialogue, and application functionality. WINTERP's use of
a real programming language for customization allows WINTERP-based
applications to be much more flexible than applications using customization
schemes provided by the X resource database or OSF/Motif's UIL (user
interface language).
An environment similar to WINTERP's already exists in the Gnu-Emacs text
editor -- WINTERP was strongly influenced by Gnu-Emacs' successful design.
In Gnu-Emacs, a mini-Lisp interpreter is used to extend the editor to
provide text-browser style interfaces to a number of UN*X applications
(e.g. e-mail user agents, directory browsers, debuggers, etc). Whereas
Emacs-Lisp enables the creation of new applications by tying together
C-implemented primitives operating on text-buffer UI objects, WINTERP-Lisp
ties together operations on graphical UI objects implemented by the Motif
widgets. Both achieve a high degree of customizability that is common for
systems implemented in Lisp, while still attaining the speed of execution
and (relatively) small size associated with C-implemented applications.
Other features:
* WINTERP is free software -- available via anonymous ftp from
expo.lcs.mit.edu:contrib/winterp/winterp-1.01.tar.Z
* Portable -- runs without porting on many Unix systems.
* Interface to gnuemacs' lisp-mode allows code to be developed
and tested without leaving the editor;
* Built-in RPC mechanism for inter-application communications;
* XLISP provides a simple Smalltalk-like object system.
* OSF/Motif widgets are real XLISP objects -- widgets can be
specialized via subclassing, methods added or altered, etc.
* Automatic storage management of Motif/Xt/X data.
* Contains facilities for "direct manipulation" of UI components;
You may obtain the current source, documentation, and examples via
anonymous ftp from host expo.lcs.mit.edu: in directory contrib/winterp you
will find the compress(1)'d tar(1) file winterp-1.01.tar.Z. Slides, papers
and further documentation can be found in directory contrib/winterp/papers.
There is also a mailing list for WINTERP-related announcements and
discussions. To get added to the list, send mail to
······················@hplabs.hp.com or hplabs!hplnpm!winterp-request.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Niels Mayer -- hplabs!mayer -- ·····@hplabs.hp.com
Human-Computer Interaction Department
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Palo Alto, CA.
*