From: Simon Brooke
Subject: Re: Lisp Interface
Date: 
Message-ID: <DD9MpB.7s@rheged.dircon.co.uk>
In article <··········@grovel.iafrica.com>,
Rob Heywood  <········@iafrica.com> wrote:
>Hi,
>My name is Rob Heywood and I am very interested in finding out about
>the interface aspect of lisp. It has been a while since I last worked 
>or looked at Lisp and I am curious about the current programming 
>interface to Lisp (generally speaking, not necessarily version 
>specific). In other words is there a version out or a soon to be 
>released version that will have a "Visual Interface" ie. what 
>Visual C++ did for C++, because I found the Lisp interface somewhat
>difficult to work with. 

Sad, sad, sad.

LISP invented the 'visual programmers interface'. I was using
graphical class browsers on InterLISP *ten* years ago. At the time,
Symbolics and TI machines were at least as good. One of the things
that happened when we all moved over to 'stock hardware' is that we
lost a lot of our pretty things, but Harlequin's LispWorks, at any
rate, is far in advance of anything you'll find on a PC (except that
you'll find it on a PC, these days, I believe). InterLISP is also
available for the PC, from Envos. 

But there are still people out there who believe that LISP can only be
programmed in some arcane fashion using emacs-inferior-processes and
so on. Ain't so, guy. Go look.


-- 
------- ·····@rheged.dircon.co.uk (Simon Brooke)
	"The result is a language that... not even its mother could love.  Like
	the camel, Common Lisp is a horse designed by committee. Camels do have
	their uses."				;; Scott Fahlman,  7 March 1995