From: Fred Gilham
Subject: XIT -- free CLOS-based Lisp GUI
Date: 
Message-ID: <u7zozj7ipj.fsf_-_@snapdragon.csl.sri.com>
Recently there was some discussion about Lisp GUIs.  Some people
expressed the desire to see a free CLOS-based GUI toolkit.  XIT, which
is built on CLUE, is such a toolkit.

I don't know if anyone has tried XIT out in a while.  I spent some
time getting it to work under CMUCL and it looks interesting.  I think
its appearance and interaction styles are quite nice --- lisp-machine
like, more so than garnet.  It has a lot of example code.

On the bad side,

1) It's suffering from a bad case of bit rot.  I had to make a lot of
   changes to get it to work.  There are also genuine bugs---typos and
   simple mistakes---that I had to find and fix.  I still haven't
   gotten all the code working---but I think it wouldn't be too hard
   for someone who knew lisp well.  I get the impression that most or
   all of it worked at some time in the past.  However, this is
   definitely serious hackerware.

2) The API seems more verbose than garnet, just glancing at the code.

3) It's big.  The working x86 CMUCL image with the latest version is
   ~26mb, compared to ~19mb for Garnet (this contrasts with 14mb for
   the base system with CLX)

4) It's slower than garnet.  There is a fair amount of run-time
   compilation that goes on because of the PCL version of CLOS.  Note
   that on reasonable hardware with a reasonable amount of memory it
   seems to run OK.  I actually tried it out on an ultrasparc 1 with
   32mb and it worked pretty well---until I loaded in so much stuff
   that it started swapping.  Even then it just slowed down some; it
   was still usable.

5) It's not maintained any more.  I sent a message to the xit mailing
   list and got a nice reply expressing suprise that anyone is still
   using XIT and saying that if it ever gets resurrected they'll look
   at my bug report.

6) The license is a bit more restrictive than is convenient---they
   prohibit redistribution of modified versions.  Perhaps if someone
   were really interested in maintaining and enhancing XIT, they'd be
   willing to waive or modify this term.

7) It tickles a pretty serious bug in the version of x86-CMUCL that I
   use (18b, experimental, on FreeBSD, built by me).  It has to do
   with reentrant calls to the xlib event handling stuff.  I don't
   know how to fix this yet.  However, I found that the CMUCL-18b
   release FreeBSD version from the web site works fine.

If anyone is interested in taking this up, please let me know.
Perhaps I can make a patch file of what I've done and it could be a
good starting place for someone who wants to work on it.

-- 
Fred Gilham                                     ······@csl.sri.com
"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and
lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke
is easy, and my burden is light."               --Jesus of Nazareth

From: Raymond Toy
Subject: Re: XIT -- free CLOS-based Lisp GUI
Date: 
Message-ID: <4n4shqtwyb.fsf@rtp.ericsson.se>
>>>>> "Fred" == Fred Gilham <······@snapdragon.csl.sri.com> writes:

    Fred> Recently there was some discussion about Lisp GUIs.  Some people
    Fred> expressed the desire to see a free CLOS-based GUI toolkit.  XIT, which
    Fred> is built on CLUE, is such a toolkit.

    Fred> I don't know if anyone has tried XIT out in a while.  I spent some
    Fred> time getting it to work under CMUCL and it looks interesting.  I think
    Fred> its appearance and interaction styles are quite nice --- lisp-machine
    Fred> like, more so than garnet.  It has a lot of example code.

    Fred> On the bad side,

[problems snipped]

I had done the same thing a year or two ago, along with several
others.  :-(

I gave up on it for these reasons:

1)  It doesn't handle keyboard input very well.  You can't edit fields
    easily because it expects characters to have the control bits set.
    I didn't know how to fix this and didn't want to change the
    characters everywhere they're used.
2)  XIT and Garnet are both equally well supported, i.e., none.
3)  Garnet is smaller.

I've probably tried just about all CL GUI's (including CLUE, CLIO,
Garnet, XIT) and the only one that worked reasonably well, was
reasonably complete, and was fairly easy to use was Garnet.

Oh well,

Ray
From: Marco Antoniotti
Subject: Re: XIT -- free CLOS-based Lisp GUI
Date: 
Message-ID: <lwn1viv7o4.fsf@copernico.parades.rm.cnr.it>
Raymond Toy <···@rtp.ericsson.se> writes:

> I've probably tried just about all CL GUI's (including CLUE, CLIO,
> Garnet, XIT) and the only one that worked reasonably well, was
> reasonably complete, and was fairly easy to use was Garnet.
> 
> Oh well,

What about the commercial ones? CAPI, Common Graphics and the MCL Mac
Interface.  I have vague memories of the MCL interface being pretty
good.

Cheers

-- 
Marco Antoniotti ===========================================
PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY
tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17, fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26
http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa
From: Raymond Toy
Subject: Re: XIT -- free CLOS-based Lisp GUI
Date: 
Message-ID: <4nso5arwv3.fsf@rtp.ericsson.se>
>>>>> "Marco" == Marco Antoniotti <·······@copernico.parades.rm.cnr.it> writes:

    Marco> Raymond Toy <···@rtp.ericsson.se> writes:

    >> I've probably tried just about all CL GUI's (including CLUE, CLIO,
    >> Garnet, XIT) and the only one that worked reasonably well, was
    >> reasonably complete, and was fairly easy to use was Garnet.
    >> 
    >> Oh well,

    Marco> What about the commercial ones? CAPI, Common Graphics and the MCL Mac
    Marco> Interface.  I have vague memories of the MCL interface being pretty
    Marco> good.

I don't have a Mac, so MCL is out.

I usually only run Lisp on Unix, so unless ACL Linux or LW Linux
comes with CAPI/Common Graphics, I can't try out any of them.  

Even if I could, the types of applications I want to run with lisp are
number crunching apps with complex numbers.  I think all Lisps except
CMUCL cons to death when working with complex numbers.  (I suppose I
could hook the two together via a socket or pipe to get the best of
both worlds, though.)

Too bad,

Ray
From: Pierre R. Mai
Subject: Re: XIT -- free CLOS-based Lisp GUI
Date: 
Message-ID: <87n1vii20w.fsf@orion.dent.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Raymond Toy <···@rtp.ericsson.se> writes:

> I usually only run Lisp on Unix, so unless ACL Linux or LW Linux
> comes with CAPI/Common Graphics, I can't try out any of them.  

LWW for Linux Personal Edition does come with CAPI (though only the
Professional Edition or better come with the Interface Builder.  OTOH
I find CAPI nice enough that the IB is not really necessary for most
interfaces).

ACL for Linux Trial Edition doesn't come with any GUI library, though
I'm led to believe that GUI support is available with a commercial
licence for ACL for Linux.

Regs, Pierre.

-- 
Pierre Mai <····@acm.org>         PGP and GPG keys at your nearest Keyserver
  "One smaller motivation which, in part, stems from altruism is Microsoft-
   bashing." [Microsoft memo, see http://www.opensource.org/halloween1.html]
From: Christopher R. Barry
Subject: Re: XIT -- free CLOS-based Lisp GUI
Date: 
Message-ID: <87aerh6mv2.fsf@2xtreme.net>
····@acm.org (Pierre R. Mai) writes:

> ACL for Linux Trial Edition doesn't come with any GUI library, though
> I'm led to believe that GUI support is available with a commercial
> licence for ACL for Linux.

The Linux Trial Edition comes with CLX and there are various things
available for free that run atop the Franz CLX like CLUE and Garnet.
(Remember Gilbert Baumann's Closure Web Browser that runs under the
Linux Trial Edition?)

Christopher