Re: The Groovy Programming Language

RobertMaas_at_YahooGroups.Com
Date: 03/18/04 

Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 23:01:52 -0800

> Kenny Tilton wrote:
> > Now if only Lisp had a GUI!
> A GUI alone is not enough. It should be fast and easy to use and
> support all "modern stuff" one expects to be in a GUI.

I propose that we list what a modern GUI is expected to do.
Here are some specific things I've found that I liked and wish were
always available:
- Alto/Dorado/Macintosh: GUI file manager: Icons on "desktop" and in
folders, which can be dragged around to move or copy, and can be
clicked to get information or to start running program or to examine
document via whatever editor is linked to it.
- HyperCard/VisualBasic: Drag-and-drop editor for designing dialogs
(windows with controls, used as control panels for application
programs), both the physical/visual layout of various controls and the
scripts/software associated with each control, in the style of
SmallTalk/OO message passing or event handling.
- Info(my1975)/EmacsInfoMode(RMS)/HyperCard/WWW: Links from one
info-frame to another to support browsing information nets just by
clicking on links which appear on-screen as hot text.
- Emacs/MacintoshAllegroCommonLISP/VisualC++/VisualBasic: Smart editors
for specific file formats such as source-code in specific programming
languages. Live interaction between source-edit window and run-program
window, both ability to click on source expression and have it passed
to run window for immediate execution, and ability of running program
to perform automated edit of text in other window.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Others here, please suggest
other very different features of a GUI that you've come to value and
always want.

One thing I've never seen but would like is data pipelining, like the
Unix pipe between processes except it'd be done by drawing a line
between output and input ports of icons of processes rather than
writing | syntax between text descriptions of processes.

Also it'd be nice if the Macintosh idea of having a program associated
with a document, which can in some cases be a scripting language
associated with a script, could be extended to mulitple levels. So for
example, for the programming system Common LISP, we could have a script
which is an application program, but then we could have a document that
is to be used as input for that program, so double-clicking on the
document would start CL then load the application script then start
running that application with the document as standard input. Or
shift-clicking on both the script and the document (to select them both
simultaneously) then double-clicking would do the same thing except you
wouldn't have to link the document to the script ahead of time. Or you
could double-click on the application, which would ask for first input
file and let you specify it merely by clicking on the document's icon,
then ask for second input file and likewise you specify it by clicking
on that document's icon. Or you could build a process by clicking on
the script, which would show you that it needs two input files, and
show a process window into which you drag the icons of those two files.
Then when the process is done, the output file is in the process
window, and you drag and optionally rename it to whereever you want it
to end up before you close the process window.

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