Re: Someone explain (Mc)Clim to me as if I were 5 years old



David Lichteblau wrote:
On 2006-10-26, Ken Tilton <kentilton@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Pardon a non-responsive response, but why do you want to use McClim or
any form of Clim?


Perhaps because CLIM implements some interesting concepts, and with the
prominent exception of normal widgets ("gadgets") is rather complete.


Most of us are using Tk, Gtk, wxWindows, or implementation-specific GUIS that work just like the ones you are used to.


Using or implementing?

Cells-Gtk, LTk, and Celtk/Cello (the line is blurry now) are all being used, tho I confess my Cells-Gtk assessment is based on the fact that it seems to be actively supported.


There are certainly lots of Lisp programmers _implementing_ such GUI
toolkits in Lisp (LTK, various GTK+ bindings, Graphic Forms, cells-gtk).

The one you want is Cello, now based on Tk/Tcl and OpenGL. Full event stream, true callbacks, access to the many Tk/Tcl libs, and terrific portability (of more than just the native look/feel GUI -- sockets, threads, file manager services, the whole Tcl language really.

And is being used heads down in development of something I hope to release in 3-6 months, so very active and very real-world.


How many real applications based on those libraries are there?

Not fair. Ron had it wrong. Lisp programmers are /too/ social, spend all their time chatting on c.l.l or closing pubs, never actually write any code.


(Oh, I know, closed-source commercial software using Franz CG and
LispWorks CAPI that nobody has ever heard of. Right.)

What do you mean by "Right."? You do not believe it? :) And why does it bother you that you have never heard of them? The testimonials from CAPI users make clear they are using that library in anger, at least, and I do not think Franz suppports itself without people using --- well, whaddoIknow? CG is just win32 and for all I know they have more users on Gtk (or not doing GUIs at all).



Clim never really caught on.


Perhaps not until McCLIM came along. Now there are various non-trivial
applications using CLIM, e.g. Climacs, Beirc, Gsharp, and of course
Closure. Neither of which is complete and perfect, but all of them are
basically usable and certainly more than just a toy example.

I heard LW was deprecating CLIM, and I think Franz is as well. My take is that CLIM /tried/ to be this incredibly better presentation manager the way CLOS is incredible at OO, but was badly designed from the programmer's perspective -- too damn hard to learn and use, and unnecessarily so. That last bit is unforgivable.

Meanwhile, look at this thread. Programmers coming to Lisp know how to put up a GUI in any number of languages, then they run into CLIM. Ooops. They also know a GUI is built up from widgets, and you concede CLIM don't play that. Oooops. I am not saying Lisp should not do better than other languages, but I am saying CLIM went in search of better along the wrong axes.

CLIM was a bold leap and I love bold leaps, but this one did not pan out and the energy going into McCLIM is just a mistake.

kt

--
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/

"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
-- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon
.

Relevant Pages

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