Things to do before GUI-developers can start their work

>>>>> "CY" == C Y <smustudent1@yahoo.com> writes:

    CY> --- Raymond Toy <toy@rtp.ericsson.se> wrote:
    >> 
    >> But there are socket libraries out there already.  CLOCC has one.
    >> There's db-sockets (?).  Don't know how complete they are.

    CY> Hmm.  Well, I suppose if there's no other way...  That pretty much
    CY> rules out any of the advantages of having the GUI be native lisp
    CY> though.

I don't think so.  It allows maxima to send over it's internal
structures without having to massage it.

    >> Hard.  Maybe very hard.  Might be able to port CMUCLs x86 threads to
    >> Solaris, which would make it easy for other platforms.  SBCL's
    >> threads for other platforms will be hard since it uses 
    >> Linux-specific stuff.

    CY> Would Windows be a whole 'nother can of worms?

Yes.  But "can" is probably too small to contain the worms. :-)

    CY> I suppose the way it could be handled would be to impliment it to take
    CY> advantage of threads if they are present, but if not do things in
    CY> series.  Then maybe as a third option access a remote kernel via
    CY> sockets or some other protocal, although the problem with that is
    CY> things like environment definitions, which could be taken for granted
    CY> as being defined if the same lisp process were used, will not be
    CY> communicated automatically via the socket and would have to be
    CY> communicated.  I guess the way to handle it would be to impliment some
    CY> sort of overriding checker that, if socket mode was enabled, queried
    CY> the Maxima kernel for settings information before any operation that
    CY> required it, and returned any results to the Maxima process.  I guess
    CY> all that needs some thought - there will be some things, like the
    CY> position of taskbars, that the kernel doesn't care about, but things
    CY> like font size and document width it will need to know about when
    CY> formatting results.

These all seem very complicated to get right.

In any case, he who has working code wins.  Talk is just talk.

Ray, who's just talking....