Things to do before GUI-developers can start their work

--- James Amundson <amundson@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-06-11 at 14:21, C Y wrote:
> 
> > Excellent.  What about a function to communicate all variables that
> > have been changed with the execution of a command?  Does something
> > like that exist, or could it be implimented?
> 
> I don't know how to do that offhand, but it has nothing to do with
> communication. How would you determine which variables had been
> modified?

No, not communication - what to communicate.  That way the lisp
enviornment of the kernel and GUI can be functionally identical,
despite using separate processes.  I was hoping any time a command like
an assign statement was made to a variable during the execution of a
command, a temporary list of that change could be made.  See my
physconst example in a previous message for one possible case where it
would matter.
 
> P.S. ...and what would you do with the information that certain
> variables had been modified?

Send commands down the socket to the GUI part of the system that would
make the same modifications to the same variables there.  That way, if
the GUI needed to update it's interface in any way in response to
activity in the kernel it could, and the same mechanism operating in
the reverse way could notify the output routines of a change in the
size of the display window (for example).  Since it would be impossible
to predict in advance all cases where this sort of thing would be
needed/useful, complete parity between the two environments is the best
way to ensure things work properly.

CY

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