5 ms·

The GUI situation in Common Lisp is pretty pitiful. AFAIK the best you get is ECL+QT5 or cffi-cl-gtk (which is GTK 3). I don't see a very favorable comparison f

by yyyk2 4y ago

The GUI situation in Common Lisp is pretty pitiful. AFAIK the best you get is ECL+QT5 or cffi-cl-gtk (which is GTK 3). I don't see a very favorable comparison for Racket at all in anything else though. When people talk about the benefits of Lisp, they are usually talking about the benefits of /Common/ Lisp. Other languages often misunderstand what makes Common Lisp so great, like in the case of Scheme's overly complex pseudo-macro system.

vindarel 4y ago
yeah… there are good IUP bindings, and embedding a CL web app into Electron (or Neutralino) is easy, once you have your standalone binary (I'll blog about that). https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl#gui https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl#gui
_ph_ 4y ago
There are also TK bindindings https://github.com/herth/ltk https://github.com/herth/ltk
rscho 4y ago
I'd argue that the brightest minds in computer science understand what makes lisp great perfectly. In the lisp tradition, they made a lisp geared towards their use case, specifically. It's called Scheme... which sports much more than 'a pseudo-macro system'.
- yyyk2 4y ago
  > I'd argue that the brightest minds in computer science understand what makes lisp great perfectly. That is your personal opinion. Personally, I consider the design of Common Lisp to be much superior. > In the lisp tradition, they made a lisp geared towards their use case, specifically. It's called Scheme... If by "their use case" you mean teaching CS, then I would agree. > which sports much more than 'a pseudo-macro system'. Well, Scheme doesn't really have many features. It's meant to be a simple (and by extension limited) language. I mentioned their pseudo-macro system since it's one of the parts where Scheme (badly) disconnects from its Lisp lineage.
  - rscho 4y ago
    Scheme is geared towards two things: research and teaching. It's a lingua franca for demonstrating implementations of new CS concepts in ways that members of the community understand. Being easy to implement from scratch is a must for both uses cases. Being a less imperative language also makes Scheme closer to the math.
    - yyyk2 4y ago
      Is it really? I haven't read many papers where new algorithms or techniques were demonstrated using Scheme. > Being easy to implement from scratch is a must for both uses cases. If you are teaching how to write a compiler or an interpreter, yes. Otherwise I would have to disagree.
      - rscho 4y ago
        Ok, I shouldn't have said 'algorithm'. Let's restrict that to 'untyped programming language theory'.
  - zelphirkalt 4y ago
    > Well, Scheme doesn't really have many features. It's meant to be a simple (and by extension limited) language. I mentioned their pseudo-macro system since it's one of the parts where Scheme (badly) disconnects from its Lisp lineage. A language does not necessarily become limited, when it is simple. If the right simple concepts are available, all kinds of stuff can be build with them, bootstrapping more complex concepts or features. It becomes rather a question of how much is already there, done by others, or how much work oneself want to put in to have some concept in ones language. So I wouldn't necessarily say, that it becomes a limited language.
    - yyyk2 4y ago
      Simple languages tend to be very unportable. This has been a plague on Scheme since the beginning, and which the R6RS / R7RS standards have tried to rectify (it's debatable how successful this effort has been). This is one way in which simple languages are limited. (The fact that there are many different Scheme standards certainly doesn't help). Another part is stripping of useful features to ease implementation. The Scheme language is full of uncomfortable, low-level constructs for the sake of simplicity. In contrast, Common Lisp is far from simple but it contains many high-level constructs which are nonetheless simpler to use.
lispm 4y ago
The best GUI support for Common Lisp one gets from the commercial implementations Allegro CL and LispWorks. Both have cross-platform GUI libraries (ACL for Windows and Gtk, LispWorks for Windows, Gtk, macOS and Motif). Both have their IDE implemented with their respective GUI library. If one would wants to write a substantial GUI application in Common Lisp, that's one of the reasons people pay quite a bit money for those implementations and for commercial support. There have been very substantial GUI applications implemented with both systems.

by yyyk2 4y ago

vindarel 4y ago

yeah… there are good IUP bindings, and embedding a CL web app into Electron (or Neutralino) is easy, once you have your standalone binary (I'll blog about that). https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl#gui https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl#gui

_ph_ 4y ago

There are also TK bindindings https://github.com/herth/ltk https://github.com/herth/ltk

rscho 4y ago

I'd argue that the brightest minds in computer science understand what makes lisp great perfectly. In the lisp tradition, they made a lisp geared towards their use case, specifically. It's called Scheme... which sports much more than 'a pseudo-macro system'.

yyyk2 4y ago
> I'd argue that the brightest minds in computer science understand what makes lisp great perfectly. That is your personal opinion. Personally, I consider the design of Common Lisp to be much superior. > In the lisp tradition, they made a lisp geared towards their use case, specifically. It's called Scheme... If by "their use case" you mean teaching CS, then I would agree. > which sports much more than 'a pseudo-macro system'. Well, Scheme doesn't really have many features. It's meant to be a simple (and by extension limited) language. I mentioned their pseudo-macro system since it's one of the parts where Scheme (badly) disconnects from its Lisp lineage.
- rscho 4y ago
  Scheme is geared towards two things: research and teaching. It's a lingua franca for demonstrating implementations of new CS concepts in ways that members of the community understand. Being easy to implement from scratch is a must for both uses cases. Being a less imperative language also makes Scheme closer to the math.
  - yyyk2 4y ago
    Is it really? I haven't read many papers where new algorithms or techniques were demonstrated using Scheme. > Being easy to implement from scratch is a must for both uses cases. If you are teaching how to write a compiler or an interpreter, yes. Otherwise I would have to disagree.
    - rscho 4y ago
      Ok, I shouldn't have said 'algorithm'. Let's restrict that to 'untyped programming language theory'.
- zelphirkalt 4y ago
  > Well, Scheme doesn't really have many features. It's meant to be a simple (and by extension limited) language. I mentioned their pseudo-macro system since it's one of the parts where Scheme (badly) disconnects from its Lisp lineage. A language does not necessarily become limited, when it is simple. If the right simple concepts are available, all kinds of stuff can be build with them, bootstrapping more complex concepts or features. It becomes rather a question of how much is already there, done by others, or how much work oneself want to put in to have some concept in ones language. So I wouldn't necessarily say, that it becomes a limited language.
  - yyyk2 4y ago
    Simple languages tend to be very unportable. This has been a plague on Scheme since the beginning, and which the R6RS / R7RS standards have tried to rectify (it's debatable how successful this effort has been). This is one way in which simple languages are limited. (The fact that there are many different Scheme standards certainly doesn't help). Another part is stripping of useful features to ease implementation. The Scheme language is full of uncomfortable, low-level constructs for the sake of simplicity. In contrast, Common Lisp is far from simple but it contains many high-level constructs which are nonetheless simpler to use.

lispm 4y ago

The best GUI support for Common Lisp one gets from the commercial implementations Allegro CL and LispWorks. Both have cross-platform GUI libraries (ACL for Windows and Gtk, LispWorks for Windows, Gtk, macOS and Motif). Both have their IDE implemented with their respective GUI library. If one would wants to write a substantial GUI application in Common Lisp, that's one of the reasons people pay quite a bit money for those implementations and for commercial support. There have been very substantial GUI applications implemented with both systems.