A common mistake (IMHO) of people new to CLIM is them trying to force everything into a presentation. Presentations are very powerful abstractions but they are NOT the be all, end all of UI paradigms. CLIM has a full set of graphics routines that can be used to display information in addition to the presentation mechanism.
A common CLIM "pattern" is based upon the Controller-Model-View GUI paradigm. (I can't believe I've used "paradigm" twice in one Email! Probably spelled it wrong too!) In CLIM, you can use an application pane as the viewer, using all of CLIM's graphics routines. An interactor pane is often used as the controller, using an application specific command table to provide more complicated interactions than simple GUI elements can provide. A hbox pane is often used as a button box/menu bar for those simple interactions ('Start', 'Stop", 'Emergency Core Shutdown') that don't require additional arguments.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that CLIM has enough power and flexibility to handle most kinds of GUI models. Don't get stuck on just presentations.
Mike McDonald mikemac@mikemac.com