"Peter Scott" sketerpot@gmail.com writes:

On 2/21/07, Perry E. Metzger perry@piermont.com wrote:

...

Pardon the utterly naive newbie question, but I'm brand new to McClim, have never used ASDF (and barely understand what it is), etc.

Welcome!

Thanks for the assistance.

A few notes:

1) The section of INSTALL that describes demos is very strangely formatted - way more than 80 column lines, and if you more the file out in an xterm everything you need to type in is more than one line so you can't cut and paste the stuff in. That's the only part of the file that is messed up in this manner. 2) It would be cool if you could pop up a "master demo window". When tcl/tk was still new and exciting, there was a single app you could launch that would let you walk through a large set of interesting demos. 2) I popped up a Clouseau window, and (being ignorant) tried to do a few things like, say, expanding the bottom pane with the usual modern method of clicking and dragging on the frame between the panes. No dice -- such a thing doesn't work. In the address book demo, you can't tab between entry fields. I recognize that the UI is very much in the image of the lisp machine, but in the intervening 25 years since Genera was state of the art the "common expectations" of the naive user community have changed -- at the very least, it might be useful if there was a short document explaining to a user what the expectations of the UI they're using are (though perhaps ultimately it might be valuable to make the UI feel a bit more like what people are now used to.)

Second, you would be well advised to install emacs and SLIME if you don't have them already. Both are available in the Ubuntu package repository, so you can install them the same way you installed SBCL.

I'm an old Emacs user so that was the first thing I install on any box I set up. However, I've yet to play much with SLIME -- is there an intro to SLIME somewhere?

Next, you'll need to download McCLIM and set it up. The easist way for you to do this would probably be to open SBCL and enter the following lines of Lisp code:

(require :asdf-install) (asdf-install:install :mcclim)

That's rather neat. It downloads and installs mcclim pretty much on its own. Is there an asdf web page that explains how the whole thing works and what it can do?

Quoting Perry E. Metzger (perry@piermont.com):

2. I popped up a Clouseau window, and (being ignorant) tried to do a few things like, say, expanding the bottom pane with the usual modern method of clicking and dragging on the frame between the panes. No dice -- such a thing doesn't work. In the address book demo, you can't tab between entry fields.

It is probably a good idea to focus on specific applications and demos to make sure that they work well. (And separate them from those without practical use or visual appeal.)

Clouseau seems like one application worth that attention. Perhaps you would like to submit a patch adding a BOX-ADJUSTER between application pane and interactor?

In contrast, the address book is a classic demo that typifies "traditional" CLIM applications, but nobody actually uses it to manage their contacts, so it receives no attention at all.

I recognize that the UI is very much in the image of the lisp machine, but in the intervening 25 years since Genera was state of the art the "common expectations" of the naive user community have changed -- at the very least, it might be useful if there was a short document explaining to a user what the expectations of the UI they're using are (though perhaps ultimately it might be valuable to make the UI feel a bit more like what people are now used to.)

It is probably easier to take those parts of CLIM that work like a normal toolkit and make them perfect than to take exotic CLIMy features and turn them into something every user will be familiar with immediately.

Take the address book as an example. Even with the Gtkairo backend, menus and scroll bars are implemented as native widgets, but overall, the application still does not look like other GUI applications today.

So if you wanted to write an address book example that looks and feels more modern, I would suggest building it out of gadgets. Get rid of the interactor. Use list panes and buttons, perhaps even add a button bar.

(Alternatively, you could take the ESA approach and build something with a look and feel familiar to Emacs users.)

Of course, it is also great to see improvements in the area of the more traditional features. Drei seems like one such step forward. Perhaps accepting-values as used for the input fields you mentioned could also use a face lift.

d.