Re: [Axiom-developer] (Possible) reasons Axiom didn't appeal to SoC coders...

[C Y]

Bill Page wrote:

> No. I meant X-windows *client* support, i.e. the X libraries and associated
> machinery. Both hyperdoc and graphics require this X-windows client
> support.

Ah.

> The X server component is no problem. A good free X server is provided
> by Xming on Windows:
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming

Neat!  Clearly I'm behind on the state of the art in free Windows X servers.

> I would not recommend running the X server component under cygwin.
> I've tried it and I think it sucks. If you really want this, then I
> think you really want Linux.

Agreed - that was the context I was originally considering for X
Hyperdoc on Windows.  Xming changes things.

>>  The correct approach here is to work with some cross platform
>> toolkit and avoid the need for an X server, but that will take time
> 
> I am not convinced that this is the correct approach. It works for
> some, e.g. GIMP, but it still looks ugly to me. I am much more
> in favor of the web-browser-as-gui solution for cross platform
> support. But both of these are too much work for the resources
> we have available right now.

GIMP uses GTK, which I agree is not very good for a native Windows look
and feel.  TK with the Tile extensions is somewhat better, and there are
other alternatives as well (QT is excellent, but does not have robust
lisp bindings).  The Right Way to do native behavior would be a robust
McCLIM with native backends for each platform, but that is likely many
man-years of work away :-(.

In theory, a proper communications API would allow browsers, GUIs, and
anything else to communicate with the same core with minimal trouble -
IIRC Kai and I agreed that was a logical point to focus initial efforts,
the last time the issue came up.

>> :-(.  Socket support on Windows should be possible - IIRC
>> Maxima makes use of this.
> 
> Certainly GCL supports sockets on Windows. No problem. But
> Axiom rolls it's own socket support, so linking it into GCL on
> Windows is a little technically challenging (but not too difficult,
> I think). But probably it would be better to modify AXIOM to use
> the socket support built in to Lisp (GCL).

Agreed.  Maybe an overlay to hide implementation specific socket APIs
would be good, but I'm not familiar with the options except knowing
about the existence of usocket:  http://common-lisp.net/project/usocket/
 Apparently GCL is not on the usocket list yet.

Cheers,
CY