[info-mcl] Pathname and Unicode in MCL 5.1

[John DeSoi]

On Oct 4, 2007, at 8:22 AM, Alexander Repenning wrote:

> Warning, crazy idea here: But how to integrate the Lisp core, e.g.,  
> OpenMCL with all this? Using a browser to render a GUI can  
> certainly be done but how to establish a connection to Lisp? How  
> about making entire OpenMCL a browser plugin and use AJAX to deal  
> with the rendering, editing etc. Here is an example of an AJAX- 
> based Java script editor. http://robrohan.com/projects/9ne/

The way I think it needs to be integrated is exactly how Python  
integrates with Komodo. What that really means and involves, I don't  
really know.

I suppose you could make a giant browser plugin, but I think the  
security sandbox restrictions become a big hassle to deal with. I've  
experimented with generating XUL from a Lisp HTTP server. This works  
great, but there are security restrictions which keep things from  
working like a real application.

If you instead integrate Lisp with the XUL runtime then you get full  
system access plus a built in web browser. Note there is a open  
source XUL runtime (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XULRunner) but I  
thought using open source Komodo would be a much better start because  
it already has an editor (http://www.scintilla.org/) and IDE built  
in. You could imagine an application delivery tool shaking down the  
Lisp image and wrapping it up in a XUL Runner application. Instant  
cross platform Lisp applications!

The other cool thing is that you could build pluggable interfaces and  
utilities using the same Mozilla/Firefox extension mechanism. This is  
how you customize Komodo. That would be a neat Lisp IDE if it could  
be easily extended by many people by developing something like a  
browser plugin.

There is a free version of Komodo if you want to look further. If you  
open the application package, you'll find much of it is built with  
XUL and plugins (e.g. see Contents/MacOS/extensions.

http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_edit/




John DeSoi, Ph.D.
http://pgedit.com/
Power Tools for PostgreSQL