Lmst

<">
In many cases, unification and simplification came only after considerable experience.
</">

Amen, brothers and sisters.

#Interlisp
#Lisp
#WorldSimplicityDay next month

DandeGUI, my GUI library for Medley Interlisp, can now send graphics output to windows.

https://journal.paoloamoroso.com/adding-graphics-support-to-dandegui

In the 1981 paper "The Interlisp Programming Environment" Warren Teitelman and @masinter explained the origins of the complexity of Interlisp tools and why the environment was designed for experts.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=b8f849085d608a657eea30f771b5a6de204a7f3f

#interlisp #lisp #retrocomputing

A screenshot of a portion of a computer science research paper that contains the following text:

Interlisp is for experts. The incremental, evolutionary way in which Interlisp developed was not especially conducive to simple interfaces. It was inappropriate to spend a lot of time and effort trying to design the right interface to a new, experimental capability whose utility had not yet been proven. Would the users like automatic error correction? Was the programmer's assistant really a good idea? The inherent complexity of the interactions among some of the more sophisticated tools, such as Masterscope, DWIM, and the programmer's assistant, made it very difficult to provide simple interfaces. In many cases, unification and simplification came only after considerable experience.

Further complexity stemmed from the commitment to accommodate a wide variety of programming styles and to enable the tools to be tailored for many applications. Given the choice of sophistication and generality of tools or simplicity of design, we chose the former, under the assumption that the system was primarily for expert programmers. As a result, mastery of all of the tools and facilities of Interlisp has become quite difficult and initial learning time fairly long. We accept this as part of the price for the system's power and productivity.

In the 1980s Xerox PARC taught courses on LOOPS (Lisp Object-Oriented Programming System), the object extension of Interlisp. The participants learned to develop knowledge systems in a simulation game called Truckin which is still available on Medley.

https://ojs.aaai.org/aimagazine/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/400

#retrocomputing #interlisp #oop

From Overview and Status of DoradoLisp under "Linguistic uniformity" on page 2:

An important sociological benefit of having a programming system described in the language it implements is that the system's implementors and users share the same culture.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/800087.802812

#interlisp #lisp #SoftwareDesign

The Interlisp library function RNUMBER displays a calculator-type dialog for entering a number with the mouse. This example accepts a floating point number (first T) and also keyboard input (second T).

More details in the documentation:

https://files.interlisp.org/medley/library/READNUMBER.TEDIT.pdf

#interlisp #lisp #gui

Screenshot of a portion of the black and white desktop of a 1980s graphical workstation environment. The desktop has a gray background pattern and a window with a white background and a title bar with white text on a black background. The window is a Lisp REPL where the following expression is evaluated:

(RNUMBER "Enter a number" NIL NIL NIL NIL T NIL T)

Above the REPL window is a calculator-type dialog window with the number 1234.56 displayed.

Interlisp source files embed binary control codes for text formatting such as ^F^B for bold. GitHub renders the codes as boxes in browsers other than Firefox, which strips the codes. Here's a sample file:

https://github.com/pamoroso/braincons/blob/main/BRAINCONS

Codeberg thinks the sources are binary files and doesn't render them. The same file on Codeberg:

https://codeberg.org/amoroso/braincons/src/branch/main/BRAINCONS

I'd love to migrate my Interlisp code to @Codeberg but this is a showstopper.

#interlisp #codeberg #GitHub

On May 28, 2025 Eleanor Young will give the talk "The Medley Interlisp Project: Reviving a Historical Software System" at the 2025 IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering and Industry Summit (CCECE). She will discuss what other historical software recovery groups can learn from the Medley Interlisp Project.

https://ccece2025.ieee.ca/technical-program

https://ccece2025.ieee.ca

#retrocomputing #interlisp #lisp #SoftwarePreservation

We maintain a collection of references and quotes of what people are saying about Medley Interlisp. News stories, blog posts, online discussions, and social posts offering nice words and impressions of the system. Thanks to all!

https://interlisp.org/project/comments

#interlisp #lisp

You can use the Interlisp function SHOWGRAPH to display a graph of an S-exp laid out by LAYOUTSEXPR, as in this example of the syntax tree of a setence. More details in the documentation of the grapher library module of Medley:

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/interlisp-d/198809_Medley_1.0/300006_Lisp_Library_Modules_Sep88.pdf#page=147

#interlisp #lisp

A 1990 MSc dissertation on the theory and design of dialog boxes in GUIs. An overview of the field at the time, with examples also drawn from Interlisp-D such as the Trillium UI designer for Xerox copiers.

https://repository.rit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1105&context=theses

#gui #retrocomputing #interlisp

Published in 1987, "Xerox LOOPS, A Friendly Primer" is a concise tutorial to the LOOPS (Lisp Object-Oriented Programming System) object extension of Interlisp. Some chapters of this copy are in the wrong order but all the content is there.

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/interlisp-d/198510_Koto/3102242_Xerox_LOOPS_A_Friendly_Primer_Mar87.pdf

#interlisp #lisp #oop

Are you doing something interesting with Medley Interlisp such as coding, running programs, or learning the system? We'd love to hear what you're doing.

#interlisp #lisp

To display a simple yes/no dialog call the Interlisp function MENU to create a menu with the question as the title and two centered items for the answers, as in the example. MENU returns the selected item, i.e. symbol Yes here.

#interlisp #lisp

DandeGUI now supports rich text for window output. DandeGUI is the GUI library for Medley Interlisp I'm writing in Common Lisp.

https://journal.paoloamoroso.com/changing-text-style-for-dandegui-window-output

#CommonLisp #interlisp #lisp

Developed in the late 1980s in Interlisp-D and its OOP extension LOOPS, the CHIPS system for creating graphical user interfaces consisted of a rich class library and interactive tools. This report describes CHIPS in depth:

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED290438

#interlisp #gui #lisp #retrocomputing

LispUsers is a collection of user contributed software that has been shipping with Interlisp and later Medley since the 1970s. To load a LispUsers program evaluate (IL:FILESLOAD file) where `file` is the program name without extension. Most come with .pdf or .TEDIT documentation that explains how to run the program.

https://files.interlisp.org/medley/lispusers

#interlisp #lisp

Now I have another #Interlisp question:

I have:

(DEFINEQ (PLOT-FN (FN SX SY C W)
(MOVETO 0 (CADR C))
(DRAWTO 200 (CADR C))
(MOVETO (CAR C) 0)
(DRAWTO (CAR C) 200)
(LET* ((L1 (MAPCAR (IOTA 50)
(FUNCTION
(LAMBDA (N)
(TIMES 200 (QUOTIENT (SUB1 N) 50)))))

;; to be continued (1/n)

@interlisp @amoroso
@kentpitman

Why do the ATAN and ARCTAN functions in #Medley #Interlisp return the result angle in degrees rather than radian?

I know the answer is (the fixnum 42), but why?

Questions over questions?

To print the contents of a window on Medley Interlisp select the Hardcopy > To a file item of the right-click menu of the title bar (first screenshot), then type a file name (second screenshot). This saves a PostScript file suitable for viewing or printing.

#interlisp #lisp

#InterLisp

Client Info