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Re: X windows
Standardization on a window system seems premature. Use of
X (or any other system) is a local phenomenon; in different locales
many competing window systems are in use. If we were to support
window system primitives, it seems to make more sense to support
a metastandard like NeWS, which will incorporate X, Postscript, possibly
Andrew, and other windowing and graphical display approaches -- although
this too seems premature at the present.
If we are going to support graphics and other "foreign" capabilities,
I believe our time would be more fruitfully spent in defining a
general mechanism for embedding foreign (non-Scheme) functions
into the Scheme environment. This is far from a cleanly solved
problem in current LISPs, and a good solution would subsume, and
hence obviate the need for, definition of a case-by-case approach
to embedding specific window, graphics, numerical, and other foreign
packages into Scheme.
asc