Bakin@HI-MULTICS.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (06/13/84)
From: Jerry Bakin <Bakin@HI-MULTICS.ARPA> The other day, I saw a demo of the dolphin. The demonstrator said that the operating system was multitasking, and that it frequently started up processes. He also mentioned that the mouse was handled by a background process. During the demo, in the top level window (is this the correct term?), I tried to find the 27th number in the fibonacci sequence. This was taking several minutes, (interpreted code) so I moved the mouse to an empty portion of the screen, and asked how I would I create another top level window. To my surprise, I was told I couldn't. There is only one "top level" window at a time. Is this true? Essentially, I wanted to create another process to talk to. Had I just asked the wrong thing? I would have thought I could type: (ADD.PROCESS (read-eval-loop) NAME WINDOW2) Of course, I would have to find out the name of Interlisp's read-eval-loop.... Then, a window would be created for this when it requested I/O, and I'd be in business. Is this not so? Why not? Thanks, Jerry Bakin.
STEINBERG@RUTGERS.ARPA (07/01/84)
From: Louis Steinberg <STEINBERG@RUTGERS.ARPA> You suggest getting another "top level" (i.e. Lisp read-eval-print) window by typing an (ADD.PROCESS ...) command. The problem is, where are you going to type it? That's LISP, and would have to be typed to some read-eval process, but your only read-eval-print process is already busy (that's the whole problem in the first place)! There are two solutions: 1) get the ongoing process in the original top level window to go into a "break", which you can do with the ctl-H or ctl-B key, execute the ADD.PROCESS, and then exit the break. 2) customize your Lisp so that the "background menu" that you get when you click on the background (i.e. not in any window) contains a command to create a new "top level" process and window. Such code has been written by Jeff Shulman here at Rutgers. -------