Re: Linux interface questions

On Dec 20, 2004, at 10:24 AM, Espen Vestre wrote:

> You may be
> in the situation that you're going to write a cross-platform
> application from scratch, and you're looking for a good tool.
> IMHO, LispWorks is a very decent such tool.

Again, I agree - that's why I'm using LispWorks. But, again, for the 
Mac, the single most important piece from the customer standpoint is 
the look and feel or else they would be on windows, (or they would use 
your windows app by means of VirtualPC which amounts to the same 
thing).

We keep coming around to this, and it seems like there's a bit of 
denial here, or a significant blind spot, among developers (not just 
LispWorks developers). You cannot extrapolate or analogize from Windows 
users (or Linux users) to Mac users. Windows users are on the platform 
because it is the default (it is), or because it has the most available 
software (it does), or because the initial cost is lowest (it is). Mac 
users are on the platform because of the look and feel, and for no 
other reason. They have decided to pay a premium, and run the risk of 
marginalization, just to get the look and feel. They are not going to 
look kindly on software that gets this wrong.

Providing the feature set is enough for Windows and Linux. Providing 
the feature set is not enough for the Mac market. I think it is fair to 
say that most Mac users won't even pay a $15 shareware fee for an app 
that they feel does not have the native Mac look and feel. if you doubt 
this, take a look at the comments on versiontracker in the Mac OS X 
section. The reviews consistently run thus: Not Mac OS X native look 
and feel = not worth paying for. A few reviews like this can 
significantly reduce the market for your app.

This being the case, CAPI will take you only so far on the Mac. You 
must go outside of CAPI in significant ways if you want to create an 
app that Mac users will think of as a real Mac app. And creating the 
native look and feel is really required if you want your offering to be 
taken seriously. This is particularly so of Cocoa apps, where users, 
who may not know much, but do know that Cocoa allows you to get all 
this stuff right essentially for free. There is really no excuse for a 
broken GUI in a Coca app as far as Mac users are concerned.

Thankfully, LispWorks 4.4 has a full public API for accessing the Cocoa 
frameworks, so anything that is not in CAPI, or that CAPI does the 
Windows way, but not the Mac OS X way, can be worked around by using 
the fli and cocoa packages. I think, as John DeSoi suggested, that user 
extensions/additions to CAPI for Mac OS X specific things by means of 
the fli and cocoa packages is the way to go.

regards,

Ralph

Raffael Cavallaro, Ph.D.
raffaelcavallaro@mac.com