Re: macros

Regardless, Lisp appears to have been designed for a simple line-
oriented-terminal model of interaction, much like bare-bones ANSI C,
actually, which requires third-party libraries to even do curses-type
stuff, let alone graphics and mouse support. Unlike C, it seems
difficult for such libraries to exist when Lisp, unlike C, compiles to
bytecode. Certainly third-party Java libraries cannot, unless they use
JNI, directly access hardware and thereby attain capabilities
involving interfacing with the hardware or the host OS that weren't
built into the JVM or the standard libraries. And I have not heard of
any Lisp facility analogous to JNI. So unless the LVM (or whatever you
want to call it) provides a particular form of host-system interface,
it is apparently unavailable to programs.

In my browsings around the net, the free Lisp implementations I've
come across seem to all be line-oriented. While it's possible that
I've missed something, it looks like the facilities required to create
a more capable UI are unavailable outside of expensive commercial
implementations.