It's 1986 and you want to use Interlisp-D on your Xerox workstation. This primer will get you up to speed with booting a Lisp image, handling floppy disks, using the mouse, transferring files to a VAX, and interacting with the environment. Some of the material is obsolete but gives an idea of what it was like to use a Lisp Machine in the 1980s.
#interlisp
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The Common Lisp implementation of Medley Interlisp is closer to CLtL1 than ANSI but does support the condition system. The CONDITIONGRAPH tool shows the hierarchy graph of conditions.
If you use or tried running Medley Interlisp, what things did you discover later on that you wish you knew? We would appreciate your feedback.
We now take it for granted but adding a display to a copying machine was a novel idea in the early 80s. In this 1984 video Austin Henderson told the history of and demoed Trillium, an Interlisp environment for designing and prototyping user interfaces for Xerox copier control panels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXwzh1Q2GeQ
Trillium was actually more versatile as Henderson used the system to run the slideshow in this presentation. See also:
It would seem odd today but the 1986 edition of the Lafite manual had an appendix on email etiquette:
Using Lafite Courteously
https://files.interlisp.org/medley/library/lafite/docs/users-guide/LAFITEMANUAL-APPENDIXA.TEDIT.pdf
The full manual of Lafite, the email system of Medley Interlisp:
https://files.interlisp.org/medley/library/lafite/docs/users-guide
The TEdit WYSIWYG editor of Medley Interlisp has a split window mode that shows different parts of a document. To split at the cursor or unsplit, middle-click on the title bar and select Split Window or Unsplit Window.
A 1988 demonstration of the Cognoter collaborative brainstorming tool in Interlisp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzBj13OSVzM
It was an application of project Colab at Xerox PARC to study how computers could support face-to-face-meetings. The researchers designed a conference room with specialized equipment such as a touch sensitive projection screen and collaboration software in Interlisp running on networked workstations.
About Colab:
In the Medley Interlisp documentation and literature the word "button" was used as a verb for mouse gestures for which we would now say "click". For example:
"Left-buttoning the display window updates it, and middle-buttoning the window brings up a menu that allows you to change the display state."
Don't mind me, I'm just poking around this newfangled OOP thing with LOOPS on Medley Interlisp. LOOPS (Lisp Object-Oriented Programming System) is the object extension of Interlisp.
DIRGRAPHER is a Medley Interlisp tool that shows graphical directory trees and provides file management commands. It's part of the LispUsers collection of user contributed software.
We are happy to share the preprint and slides of the paper "The Medley Interlisp Project: Reviving a Historical Software System" by Eleanor Young et al.:
https://interlisp.org/documentation/young-ccece2025.pdf
https://interlisp.org/documentation/young-ccece2025-slides.pdf
It tells the first 5 years of the Medley Interlisp Project and discusses what other historical software recovery groups can learn from our experience. The paper was presented at IEEE CCEECE 2025 in Vancouver and accepted for publication.
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@jackdaniel @NGIZero h'mmm ... Yesterday, not for the first time, I was looking at reimplementing #InterLisp's GRAPHER library in #Clojure. It's doable, but surprisingly difficult. If there was a good Java SVG engine which allowed callbacks through JavaScript or whatever, it would be easier, and *possibly* Batik may do that.
But #CommonLisp in the browser, interacting with SVG in the browser... Now that sounds fun.
The LOOPS primer, published in 1987, captured well the essence of exploratory programming in Lisp:
The LOOPS interface provides both a programming tool and a thinking tool. As you develop a new system, each preliminary version provides an object for thought and discussion. The preliminary versions are a crucial part of the design process.
LOOPS (Lisp Object-Oriented Programming System) is the OOP extension of Interlisp.
Fugue, Interlisp-360, Lcom, XEOS.
These are some of the terms, names, and organizations in our Glossary. It's a useful resource for getting your way around Medley Interlisp. Any other terms you'd like to see defined?
The Medley Interlisp ProjectGlossaryThe names “Medley,” “Interlisp-D,” “Interlisp.org,” “Common Lisp,” etc. are often used in confusing ways. We’re talking about a lot of different things that evolved over decades. These are cemented in by usage in different publications over time. We hope this glossary of terms will help.
Vocabulary and relationships AltoLisp An (unsuccessful) attempt to build a Lisp-based OS for running Interlisp on an Alto. Carol, Fugue, Harmony, Intermezzo, Koto, Lyric, Medley Named releases of Interlisp-D. All are obsolete except Medley. Common Lisp The subject of a 10-year standards process to converge multiple dialects of the Lisp language. Strong influences from many Lisp dialects, including Interlisp. Common Lisp the Language Book by Guy Steele with two editions: CLtL1 – edition 1, 465 pages CLtL2 – second edition, 1029 pages Common Lisp dpANS The ANSI Standard for Common Lisp. Starting with the Lyric release of Interlisp-D and then the Medley release, the implementation of Medley included implementations of Common Lisp (CLtL 1) as well as the Interlisp dialect in a single development environment; this was made possible by using the (Common Lisp) “package” feature to allow both dialects to be intermixed.
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@screwlisp One of the things which was most exciting to me in the #InterLisp D environment was the ease of producing dynamic, interactive graphs. I don't know any modern software environment which does it so well.
The newsletter Hotline was a support resource Xerox published in the late 1980s for users of Xerox Lisp (Interlisp and Common Lisp). It featured tutorials, usage tips, fixes, and more that are still valuable to Medley users.
bitsavers.orgIndex of /pdf/xerox/interlisp-d/hotline
The Interlisp function COMPARELISTS compares the structures of two lists and prints a terse description of the differences which highlights the items that differ. More details are in the Interlisp Reference Manual.
In the mid 1980s Xerox published Masterscope, a newsletter for Interlisp-D users which featured product updates, project showcases, tips, and more. Browsing through the issues gives an idea of the applications and domains Interlisp-D was used for.
www.bitsavers.orgIndex of /pdf/xerox/interlisp-d/newsletters
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The 6 windows that make up the GUI of DInfo, the documentation browser of Medley Interlisp.
The GUI of a Medley Interlisp program is often made from windows attached together or standalone, like the 6 windows (can you spot them?) of this documentation browser. To get the same setup select DInfo from the right-click background menu, then click Menu and History.