Re: Foreign function interface

Hi Jerry,

you may want to look at

http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-50/

My conclusion from all the discussion was that, for a C-side FFI, we
want to do something JNI-like where C-side references to Lisp objects
are explicitly allocated and de-allocated.  That's easy to implement
on top of what XEmacs has currently, and it achieves maximum
portability.

We may also consider a Lisp-side FFI such as the one the PLT folks are
building now.  They're using libffi, something similar to Bruno
Haible's library, but with less license restrictions.  A paper (by Eli
Barzilay) can be found under

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/techreports/TRNNN.cgi?trnum=TR600

I've done *a lot* of thinking and research on FFIs, so I'll be happy
to help with design issues.  (Even though I'm not much good for XEmacs
*hacking* these days.)

-- 
Cheers =8-} Mike
Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla