CWEST: SRI CLIM to WWW Converter

Peter Karp and Suzanne Paley

This page describes a recently developed software tool for retrofiting graphical user interfaces developed for CLIM (the Common Lisp Interface Manager), to run dynamically through the World Wide Web.

Key Ideas

Real-time generation of Web pages that integrate HTML, and GIF regions with active regions
Retrofitting of existing CLIM user interfaces to send their graphics via the Web
CLIM provides a high-level tool for generating interactive graphics applications for the Web

See the paper Adapting CLIM Applications for Use on the World Wide Web for more details.

System Architecture

Operation

A LISP/CLIM server receives URLs from the Internet
The URL is interpreted as a command, and causes real-time generation of CLIM graphics
Those graphics are converted in real-time to a combination of HTML and GIF that are transmitted back to the user's WWW client
A key CLIM data structure called an output record history describes all text, graphics, and active regions generated by the application; that data structure is the input to the converter

Example

We used CWEST to retrofit the EcoCyc user interface (EcoCyc is a knowledge base of biochemistry and genes). Only minimal modifications to EcoCyc were required.

Obtaining and Installing CWEST

CWEST requires Allegro Common Lisp 4.2 or higher and Allegro CLIM 2.0 from Franz Inc, including the latest patches as of 9/1/95. It is known to run on a Sparcstation, running SunOS 4.x, but would presumably be trivially portable to other architectures that run ACL and CLIM.

CWEST is available under the BSD open source license. To download the CWEST software, click here. The file README provides installation instructions.

We welcome the efforts of anyone who wishes to add to or improve CWEST. For example, adapting it to run with CL-HTTP or AllegroServe instead of just its own lightweight server, or porting it to run with other Lisps/CLIMs would immediately expand its applicability.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Colin Meldrum of Franz Inc for his help in speeding up the generation of GIF images in CWEST.