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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 25/09/2026

On Medley Interlisp the Snap item of the background or window title right-click menu lets you capture a screenshot of a portion of the screen you are prompted to swipe out. Here is the background menu with a captured copy of the Medley logo window. #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 10/09/2026

Margot created this art with the Interlisp bitmap editor (left window) and experimented with layering it over itself using the BITBLT graphics operation (right window). github.com/orgs/Interli... #PixelArt #interlisp

Screenshot of the black and white desktop of a 1980s graphical workstation environment. The desktop has a background pattern consisting of a cat head pattern and some windows with a white background and a title bar with white text on a black background. One of the two main windows shows a handmade bitmap drawing of the upper part of a person with the hands on their face. The other window shows the result of layering that bitmap drawing over itself.

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 04/09/2026

The Interlisp function APROPOS prints the symbols which have the first argument as a substring, along with details relevant to each matching symbol such as the arguments of functions. This is the output of the call (APROPOS "HOSTNAME"). interlisp.org/documentatio... #interlisp #lisp

Screenshot of a portion of the black and white desktop of a 1980s graphical workstation environment. The desktop has a gray background pattern and one window with a white background and a title bar with white text on a black background. The window shows a a list of symbols that match a string and some details on them.

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 29/08/2026

The Interlisp environment can trace data packets over a local network. As in this example of the traffic for accessing a file server connected to a Xerox XNS network, emulated via Dodo Services running on Linux. #xns #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 14/08/2026

Margot created this art with the bitmap editing features of Medley Interlisp. github.com/orgs/Interli... #PixelArt #interlisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 05/08/2026

We had a meeting at the Computer History Museum and took the opportunity for a photo next to a Xerox Alto. From left to right: Nick Briggs, Ron Kaplan, Herb Jellinek, Frank Halasz, and Larry Masinter. computerhistory.org #interlisp #xerox #parc #chm

A photo of five senior men dressed casually standing in front of a computer museum exhibit of an early graphical workstation, three at the left and two at the right of the machine.

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 02/08/2026

Ryan Burnside updated his game Hungarian Rings to lower the difficulty, redo the instructions, group the program windows, and add a visual signal when solved. github.com/RyanBurnside... #game #interlisp #lisp

Screenshot of the black and white desktop of a 1980s graphical workstation environment. The desktop has a gray background pattern and some windows with a white background and a title bar with white text on a black background. The main windows, attached at a vertical side, show a puzzle game. Each window graphically displays three overlapping rings of balls of different shade patterns.

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 27/07/2026

These are the screens of two Medley Interlisp instances connected to a Xerox XNS local network emulated via Dodo Services, all running on Linux. 1/2 #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 24/07/2026

The echo server of Medley Interlisp mirrors the packets received over a network. This is the output of the client, function NS.ECHOUSER, where ! represents a sent packet and + a received packet. 1/2 #interlisp #xns #lisp

Screenshot of a portion of the black and white desktop of a 1980s graphical workstation environment. The desktop has a grey background pattern and one window with a white background and a title bar with white text on a black background. The window shows a sequence of characters "!+" repeated dozens of times, along with information on a machine connected to the local network.

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 21/07/2026

On Medley Interlisp you can access all the source code, including that of core system features. For example, to open in the editor the CREATEW function for creating a window evaluate (ED 'CREATEW). And, of course, you can change and run the code. #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 14/07/2026

TEdit, the WYSIWYG editor of Medley Interlisp, also supports mathematical equations and symbols. #interlisp #lisp #retrocomputing

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 07/07/2026

These are the screens of two Medley Interlisp instances connected to a Xerox XNS local network emulated via Dodo Services, all running on Linux. A frame delimits a clock application on the first instance. 1/2 #xns #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 28/06/2026

The Interlisp environment has no file picker dialog. Applications provide a text entry field to type a file name with optional path, as the TEdit WYSIWYG editor here which prompts for a file to open (GET). #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 17/06/2026

Ryan Burnside ran the SPY statistical profiler of Medley Interlisp to analyze a non-trivial program and this is the output. #profiler #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 07/06/2026

On Medley Interlisp, if you highlight a menu item without releasing the mouse button an explanation of what the item does, if available, will be printed in the Prompt Window (the black one). This is conceptually similar to tooltips on modern systems. interlisp.org/documentatio... #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 01/06/2026

Ryan Burnside is experimenting with Interlisp code that draws plots of random noise functions. groups.google.com/g/lispcore/c... #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 29/05/2026

The Prompt Window of Medley Interlisp is a window in which the system and applications display status messages or prompt for input. It's conceptually similar to the notification area of modern systems. #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 20/05/2026

When an Exec (REPL) window of Medley Interlisp fills with text it pauses output and turns into reverse video waiting for you to press any key to proceed, similarly to pressing SPACE with the Unix program more(1). This behavior can be turned off or customized on a per window basis. #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 17/05/2026

This document open in two windows of TEdit, the WYSIWYG editor of Medley Interlisp, shows a gallery of bitmaps available for Lisp applications and tools. #bitmap #interlisp #lisp #retrocomputing

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 11/05/2026

The ? command of the Interlisp Exec (REPL) prints a list of available commands with brief explanations of what they do. Most are Interlisp-D commands, some modern Medley additions. #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 02/05/2026

Ryan Burnside published the code of his turtle graphics library in Interlisp, which he used to make the generative art of this screenshot. github.com/RyanBurnside... #TurtleGraphics #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 26/04/2026

The PL command of the Medley Interlisp Exec (REPL) prints the property list of a symbol as a series of property name and value entries, one per line. This is the property list of CAR. #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 17/04/2026

This screenshot demonstrates a turtle graphics library that Ryan Burnside wrote for Medley Common Lisp. groups.google.com/g/lispcore/c... #TurtleGraphics #CommonLisp #interlisp #lisp

Screenshot of the black and white desktop of a 1980s graphical workstation environment. The desktop has a grey background pattern and some windows with a white background and a title bar with white text on a black background. The main windows show some geometric shapes drawn by a turtle graphics program, the Common Lisp code of the program, and the REPL with the expressions to run the program.

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 01/03/2026

To consult the Medley Interlisp documentation execute MAN <query> at the Lisp prompt where <query> is the name of a Lisp function, form, topic, or library module. Try: MAN APPEND MAN WINDOWS MAN FILEBROWSER MAN PACMAN #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 23/02/2026

The highest class of the LOOPS hierarchy is called Tofu, an acronym for "Top of the universe". The Lisp Object-Oriented Programming System (LOOPS) is the object extension of Interlisp. #oop #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 14/02/2026

Visiting interlisp.org with the Lynx web browser on Medley Interlisp. The main window is a VT100 terminal emulator running Lynx on the host operating system, Linux in this case. The smaller window next to the terminal is a VT100 keypad. #interlisp #LynxBrowser #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 03/02/2026

The SEdit structure editor of Medley Interlisp lets you also modify arbitrary list structures and data, not just Lisp code. In this example the ED function calls SEdit and returns the modified object. #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 11/01/2026

In Interlisp PUSH and POP manipulate stacks represented as lists and work like the corresponding Common Lisp macros, but PUSH swaps the order of the arguments. interlisp.org/documentatio... #interlisp #CommonLisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 22/12/2025

An example of one way of defining, expanding, and calling an Interlisp macro similar to WHEN of Common Lisp. Macro definitions are represented by lists stored on the property list of a symbol. Here ARGS is bound to the CDR of the calling form. #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 16/12/2025

Evaluate (INSPECTCODE 'FN), where FN is an Interlisp function name, to disassemble the compiled function and see the opcodes of Maiko, the Medley Interlisp virtual machine. This example also shows the corresponding source of the function.

Screenshot of the black and white desktop of a 1980s graphical workstation environment. The desktop has a gray background pattern and several windows with a white background and a title bar with white text on a black background. One of the two main windows shows the disassembly of the compiled Interlisp function APPEND with the opcodes of the Medley Interlisp virtual machine. The other window is an editor that shows the Interlisp code of the APPEND function.

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 26/11/2025

In the 1980s Interlisp-D came with a read-only remote desktop client for monitoring networked Lisp workstations, like in the screenshot. Medley Interlisp still includes the code which doesn't currently work. files.interlisp.org/medley/lispu... #interlisp #RemoteDesktop #retrocomputing

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 20/11/2025

Interlisp source files embed control codes to style the code viewed in the Medley environment, which displays the proper fonts and text attributes. To view the formatted code on modern systems run the "lsee" shell script from a terminal. github.com/Interlisp/me... #interlisp #lisp #linux

Screenshot of a Linux terminal window that displays a portion of an Interlisp source file. The code is formatted with syntax highlighting and text colored in white, red, green, and yellow.

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 28/10/2025

To scroll a window on Medley Interlisp hover the mouse pointer slightly beyond the left or bottom edge to bring up a scroll bar, then left-click or right-click. Middle-clicking positions the thumb within the bar. #interlisp #gui #retrocomputing

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 19/10/2025

Some 1980s Xerox Lisp Machines came with an IBM PC/XT card that allowed running MS-DOS from the Interlisp-D environment, like the spreadsheet program window here. Image from a flyer of the Xerox 1186 AI workstation. groups.google.com/g/lispcore/c... #interlisp #msdos #LispMachine #retrocomputing

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 16/10/2025

To interactively edit a graph on Medley evaluate at an Interlisp REPL: (SHOWGRAPH NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL T) Right-click inside the window for a command menu, click STOP to exit. Right-click on the title bar and click Shape to resize the window. Try here: online.interlisp.org/guest #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 04/10/2025

In NoteCards a "tabletop card" is an arrangement of cards (hypertext nodes) on the screen, such as the 3 cards at the center. 1/2 #NoteCards #interlisp #hypertext #retrocomputing

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 26/09/2025

A NoteCards "browser" is a type of card that shows a hypertext network as a graph structure, i.e. a graph view like in this example. The thumbnail at the top left corner lets you pan and scroll the graph. #NoteCards #Interlisp #hypertext #retrocomputing

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 18/09/2025

CLISP (Conversational LISP) is the Algol-like infix notation of Interlisp. The 1978 Interlisp Reference Manual (page 554) explains the design goals of the notation and how it integrates with the prefix syntax of Lisp. www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LIS... #interlisp #lisp #retrocomputing

A screenshot of a portion of the reference manual of the Interlisp programming language. The portion contains the following paragraph of text (emphasis is in the original):

There have been similar efforts in other LISP systems, most notably the MLISP language at Stanford. CLISP differs from these in that it does not attempt to _replace_ the LISP syntax so much as to _augment_ it. In fact, one of the principal criteria in the design of CLISP was that users be able to freely intermix LISP and CLISP without having to identify which is which. Users can write programs, or type in expressions for evaluation, in LISP, CLISP, or a mixture of both. In this way, users do not have to learn a whole new language and syntax in order to be able to use selected facilities of CLISP when and where they find them useful.

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 27/08/2025

What is the origin of "inter" in Interlisp? From Introduction on page 1.1 (page 19 of the PDF) of the 1978 edition of the Interlisp Reference Manual: "Interlisp has been designed to be a good on-line _inter_active system (from which it derives its name)." #interlisp #lisp #retrocomputing

A screenshot of a portion of the reference manual of the Interlisp programming language. The portion contains the following paragraph of text:

Interlisp has been designed to be a good on-line interactive system (from which it derives its name). Some of the features provided include elaborate debugging facilities with tracing and conditional breakpoints (Section 15), and a sophisticated LISP oriented editor within the system (Section 9). Utilization of a uniform error processing through user accessible routines (Section 16) has allowed the implementation of DWIM, a 00-What-!-Mean. facility, which automatically corrects many types of errors without losing the context of computation (Section 17). The CLISP facility (Section 23) extends the LISP syntax by enabling ALGOL-like infix operators such as +. -, *, /, =, _, AND, OR, etc., as well as IF-THEN-ELSE statements and FOR-WHILE-DO statements. CLISP expressions are automatically converted to equivalent lnterlisp forms when they are first encountered. CLISP also includes a sophisticated pattern match compiler, as well as a record package that facilitiates "data-less" programming.

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 21/08/2025

To edit a font on Medley Interlisp load and run the EDITFONT font editor like in the screenshot: (FILESLOAD EDITFONT) (EDITFONT '(TIMESROMAND 36 BOLD)) Left-click on a character to edit its bitmap, middle-click to bring up a menu. #interlisp #lisp #fonts

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 22/07/2025

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. #interlisp #CommonLisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 10/07/2025

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. #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 01/07/2025

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. #interlisp #lisp #retrocomputing

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 17/06/2025

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. interlisp.org/documentatio... #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 11/06/2025

☝️ The 6 windows that make up the GUI of DInfo, the documentation browser of Medley Interlisp. #interlisp #lisp #gui

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 07/06/2025

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. #interlisp #lisp #gui

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 04/06/2025

In the 1981 paper "The Interlisp Programming Environment" Warren Teitelman and Larry Masinter explained the origins of the complexity of Interlisp tools and why the environment was designed for experts. citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?rep... #interlisp #lisp #retrocomputing

A screenshot of a portion of a computer science research paper that contains the following text:

Interlisp is for experts. The incremental, evolutionary way in which Interlisp developed was not especially conducive to simple interfaces. It was inappropriate to spend a lot of time and effort trying to design the right interface to a new, experimental capability whose utility had not yet been proven. Would the users like automatic error correction? Was the programmer's assistant really a good idea? The inherent complexity of the interactions among some of the more sophisticated tools, such as Masterscope, DWIM, and the programmer's assistant, made it very difficult to provide simple interfaces. In many cases, unification and simplification came only after considerable experience.

Further complexity stemmed from the commitment to accommodate a wide variety of programming styles and to enable the tools to be tailored for many applications. Given the choice of sophistication and generality of tools or simplicity of design, we chose the former, under the assumption that the system was primarily for expert programmers. As a result, mastery of all of the tools and facilities of Interlisp has become quite difficult and initial learning time fairly long. We accept this as part of the price for the system's power and productivity.

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 30/05/2025

The Interlisp library function RNUMBER displays a calculator-type dialog for entering a number with the mouse. This example accepts a floating point number (first T) and also keyboard input (second T). More details in the documentation: files.interlisp.org/medley/libra... #interlisp #lisp #gui

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 21/05/2025

You can use the Interlisp function SHOWGRAPH to display a graph of an S-exp laid out by LAYOUTSEXPR, as in this example of the syntax tree of a setence. More details in the documentation of the grapher library module of Medley: www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/in... #interlisp #lisp

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The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · 13/05/2025

To display a simple yes/no dialog call the Interlisp function MENU to create a menu with the question as the title and two centered items for the answers, as in the example. MENU returns the selected item, i.e. symbol Yes here. #interlisp #lisp

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