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The Medley Interlisp Project
@interlisp.org
51 followers 4 following 160 posts
Official account of the open source project to preserve, revive, and modernize Medley Interlisp. This extensible graphical operating and programming environment has roots in Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

https://interlisp.org
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interlisp.org
The Medley Interlisp Project @interlisp.org · Dec 12
Hello from the Medley Interlisp Project! We revive and modernize the Medley Interlisp extensible graphical operating and programming environment created at Xerox PARC.

interlisp.org

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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. The windows display text, bitmaps, graphs, icons, sketches, and other graphical documents and elements.
interlisp.org
Ryan Burnside entered the Autumn Lisp Game Jam 2025 with Interlisp Hungarian Rings, a puzzle he wrote in Interlisp. The project page provides instructions for downloading and playing the game:

itch.io/jam/autumn-l...

#LispGameJam #interlisp #lisp #game
Rate Interlisp Hungarian Rings by Pixel_Outlaw for Autumn Lisp Game Jam 2025
My second game using the Medley Interlisp environment
itch.io
November 11, 2025 at 11:06 AM
interlisp.org
On World Digital Preservation Day 2025 Eleanor Young gave the virtual talk "The Medley Interlisp Project: Reviving a Historical Software System". The video recording and transcript are available here:

psu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/The+Me...

#WDPD2025 #interlisp #lisp #retrocomputing
The Medley Interlisp Project: Reviving a Historical Software System - Penn State MediaSpace
psu.mediaspace.kaltura.com
November 8, 2025 at 10:13 AM
interlisp.org
On World Digital Preservation Day, Nov 6, 2025, Eleanor Young will give the virtual talk The Medley Interlisp Project: Reviving a Historical Software System. Details:

www.dpconline.org/events/world...

About WDPD:

www.dpconline.org/events/world...

#WDPD2025 #interlisp #lisp #retrocomputing
World Digital Preservation Day Events 2025 - Digital Preservation Coalition
www.dpconline.org
November 5, 2025 at 10:26 AM
interlisp.org
These books document different aspects of the Medley Interlisp environment: the API and using the interactive tools.

Medley Interlisp: Interactive Programming Environment
interlisp.org/documentatio...

Medley Interlisp: Interactive Programming Tools
interlisp.org/documentatio...

#interlisp #lisp
interlisp.org
November 3, 2025 at 11:05 AM
interlisp.org
Codeberg deployed Forgejo v13.0.0 which now detects Interlisp sources and handles them as text rather than binary files. We thank Forgejo and Codeberg for widening the choice of code forges for hosting Interlisp software.

codeberg.org/forgejo/forg...

#interlisp #lisp #forgejo #codeberg #foss
forgejo
Beyond coding. We forge.
codeberg.org
October 31, 2025 at 10:20 AM
interlisp.org
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
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 is a file browser with a main pane listing some files, status and input panes, and a command menu. The file list has a vertical scroll bar at the left edge. 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 is a file browser with a main pane listing some files, status and input panes, and a command menu. The file list has a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom edge.
October 28, 2025 at 11:20 AM
interlisp.org
Published in 1986, "INTERLISP: The Language and Its Usage" by Stephen Kaisler was the only book on Interlisp by a publisher. It extensively covers the Interlisp language and environment with many code snippets and examples.

interlisp.org/documentatio...

#interlisp #lisp #retrocomputing #books
interlisp.org
October 25, 2025 at 10:50 AM
interlisp.org
We added "NoteCards User’s Guide" V2.0 to the NoteCards sources. This 1991 manual better matches the NoteCards code that comes with Medley Interlisp but some of the information is only of historical value.

files.interlisp.org/medley/notec...

#interlisp #NoteCards #hypertext #retrocomputing
Index page for {MEDLEY}/notecards/docs/user-guide-v2.0/
files.interlisp.org
October 22, 2025 at 10:21 AM
interlisp.org
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
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. The windows display Lisp source code, icons, scientific and business charts, a spreadsheet program, a virtual keyboard, and other graphical elements.
October 19, 2025 at 9:30 AM
interlisp.org
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
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 is a graph editor with an open command menu providing the options Move Node, Add Node, Delete Node, Add Link, Delete Link, Change label, label smaller, label larger, Directed, Sides, Border, Shade, STOP. The window also shows a graph consisting of 2 nodes connected by a link.
October 16, 2025 at 9:37 AM
interlisp.org
Ryan Burnside designed some visual themes for Medley Interlisp by combining pairs of foreground and background colors. The file medley.sh provides commands for running Medley with the themes enabled.

github.com/RyanBurnside...

#interlisp #lisp
medley.sh
October 13, 2025 at 9:01 AM
interlisp.org
What do Alice's Restaurant and Bonnie and Clyde have to do with Interlisp? Find out in this post, which also features a cameo of Lynn Conway and John Osterhout.

www.markstefik.com?page_id=359

#interlisp #oop #retrocomputing
Truckin’ and the Knowledge Competitions | MJSBlog
MJSBlog - Workin on it
www.markstefik.com
October 10, 2025 at 9:15 AM
interlisp.org
Ryan Burnside cleaned up and published the Interlisp code of FIFTEEN, the 15 puzzle game he originally developed for the Spring Lisp Game Jam 2023.

github.com/RyanBurnside...

Ryan's original Game Jam submission:

itch.io/jam/spring-l...

#interlisp #game #lisp
GitHub - RyanBurnside/FIFTEEN: A sliding tile puzzle for Medley InterLisp
A sliding tile puzzle for Medley InterLisp. Contribute to RyanBurnside/FIFTEEN development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
October 7, 2025 at 9:05 AM
interlisp.org
In NoteCards a "tabletop card" is an arrangement of cards (hypertext nodes) on the screen, such as the 3 cards at the center.

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#NoteCards #interlisp #hypertext #retrocomputing
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. The windows display graph structures with nodes and links and other tools of a hypertext system.
October 4, 2025 at 9:18 AM
interlisp.org
In Interlisp the variable IT holds the value of the most recent event or expression evaluated at an Exec (REPL) and is similar to the variable * of Common Lisp. An example:

← (PLUS 5 3)
8
← (PLUS IT 2)
10

#interlisp #lisp
October 1, 2025 at 11:04 AM
interlisp.org
This 1983 Xerox PARC report documented the state of Interlisp at the time. It collected papers about the Interlisp environment and programming style, development status, and implementation.

bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/pa...

#interlisp #lisp #retrocomputing
bitsavers.org
September 29, 2025 at 9:15 AM
interlisp.org
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
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. The windows display a graph structure with nodes and links and other tools of a hypertext system.
September 26, 2025 at 9:09 AM
interlisp.org
Although NoteCards predated the WWW, in the early days of the web the Xerox PARC hypermedia system was also used for research on the design, analysis, and documentation of web sites such as the projects described in these papers.

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#NoteCards #web #hypertext #interlisp #retrocomputing
September 24, 2025 at 9:12 AM
interlisp.org
ROOMS, developed at Xerox PARC with Interlisp-D, is what we now call a virtual desktop manager. In this 1987 videotape its creators Austin Henderson and Stuart Card present and demostrate the system.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WL9...

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#interlisp #retrocomputing #lisp
The Rooms System — PARC Forum with Austin Henderson and Stuart Card (August 1987)
YouTube video by Medley Interlisp Project
www.youtube.com
September 21, 2025 at 9:05 AM
Reposted by The Medley Interlisp Project
clausatz.bsky.social
At ACM #Hypertext @acmht.bsky.social: Mark Anderson talking about spatial hypertext and its origins, also referring to Frank Halasz's #NoteCards. See his full paper “W(h)ither Spatial Hypertext?” at doi.org/10.1145/3720...
@hist-ht.bsky.social @interlisp.org
Screenshot of Notecards. Screenshot of Notecards.
September 18, 2025 at 3:14 PM
interlisp.org
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.
September 18, 2025 at 9:15 AM
interlisp.org
Ryan Burnside is using Medley Interlisp to develop a tool, a data plotting utility. In this screencast he introduces the environment, shows how to find documentation, defines a function for generating test data, and explains windows and regions.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps_N...

#interlisp #lisp
InterLisp Tool Making Part 1
YouTube video by PixelOutlaw
www.youtube.com
September 12, 2025 at 8:41 AM
interlisp.org
Medley Interlisp supports the "process", a feature we now call "thread" as the Lisp terminology predated modern threads. The system makes wide use of processes and the Interlisp Reference Manual describes the API:

interlisp.org/documentatio...

#interlisp #lisp
interlisp.org
September 9, 2025 at 8:58 AM
interlisp.org
Now you can directly access Medley Online guest sessions with the following Interlisp applications loaded:

NoteCards online.interlisp.org/guest?noteca...
Rooms online.interlisp.org/guest?rooms
NoteCards & Rooms online.interlisp.org/guest?noteca...

Evaluate (LOGOUT) to exit.

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#interlisp #lisp
Interlisp Online
online.interlisp.org
September 6, 2025 at 9:26 AM
interlisp.org
The 1986 paper "LISP as an Environment for Software Design: Powerful and Perspicuous" presented the features of Lisp for prototyping knowledge-intensive clinical applications, with examples and code in Interlisp.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

#interlisp #lisp #retrocomputing
LISP as an Environment for Software Design: Powerful and Perspicuous
The LISP language provides a useful set of features for prototyping knowledge-intensive, clinical applications software that is not found In most other programing environments. Medical computer progra...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
September 3, 2025 at 9:34 AM