Hugs for MacOS X

[Johan Nordlander]

> At The University of Western Australia, we use Hugs 98 on Macintoshes
> to teach Foundations of Computer Science to approximately 300
> first-year students
> (http://undergraduate.cs.uwa.edu.au/courses/230.123). Currently we
> use Hugs 98 on MacOS 8.6. We're likely to change to MacOS X for 2003,
> and we're likely to continue using Hugs 98 on that platform.
> 
> We are considering applying to the Apple University Development Fund
> for support to build an integrated development environment for MacOS
> X based on the (already-ported) Hugs engine. We're not thinking of a
> huge project: probably initially we will build something roughly like
> the MacGofer environment (those were the days!), with an integrated
> editor, command-line editing, colour-coded syntax a la the
> Haskell-mode in emacs, etc. With the size (and general naivety) of
> the class, the initial emphasis will be on reliability.
> 
> My questions are:
> 
> 1. Would this be of interest to other groups who use Hugs on Macintoshes?
> (Statements of interest may increase our chances of success with AUDF.)

I think this would be of interest to a large portion of the Mac users.
The download figures for Hugs-Dec2001 show that a majority of Hugs
users on the Mac has switched to MacOS X already.

> 2. Is anyone working on this sort of environment already?

To my knowledge - no.

> 3. Does anyone know any reason that this sort of endeavour might be
> harder than we expect?

Nope, especially not if the application is set up to launch the standard
Hugs distribution as a subprocess.

I really hope you'll be able to find funding for this project!

Good luck,
Johan