The Clearinghouse is the directory and naming service of the Xerox Network Systems (XNS) protocol suite, which was used by Xerox workstations and other machines including Interlisp systems. The Clearinghouse is to XNS what DNS is to TCP/IP.

https://www.connected.app/ports/54

#xns #interlisp #retrocomputing

RE: https://fosstodon.org/@interlisp/116794421711231626

A great interview with interesting historical insight.

#interlisp #retrocomputing #parc

In 2025 Larry Masinter @masinter and Frank Halasz @fghalasz were guests of "Do you speak tech?", a show of Near FM community radio in Dublin. They chatted with host Patrick Domanico about Interlisp, their memories of Xerox PARC, the computing world then and now, and more.

https://www.patrickdomanico.com/bpm/2026/06/16/inventing-the-future-one-lisp-machine-at-a-time/

#interlisp #lisp #retrocomputing

These are the screens of two Medley @interlisp instances connected to a Xerox XNS local network emulated via Dodo Services, all running on my Linux box.

A documentation browser is open on the first instance. The second instance is running MONITOR, a remote screen monitoring tool connected to the first instance, and shows what's on the screen of that machine. Think of the tool as a grandfather of a VNC client, developed in the 1980s.

https://files.interlisp.org/medley/lispusers/MONITOR.TEDIT.pdf

The full source of MONITOR, client and server, is 180 lines of Interlisp code.

https://github.com/Interlisp/medley/blob/master/lispusers/MONITOR

#interlisp #lisp

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

#profiler #interlisp #lisp

This is Medley Interlisp running the Lafite email program. The mailbox window at the bottom left has a single entry, a test message I sent myself shown in the large window to the right.

What's neat is Lafite delivered to and retrieved the message from a mail server by exchanging packets over the Xerox XNS local network, here emulated with the server on my Linux box via Dodo Services. See the network logs in the black Prompt Window at the top left.

Nick Briggs @nhbriggs is reviving the original XNS network stack of Interlisp, which can now run Lafite and other network applications.

https://github.com/devhawala/dodo/tree/master

#interlisp #xns #lisp

The Medley Interlisp environment has a reference-counting garbace collector that provides better performance with interactive applications. The limitations are that the facility doesn't reclaim circular structures and some other data, and the reference count table is of fixed size.

https://interlisp.org/documentation/IRM.pdf#page=435

#GarbageCollection #interlisp #lisp

Don't mind me, I'm just using the Medley environment to work on my gravity simulator in Interlisp and LOOPS. It's 1986(+40) and this new OOP thing is a lot of fun.

https://journal.paoloamoroso.com/gravityloops-a-gravity-simulator-in-interlisp-and-loops

#interlisp #oop #lisp

The December, 1983 edition of the LOOPS manual listed the intellectual precursors of the Lisp Object-Oriented Programming System, the object extension of Interlisp:

- Smalltalk
- Flavors
- PIE
- KRL
- UNITS
- EMYCIN

#oop #interlisp #lisp #retrocomputing

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.

https://interlisp.org/documentation/Medley-Primer.pdf#page=23

#interlisp #lisp