WhatIsLisp

Lisp is a computer language. But it is also data that tastes good to another computer language, namely itself. In other words, Lisp is a species of oroborus. Not -- I repeat, not -- to be confused with the Oroborus window manager. In fact, some of the things that make Lisp different from the Oroborus Window Manager are also what makes it great for StumpWM. I will continue on this theme just below.

The Oroborus Window Manager is, according to its homepage "a really minimalistic window manager." They elaborate as follows: "'Minimalistic' means that the Oroborus window manager doesn't provide some things other window managers provide." Which, interestingly enough, is something that the Oroborus window manager has in common with StumpWM. But not -- and I repeat not -- with Lisp. Ever since the introduction of Garnet, Lisp has provided all the same things as other window managers. Lisp is maximalistic -- not unlike C++ or Java -- but then again very much unlike C++ or Java in ways that I don't have time to elaborate on right now.

Instead, let's consider a few more things about the Oroborus Window Manager. According to its description in the FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory, "Oroborus doesn't provide any kind of dock, toolbar, program launcher, background changer, or root menu as these are added weight and their functions can be provided by seperate (sic) applications." In fact, the same is true about StumpWM! But again, StumpWM gets off the hook by turning to Lisp, and in particular to [[Emacs?]], which is written in Lisp, and which provides all these functions and more.

This concludes our short description of Lisp and the comparison of Lisp and the Oroborus Window Manager. Please feel free to look at the interesting pages of CLiki for a more thorough discussion.