I am a student of Computer Systems Technology.  I have experience
programming in several other languages.

I have just started with Allegro LISP.  I have been able to find sufficient
help and instruction for the LISP language itself and am making slow but
steady progress learning the syntax of CL.

However, I, (and the rest of my class-mates), am/are having extreme
difficulty with the Allegro IDE.

The Allegro online help is sparse (to put it lightly) with almost no sample
code.  The on-line tutorial that ships with Allegro would be better named a
"procedure" as it continually instructs you to "copy and paste this code"
with no explanation of what is going on (and *zero* in-code comments
either).  Obviously the IDE is full of features, (typical of other IDE's we
are familiar with such as MS VC++, Delphi, Visual Basic, etc.)  And
obviously shares some parallels with the other IDEs we know. But we have
been unable to find instructions/examples of how to do the simplest of
things.

Specifically, (and for starters), I want to design two forms, say:
"Main-Form" and  "Second-Form".
Main-Form is just that: (the main form that the program starts execution
with first)
Second-Form is-a Dialog.
I want to place a button on Main-form that when clicked will display
Second-Form (say for input).
1) I drop a button on Main-Form - no problem
2) I use the inspector to view the events associated with that button - no
problem
3) I click on the ellipsis in the "on-click" event field, which generates
skeleton code for the event - no problem
skeleton Allegro generates:

(defun mainform-button4-on-click (dialog widget)
  (declare (ignore-if-unused dialog widget))

  t)

4) OK - here is the problem - we don't know how to (in the skeleton function
defined above) refer to and make the Second-Form simply appear.
(sounds simple -- but we are at a loss.)  We have tried a number of things
with no luck.  We have searched all available help and on-line resources we
can find --- no luck.

Unfortunately, our kind instructor has been put in the position of teaching
us this course without having used Allegro since the time of Windows 3.1 and
she is at a loss too (not for lack of trying - she knows CL syntax *very*
well - Allegro 5.0.1, *not* so well).

Please help by answering the above problem and/or directing me to resources
which will help (specifically with Allegro 5.0.1 IDE).

Thank You

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Zack Wickes <home.com at zwicks>  ICQ#  6464203
Web Page: http://www.zackwickes.com/
BCIT Set: COMP3E  -- Applied Artificial Intelligence
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