Gestalt Common Lisp Web Framework

What is it?

It is a framework for complex Web applications development in Common Lisp.

Why is it named Gestalt?

Gestalt is a german word that doesn't have an exact English translation. It means form or shape. It refers to a concept of 'wholeness'. Common Lisp could be considered a Gestalt: it is not its features taken separately but together what makes it such a great tool to work with. This framework is my intent to achieve something similar in the web development area.

What are its design principles?

It's been said that art is unity in multiplicity. I think software could take that as a design principle. It should be possible to solve a problem in multiple ways through the solution that adapts better and at the same time achieve unity by means of high level abstractions.

How could that be achieved?

Stratified design: possibility to solve a problem in different ways. For example, program de control flow of the application using a page-centric design, or as a component tree, or a combination of both. Besides, provide the possibility to generate HTML or XUL by means of strings concatenation, or a domain specific language, or using higher level of abstractions such us widgets with dataflow support.
Integrating state-of-the art designs such as component tree and delimited continuations for control flow.
Extend it with dataflow semantics and syntax for the model, the components and view updates.
More composability through memory transactions.
First-class composable declarative templates.
A better way of doing Javascript.

Motto:

An application framework that doesn't affect the way you think about programming,
is not worth knowing. (Adapted from Alan Perlis quote about programming languages)

How mature is it?

This is vaporware at the moment, but some of the design desitions have already been tested in another framework (PHP Web builder). I decided PHP is a very limited platform and language for what I wanted to do so I decided to switch to Common Lisp that fits a lot better.

Project author and mantainer: Mariano Montone