RFE: debugging in separate window

Hi,

please have a short look at impnotes:
Extensions-2.12. Other
To have *DEBUG-IO* and *ERROR-OUTPUT* point to separate console windows (thus 
keeping your standard console window clean from error messages) you can use:
       (SETQ *ERROR-OUTPUT*
         (SETQ *DEBUG-IO*
           (OPEN "CON:0/0/500/300/CLISP-Debugger/AUTO/CLOSE"
                   :DIRECTION :IO)))

I don't know if people on UNIX/PC realize the power and usefulness of this.
I wish I could use this idiom on UNIX or MS-Windows too, not just the Amiga.

On the Amiga, CON:////window-title/options provides for a full-featured 
tty-window with line-editing and scrollbars etc. The above means sort of 
*debug-io* goes to a separate xterm window. The given options mean that this 
window only appears when needed (e.g. when an error occurs).

Consider CLISP within a shell pipe
# cat foo bar | clisp --with-interactive-debug -i file -x ... | xyz-processing

Using the above with a pipe means that Lisp's *standard-input* and -output* are 
left completely undisturbed!
All your *debug-io* interactive session happens in a different window. There 
you can either abort CLISP and thus the pipe, or maybe manage to debug online 
and have the pipe continue successfully.

Bruno Haible once told me about a UNIX terminal/xterm hack where output to 
stderr would appear in red color.

I often send *trace-output* to a separate window.

You get the idea.

Does anybody know how to achieve something equivalent for either MS-Windows or 
some flavour of UNIX?

Regards,
        Jörg Höhle.


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