Thanks for that. Maybe I will try again some time.
I'm not saying it is impossible, rather that it is hard work compared to e.g. python. I recall looking through a few promising google results and finding e.g. that the library is no longer maintained, has bits missing etc. With python, when I use e.g. beautiful soup, it just works - I lose almost no time getting setup. When doing a project that needs many external libraries, that makes a big difference.
e.g. the first item on http://www.cliki.net/GUI has its last news item from 2007, and the mailing list gives 'not found'. But there is a new(er) github page with the comment "I cleaned up the library just in case I needed GUI in Lisp, but it turned out that I did not. Hence, the primary extent of my testing is running test-gtk:gtk-demo application. Bug reports and/or patches are welcome."
Since the parent was talking about ecosystems etc, I thought my experiences were worth mentioning - "Python novice uses python to get stuff done" but "CL novice gets lost in old/unmaintained libraries, gives up and sticks with c++ & python".
I mean no disrespect to the people who write these libraries etc., I am just describing what I found as a novice in CL.
Many people who actually write GUI software in Lisp use one of the commercial offerings, typically either LispWorks and Allegro CL. That's one of their advantages: they offer maintained and cross platform GUI libraries.
One can for example also use Clozure CL for advanced GUI stuff, but that is best on the Mac.
Thanks for the info. I just had a quick look at Clozure CL - as you say, the main Gui library is for apple. The other gui library is labelled 'under development' but also 'last modified: 6 years ago' :(
I wonder whether the (I'm told) good commercial lisp offerings have hampered lisp adoption, in that people who use lisp a lot, pay for commercial offerings, leaving the free stuff less used and maintained? Then newcomers, who don't want to pay to do hobby projects in a new language, are discouraged by the less maintained free stuff.
Html Parser: http://www.cliki.net/cl-html-parse
Http client: http://weitz.de/drakma/
I'm not sure why you are/were stumped? I could search for qt bindings for you, but I'm sure they exist and are pretty mature.