GNU Emacs and Xemacs Schism
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From: Nick Keighley on 30 Jun 2010 04:27 On 30 June, 03:08, Fren Zeee <frenz...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Jun 29, 7:08 am, Xah Lee <xah...(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm not entirely sure this belongs on comp.lang.c. There's one point thats close to on-topic though. > > GNU Emacs and Xemacs Schism, by Ben Wing > > http://xahlee.org/emacs/gnu_emacs_xemacs_schism_Ben_Wing.html > > > plain text version follows. > > > -------------------------------------------------- > > GNU Emacs and Xemacs Schism, by Ben Wing > > > Ben Wing, 2001? > > > Many people look at the split between GNU Emacs and XEmacs and are > > convinced that the XEmacs team is being needlessly divisive and just > > needs to cooperate a bit with RMS, and the two versions of Emacs will > > merge. In fact there have been six to seven major attempts at merging, > > each running hundreds of messages long and all of them coming from the > > XEmacs side. All have failed because they have eventually come to the > > same conclusion, which is that RMS has no real interest in cooperation > > at all. If you work with him, you have to do it his way my way or > > the highway. Specifically: <snip> > > 2. RMS does not like abstract data structures. Abstract data > > structures are the foundation of XEmacs and most other modern > > programming projects. In my opinion, [it] is difficult to impossible to > > write maintainable and expandable code without using abstract data > > structures. In merging talks with RMS he has said we can have any > > abstract data structures we want in a merged version but must allow > > direct access to the implementation as well, which defeats the primary > > purpose of having abstract data structures. > > What does he mean by ADT ? I thought any struct in C is the ADT. Some are more abstract than others. A true ADT hides implementaion detail (and allows it to be changed without change rippling through the whole application). For instance a stack could be an array or a linked list. An ADT would hide this detail a er Concrete DT (CDT) would allow access to the underlying array or list. Calling a struct an ADT is rather stretching the term. > If > the emacs is written in C then it has struct in it. I suspect most of it is written in Lisp. > If the lisp has a > certain structure of dotted pairs or two cells, then it is a > structure, ie a tree with special nodes to void. what? A Lisp cell is a pretty abstract type. Modern hardware is unlikely to support it directly and there a variety of ways to implement it in C. But when writing (most) Lisp you don't care. <snip emacs wars> -- We recommend, rather, that users take advantage of the extensions of GNU C and disregard the limitations of other compilers. Aside from certain supercomputers and obsolete small machines, there is less and less reason ever to use any other C compiler other than for bootstrapping GNU CC. (Using and Porting GNU CC)
From: Julian Bradfield on 30 Jun 2010 04:28
On 2010-06-30, Fren Zeee <frenzeee(a)gmail.com> wrote: > question above about > ADT > C structure If you don't understand the difference between an abstract data type and a C structure, then read (for example) the Wikipedia entry on abstract data types. |