the Modernization of Emacs
in [Lisp]
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From: Christophe Rhodes on 12 Apr 2006 17:25 [ not scheme: note followups, and apologies to readers in c.l.s if this comes across the wrong way ] "Tom Lord" <lord(a)emf.net> writes: > Why do you ask? You wanna help hack such a > redesign/rewrite? You live in the Bay Area, right? Contact > me off list if you want to put some time into such a > project. > > An obvious thing is an improved lisp (performance, dialect, > modules, threads). One side effect should be less code not > written in lisp. If Common Lisp is an improved lisp from your point of view, can I encourage you to look at the Climacs project? I am away from development for a few days, but I can try to make a binary available for your platform if compiling it and its dependencies looks too daunting. (You are most welcome to contact me or the climacs development mailing list for more information.) Christophe
From: Ari Johnson on 12 Apr 2006 19:46 Christophe Rhodes <csr21(a)cam.ac.uk> writes: > If Common Lisp is an improved lisp from your point of view, can I > encourage you to look at the Climacs project? I am away from > development for a few days, but I can try to make a binary available > for your platform if compiling it and its dependencies looks too > daunting. (You are most welcome to contact me or the climacs > development mailing list for more information.) The problem I have with Climacs is that I can't use it. All my machines are Macs except for Linux servers, so X11 applications (while technically usable) are not useful to me. I wish that I had the CLIM and Cocoa experience necessary to create an OSX CLIM, as that is something I see as being an immensely useful project. The other problem that many people would have with adopting Climacs is that it appears to the average user to be comparatively difficult to install and run, when compared head-to-head against Emacs. Emacs is well-tested on all platforms it runs on and Elisp is consistent across them. Also, there is little danger that a piece of Elisp code will step outside of Emacs to do something naughty; whereas, with a CL editor, there is much more opportunity for a script to do something outside the scope of the editor. Furthermore, you would be best to package a CL with the editor, since the capabilities of a given CL change with each version. (Witness that Debian 'sarge' comes with SBCL 0.8.16, which cannot run the Swank component of SLIME post-April 19, 2005.) So you have a size issue - Emacs is big, but a CL is not a tiny thing to be throwing around along with it. Do you have plans to address these issues?
From: Edward Dodge on 12 Apr 2006 20:04 Greg Menke <gregm-xyzpdq3(a)toadmail.com> writes: > As far as OS X, the gui & mouse are just too tedious. I find it easier > to use plain emacs -nw in multiple terminal windows and get on with the > job at hand. My preference with Mac hardware is to put Linux on it and > run Windowmaker. Why bother with Linux just to use an X11 manager? Install X11.app on OSX and then install the X11-version of EMACS. Run OSX and an X-Window window-manager (complete with all your X-based apps) at the same time. -- Edward Dodge __o _`\(,_ (_)/ (_) --- ---
From: Bill Atkins on 12 Apr 2006 20:17 Ari Johnson <iamtheari(a)gmail.com> writes: > [...] > them. Also, there is little danger that a piece of Elisp code will > step outside of Emacs to do something naughty; whereas, with a CL > editor, there is much more opportunity for a script to do something > outside the scope of the editor. Furthermore, you would be best to > [...] Really? ;; intentionally misspelled to prevent accidental evaluation, but ;; you get the idea (shel-command "rm / -rf") I'm not aware of any effort on Elisp's part to prevent code from doing damage to a machine. Bill
From: Ari Johnson on 12 Apr 2006 20:27
Bill Atkins <NOatkinwSPAM(a)rpi.edu> writes: > Ari Johnson <iamtheari(a)gmail.com> writes: > >> [...] >> them. Also, there is little danger that a piece of Elisp code will >> step outside of Emacs to do something naughty; whereas, with a CL >> editor, there is much more opportunity for a script to do something >> outside the scope of the editor. Furthermore, you would be best to >> [...] > > Really? > > ;; intentionally misspelled to prevent accidental evaluation, but > ;; you get the idea > (shel-command "rm / -rf") > > I'm not aware of any effort on Elisp's part to prevent code from doing > damage to a machine. I was thinking more in terms of within the Lisp but outside of the editor. I'm not well-versed in elisp, but it seems to me that it would be easier to break the editor in CL than in elisp, given that at least part of Emacs is not written in elisp and thus at least part of it cannot be broken with elisp alone. I may be entirely wrong. |