Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!sri-spam!sri-unix!quintus!pds From: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Fortran Message-ID: <453@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> Date: 10 Dec 87 03:28:50 GMT References: <332@siemens.UUCP> Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA Lines: 45 Summary: Actually CommonLisp is the Ada of Lisps In article <332@siemens.UUCP>, steve@siemens.UUCP (Steve Clark) writes: > ... Will Common Lisp be the Fortran of Lisp? No, CommonLisp is more like the Ada of Lisps. A standardized committee effort, designed to include everything including the kitchen sink. Why didn't CommonLisp take the more modern approach of having most of the goodies out in libraries (Modules to CommonLispers)? > 2) I assert that Emacs is the Fortran of editors. The really sad thing about emacs is that it doesn't have a way to highlight selected regions of a buffer. This renders a mouse pretty much useless except for positioning. If emacs could hightlight regions, one could select words, sentences, and paragraphs with a mouse and then delete them or copy them with a single keystroke. I've used a version of emacs that uses a mouse to do these sorts of things WITHOUT highlighting them first, and this is worse than nothing. You just don't know what you're doing until it's done. Sure, you can get it back if you deleted something you wanted, but first you have to figure out what happened. The visual feedback BEFORE the operation is committed to is important. All of you hardcore emacsers are screeching at the thought of handling a rodent for editing, I know. But for manipulating chunks of text (or structure), a mouse is the ideal tool. And the real idea is to use one hand to move and click the mouse, and the other chording keys on the keyboard to indicate WHAT to do with the chunk you are selecting with the mouse. Interlisp-D uses the scheme that SHIFT means to copy what you have selected to wherever your typein would go, and CONTROL means to delete it. Of course, both means to move it. (Note that what you select is not constrained to have your typein point at one end of it, as does emacs.) I might even LIKE emacs if it could let me do that. Except that in LISP mode, I'd want do be selecting S-expressions, and in text mode, words and sentences. And I'd want emacs to do my formatting for me completely automatically. Just like it can fill paragraphs as I type. Given emacs as it is now, thought, I'd say emacs is worse than a FORTRAN. At least FORTRAN could handle new technology (terminals with variable-length lines) when it came along. Emacs will need some work. Or is there a hacked-up emacs that will do that now? -- -Peter Schachte pds@quintus.uucp ...!sun!quintus!pds