Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ptsfa!ames!rutgers!labrea!russell!rustcat From: rustcat@russell.STANFORD.EDU (Vallury Prabhakar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Lisp and editing Keywords: Lisp, editors, systems, other languages, flame-less Message-ID: <1168@russell.STANFORD.EDU> Date: 16 Dec 87 03:41:12 GMT Reply-To: rustcat@russell.stanford.edu (Vallury Prabhakar) Organization: Yonder, the Apocalyptic Horizons Lines: 46 Not that I can claim to be a Lisp whiz, but the present discussion has made me curious. The impression I've gotten so far, is that in order to program efficiently in CL, one would need an editor that is custom-made for the language. Smart pretty-printing, indentations, comments et all need to handled efficiently by the editor. In other words, people seem to feel that these utilities need to be "hard-wired" into the editor/system. I can see how that would be a neat thing to do for Lisp machines like the Explorers. (I personally do find that Explorers and especially the editor to be quite fascinating). Since the sole environment that those machines work in is Lisp itself, total compatibility between the editor and the OS is desirable. However, I find it strange that people should be knocking editors like GNU/Gosling Emacs. Surely, these are not editors that were conceived keeping Lisp in mind? At least, not primarily. The whole point of these editors is their universality and flexibility. Under those circumstances, isn't a bit unreasonable to expect the editor to be able to figure out all sorts of nifty things for Lisp at the touch of a key, and at the same time be able to handle other modes such as electric-c-mode, etc? The best part about Emacs is that they are so very open. Customizing the framework of these editors to suit the individual programmer's taste (whether it's Lisp or C or whatever) is eminently possible, and certainly less of a "hard-wiring" requirement kludge. Speaking from personal experience, I've done most of my Lisp on a Sun using Gnu Emacs, and I'm very satisfied. Open up another window with the lisp interpreter running in it, and set up your file to work in Lisp mode, and that's all I've needed. Granted that the ZMACS editor on the Explorers can probably do a better job with all sorts of nifty little Lisp options, but can it switch into C/Tex mode when I want it to? Afraid not. Disclaimer: The above are my opinions only. You hear me?? MINE! So spare me any flames. -- Vallury -- > (get life) >>Error: LIFE has no global value :C Try evaluating LIFE again ->