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