Can someone tell me what's Emacs? Is there any difference to lisp only?
I run my Allegro CL lite (lisp only) now. What's the benefit to run Lisp to
Emacs or with IDE environment? I am not quite understand the "project" &
"form"'s function with IDE. Thanks.
"Wayne" <··@ecn.purdue.edu> wrote in message
·················@mozo.cc.purdue.edu...
> Can someone tell me what's Emacs? Is there any difference to lisp only?
Emacs is a text processor (and a whole lot more) that uses an archaic
dialect of Lisp. A large part of it is written in eLisp and it is
(relatively) easy to powerfully extend Emacs capabilities using it. SF
author Neal Stephenson ("Snowcrash" and "Cryptonimicon" are both very good
books of his :) wrote this about it in a piece titled "In the Beginning was
the Command Line...":
"In the GNU/Linux world there are two major text editing programs: the
minimalist vi (known in some implementations as elvis) and the maximalist
emacs. I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word
processor. It was created by Richard Stallman; enough said. It is written in
Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful. It is colossal,
and yet it only edits straight ASCII text files, which is to say, no fonts,
no boldface, no underlining. In other words, the engineer-hours that, in the
case of Microsoft Word, were devoted to features like mail merge, and the
ability to embed feature-length motion pictures in corporate memoranda,
were, in the case of emacs, focused with maniacal intensity on the
deceptively simple-seeming problem of editing text. If you are a
professional writer--i.e., if someone else is getting paid to worry about
how your words are formatted and printed--emacs outshines all other editing
software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars.
It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish.
For page layout and printing you can use TeX: a vast corpus of typesetting
lore written in C and also available on the Net for free."
> I run my Allegro CL lite (lisp only) now. What's the benefit to run Lisp
to
> Emacs or with IDE environment?
Using Emacs as the editor (whether you use the IDE or not) makes life _much_
easier and smoother (once you have it and Allegro CL set up to work
together -- a non-trivial task if you don't know much about either one, I'm
afraid, but quite doable if you're patient and persistent and willing to
learn). Emacs can auto-indent your code as you type, do color syntax
highlighting, help keep track of matching parentheses (that helps a _lot_),
lets you call the Allegro Lisp compiler from a window within Emacs, use ACL
interactively from within Emacs, and a few other nice things.
I think the IDE is really only useful if you're going to create Windows
programs. If you're not going to be doing that, using just Emacs with ACL
should be plenty powerful enough. I never had any need to use the IDE. If
you're just learning Lisp, the IDE is overkill. I would say that Emacs is
most definitely better than using the IDE in that case _except_ that it's
not easy to get them working together if you're inexperienced with either
one. I'd still recommend using Emacs, though. You can always ask for help
here, too.
> I am not quite understand the "project" &
> "form"'s function with IDE. Thanks.
The best thing I can recommend to do is to go to your local library or
bookstore and get one of those "Visual Basic for Dummies" guides for an
intro into RAD tools and GUI-building. It won't help you directly with ACL,
but it will hopefully introduce you to the concepts well enough that you can
then understand the HTML documentation that came with ACL Lite.
You can get Emacs for Windows at:
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/voelker/ntemacs.html#whatisit
Larry
[Larry Elmore]
| For page layout and printing you can use TeX: a vast corpus of typesetting
| lore written in C and also available on the Net for free."
er, that would be Web, which is a Pascal preprocessor.
--
Rolf Lindgren http://www.roffe.com/
·····@tag.uio.no
[Followup posted to comp.lang.lisp only - Paolo]
On Sat, 16 Sep 2000 21:35:30 GMT, "Larry Elmore" <·········@gte.net> wrote:
> author Neal Stephenson ("Snowcrash" and "Cryptonimicon" are both very good
> books of his :) wrote this about it in a piece titled "In the Beginning was
> the Command Line...":
[...]
> For page layout and printing you can use TeX: a vast corpus of typesetting
> lore written in C and also available on the Net for free."
Actually, TeX is written in WEB, a literate programming tool for Pascal.
The WEB source is mechanically translated to C to ease compilation on most
systems.
Paolo
--
EncyCMUCLopedia * Extensive collection of CMU Common Lisp documentation
http://cvs2.cons.org:8000/cmucl/doc/EncyCMUCLopedia/
In our last episode (Sun, 17 Sep 2000 17:35:15 +0200),
the artist formerly known as Paolo Amoroso said:
>[Followup posted to comp.lang.lisp only - Paolo]
>
>On Sat, 16 Sep 2000 21:35:30 GMT, "Larry Elmore" <·········@gte.net> wrote:
>
>> author Neal Stephenson ("Snowcrash" and "Cryptonimicon" are both very good
>> books of his :) wrote this about it in a piece titled "In the Beginning was
>> the Command Line...":
>[...]
>> For page layout and printing you can use TeX: a vast corpus of typesetting
>> lore written in C and also available on the Net for free."
>
>Actually, TeX is written in WEB, a literate programming tool for Pascal.
>The WEB source is mechanically translated to C to ease compilation on most
>systems.
Lately, releases of TeX tend to be deployed using CWEB, a literate
programming tool for documenting C, C++, and Java programs.
<http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/cweb.html>
--
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" ·@" "acm.org")
<http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/computing.html>
Rules of the Evil Overlord #156. "If I have the hero and his party
trapped, I will not wait until my Superweapon charges to finish them
off if more conventional means are available."
<http://www.eviloverlord.com/>
* Christopher Browne wrote:
> Lately, releases of TeX tend to be deployed using CWEB, a literate
> programming tool for documenting C, C++, and Java programs.
This is way off topic, but this is wrong. TeX is in the original
Pascal-based Web the same as it has been since 1992. It's typically
built nowadays using a thing called web2C which takes web and spits
out C (actually, I guess I can't remember using a machine which didn't
build it using some ancestor of web2c).
CWEB is not the same as web2c, it's a newer version of web designed
for C and related languages.
There *was* once something called `common TeX' which was a
reimplementation of TeX in C (not cweb, which didn't exist then), but
I have no idea what happened to that (and actually I might be
misremembering).
--tim
Larry Elmore wrote:
>
> Using Emacs as the editor (whether you use the IDE or not) makes life _much_
> easier and smoother (once you have it and Allegro CL set up to work
> together -- a non-trivial task if you don't know much about either one, I'm
> afraid, but quite doable if you're patient and persistent and willing to
> learn). Emacs can auto-indent your code as you type,
So does the IDE.
> do color syntax
> highlighting,
Don't find syntax highlighting all that useful when editing Lisp,
myself. YMMV.
> help keep track of matching parentheses (that helps a _lot_),
So does the IDE.
> lets you call the Allegro Lisp compiler from a window within Emacs, use ACL
> interactively from within Emacs, and a few other nice things.
So does the IDE, and with greater ease. Most of the
step/debug/inspect/trace functionality is right out there in the IDE,
either on a menu, a toolbar, or in a window which is visible by
default. The same functionality is there in Emacs, but it is MUCH
harder, especially for an emacs novice, to find.
>
> I think the IDE is really only useful if you're going to create Windows
> programs.
As you may have gathered from the foregoing, I disagree strongly. I use
the Emacs interface on Linux, but I've never bothered installing it on
Windows. If I had the IDE available on Linux, I'd use it in a heartbeat.
Emacs (Editing MACroS) is an editor/emailer/newsreader/operating
environment available from GNU (www.gnu.org). It has been ported to all
flavors of UNIX, DOS and Windows, probably Mac as well.
Emacs is written largely in LISP, but it's base is written in C, so it is
portable. It has it's own dialect of LISP, called ELISP, which allows the
user to customize and extend the editor on the fly. Emacs is a love it or
hate it application--few people who use it are indifferent to it.
I recommend you try it. It is one of the original full screen editors,
and is open source.
In article <············@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>, "Wayne" <··@ecn.purdue.edu>
wrote:
> Can someone tell me what's Emacs? Is there any difference to lisp only?
>
> I run my Allegro CL lite (lisp only) now. What's the benefit to run Lisp
> to Emacs or with IDE environment? I am not quite understand the
> "project" &
> "form"'s function with IDE. Thanks.
>
>
>
"Paul Heinzman" <·········@hotmail.com> writes:
> Emacs (Editing MACroS) is an editor/emailer/newsreader/operating
> environment available from GNU (www.gnu.org). It has been ported to all
> flavors of UNIX, DOS and Windows, probably Mac as well.
>
> Emacs is written largely in LISP, but it's base is written in C, so it is
> portable. It has it's own dialect of LISP, called ELISP, which allows the
> user to customize and extend the editor on the fly. Emacs is a love it or
> hate it application--few people who use it are indifferent to it.
I'm one of it. It has it's pros and cons, but you got you job done and
the sheer mass of functionality is overwhelming. I would think are
more OO-ish approach would signisficantly improve on it. But that's
just, what I think.
Regards
Friedrich
--
for e-mail reply remove all after .com
Friedrich Dominicus <·····@q-software-solutions.com> writes:
>I'm one of it. It has it's pros and cons, but you got you job done and
>the sheer mass of functionality is overwhelming. I would think are
>more OO-ish approach would signisficantly improve on it. But that's
>just, what I think.
I'm interested to know what you mean by "more OO-ish approach".
cheers, Andrew
········@cs.mu.oz.au (Andrew Luke NESBIT) writes:
> Friedrich Dominicus <·····@q-software-solutions.com> writes:
>
> >I'm one of it. It has it's pros and cons, but you got you job done and
> >the sheer mass of functionality is overwhelming. I would think are
> >more OO-ish approach would signisficantly improve on it. But that's
> >just, what I think.
>
> I'm interested to know what you mean by "more OO-ish approach".
I'm afraid I will go off-topic here. I would think one could use some
sort of hierachy e.g one can have a Class which represents the Mode
Emacs Lisp is in. People derive from such Modes and overwrite just the
things they need to. I guess (read I'm not sure) that than one could
e.g derive C++ from C maybe all C-ish looking languages.
At the moment I think modes are derived as follows.
Find a suitable mode, rename all with your-mode prefix. Drop things
you don't like ... One comes up with (not real names just to give the
idea)
c-mode-brace
java-mode-brace
c++-mode-brace
If the things were derived from each other it just would just be
brace. The naming would be mucht simpler and I guess one would not so
much overwhelmed by all the different things. Another point which I
would think could gain from structuring it in large on objects would
be a much cleaner namespace. Just to give some figures. My (X)Emacs
here has round 180 methods starting with set-. I would think with an
more OO-ish approach this would drop significantly. And that was just
one example. A rough try to find out how many things are defined in
XEmacs I counted > 16000 functions,variables etc.
If I would be able to
"learn" 10 each day it would take me just 1600 Days or 4 years. I
guess after 4 years I had to start over ;-)
But to get on-topic again. I think Common Lisp offers all for better
structuring, and using CLOS for the structuring in-the-large would do
an amazingly good job on this. Some elements added from Eiffel and
"the Framework" would be in place ;-)
Regards
Friedrich
--
for e-mail reply remove all after .com
Friedrich Dominicus <·····@q-software-solutions.com> writes:
> I would think one could use some sort of hierachy e.g one can have
> a Class which represents the Mode Emacs Lisp is in. People derive
> from such Modes and overwrite just the things they need to.
Doesn't your Emacs have `define-derived-mode'?
The fact that most people don't use it doesn't mean it's not there :)
Colin Walters <·······@cis.ohio-state.edu> writes:
> Friedrich Dominicus <·····@q-software-solutions.com> writes:
>
> > I would think one could use some sort of hierachy e.g one can have
> > a Class which represents the Mode Emacs Lisp is in. People derive
> > from such Modes and overwrite just the things they need to.
>
> Doesn't your Emacs have `define-derived-mode'?
>
> The fact that most people don't use it doesn't mean it's not there :)
I wish `define-derived-mode' was there when ILISP was first written.
ILISP contains what essentially is a `define-derived-mode'.
Maybe, if ILISP will ever get rewritten, we will use
`define-derived-mode'.
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti =============================================================
NYU Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
719 Broadway 12th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122
New York, NY 10003, USA http://galt.mrl.nyu.edu/valis
Like DNA, such a language [Lisp] does not go out of style.
Paul Graham, ANSI Common Lisp
Colin Walters <·······@cis.ohio-state.edu> writes:
> Friedrich Dominicus <·····@q-software-solutions.com> writes:
>
> > I would think one could use some sort of hierachy e.g one can have
> > a Class which represents the Mode Emacs Lisp is in. People derive
> > from such Modes and overwrite just the things they need to.
>
> Doesn't your Emacs have `define-derived-mode'?
Oh yes, it's there. Must be one of the 16000 functions I did not know,
ok, flame me ;-)
Regards
Friedrich
--
for e-mail reply remove all after .com
Paul Heinzman wrote:
>
> Emacs (Editing MACroS) is an editor/emailer/newsreader/operating
> environment available from GNU (www.gnu.org). It has been ported to all
> flavors of UNIX, DOS and Windows, probably Mac as well.
>
> Emacs is written largely in LISP, but it's base is written in C, so it is
> portable. It has it's own dialect of LISP, called ELISP, which allows the
> user to customize and extend the editor on the fly. Emacs is a love it or
> hate it application--few people who use it are indifferent to it.
People who hate it are plain misinformed.
> I recommend you try it. It is one of the original full screen editors,
> and is open source.
Don't say 'open source' in front of RMS. Emacs is free software.
--
Weiqi Gao
········@networkusa.net
Weiqi Gao <········@networkusa.net> writes:
> > Emacs is a love it or hate it application--few people who use it
> > are indifferent to it.
>
> People who hate it are plain misinformed.
People who hate it fall into two categories; those who hate it because
they don't like the interface, in which case they should fire up
viper-mode (or one of the many other emulation modes), and those who
hate it because it's so huge, in which case they should buy a better
computer. ;)
--
Adam "Emacs for programming and news, joe for mail, vim for config
files" Sampson
····@ukc.ac.uk, ···@gnu.org
Adam Sampson <····@ukc.ac.uk> writes:
> Weiqi Gao <········@networkusa.net> writes:
>
> > > Emacs is a love it or hate it application--few people who use it
> > > are indifferent to it.
> >
> > People who hate it are plain misinformed.
>
> People who hate it fall into two categories; those who hate it because
> they don't like the interface, in which case they should fire up
> viper-mode (or one of the many other emulation modes), and those who
> hate it because it's so huge, in which case they should buy a better
> computer. ;)
I had a guy here hate it because he couldn't grok automatic,
syntax-driven indentation.
--
(__) Doug Alcorn (···········@lathi.net http://www.lathi.net)
oo / Unix Hacker
|_/ "It's too late for paradise"
Doug Alcorn <····@lathi.net> writes:
> Adam Sampson <····@ukc.ac.uk> writes:
>> Weiqi Gao <········@networkusa.net> writes:
>>>> Emacs is a love it or hate it application--few people who use it are
>>>> indifferent to it.
>>> People who hate it are plain misinformed.
>> People who hate it fall into two categories; those who hate it because they
>> don't like the interface, in which case they should fire up viper-mode (or
>> one of the many other emulation modes), and those who hate it because it's
>> so huge, in which case they should buy a better computer. ;)
The "so huge" part generally means "so slow starting up" ... in which case I
try to get users to LEAVE EMACS UP and set their editor to emacsclient
(aliased to "e").
> I had a guy here hate it because he couldn't grok automatic,
> syntax-driven indentation.
Does anyone else have bumps of over-developed emacs muscle on the backs of
their hands behind the 1st and 2nd knuckles? Predominantly on the left hand?
I attribute it to using lots of emacs features and key bindings and thereby
riding alt-control-shift keys a lot.
It's quite remarkable. I could have used it many years ago during my martial
arts days for my backfists. :-)
[Anyone see the movie "Mystery Men"??? I suppose this is my "super power.":-]
--
Daniel Ortmann, IBM Circuit Technology, Rochester, MN 55901-7829
·······@us.ibm.com / internal 8.553.6795 / external 507.253.6795
·······@isl.net home 507.288.7732
"The answers are so simple, and we all know where to look,
but it's easier just to avoid the question." -- Kansas
Daniel Ortmann <·······@us.ibm.com> writes:
> Does anyone else have bumps of over-developed emacs muscle on the
> backs of their hands behind the 1st and 2nd knuckles?
You've gotta be kidding me -- I've got those!
It doesn't feel like its muscles, though, more like a patch of extra
rough or thick skin. :^/
> Predominantly on the left hand?
Yep.
> I attribute it to using lots of emacs features and key bindings and
> thereby riding alt-control-shift keys a lot.
Heh. I've been an Emacs user for about 9 years, but I've had them for
several years already.
So, is there a known cure? Or do I have to resort to plastic surgery?
:^}
> [Anyone see the movie "Mystery Men"??? [...]
Yeah, too bad Tom Waits had such a small part.
Regards,
Morten
Daniel Ortmann <·······@us.ibm.com> writes:
> >> Weiqi Gao <········@networkusa.net> writes:
>
> >>>> Emacs is a love it or hate it application--few people who use it are
> >>>> indifferent to it.
>
> >>> People who hate it are plain misinformed.
>
> >> People who hate it fall into two categories; those who hate it because they
> >> don't like the interface, in which case they should fire up viper-mode (or
> >> one of the many other emulation modes), and those who hate it because it's
> >> so huge, in which case they should buy a better computer. ;)
>
> The "so huge" part generally means "so slow starting up" ... in which case I
> try to get users to LEAVE EMACS UP and set their editor to emacsclient
> (aliased to "e").
Why, is there another way of using Emacs I wasn't told? :)
At a certain point I had it in my .xinitrc file :)
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti =============================================================
NYU Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
719 Broadway 12th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122
New York, NY 10003, USA http://galt.mrl.nyu.edu/valis
Like DNA, such a language [Lisp] does not go out of style.
Paul Graham, ANSI Common Lisp
Marco Antoniotti <·······@cs.nyu.edu> writes:
> Daniel Ortmann <·······@us.ibm.com> writes:
> > The "so huge" part generally means "so slow starting up" ... in which case I
> > try to get users to LEAVE EMACS UP and set their editor to emacsclient
> > (aliased to "e").
>
> Why, is there another way of using Emacs I wasn't told? :)
>
> At a certain point I had it in my .xinitrc file :)
The CL image started from my Emacs tends to get uptimes of more than a
month.
--
Lieven Marchand <···@bewoner.dma.be>
Lambda calculus - Call us a mad club
Doug Alcorn <····@lathi.net> writes:
> I had a guy here hate [Emacs] because he couldn't grok automatic,
> syntax-driven indentation.
Hm. How about this:
(setq auto-mode-alist '(".*" . fundamental-mode))
;^)
Regards,
Morten
"Wayne" <··@ecn.purdue.edu> wrote:
>Can someone tell me what's Emacs? Is there any difference to lisp only?
>
>I run my Allegro CL lite (lisp only) now. What's the benefit to run Lisp to
>Emacs or with IDE environment? I am not quite understand the "project" &
>"form"'s function with IDE. Thanks.
>
The IDE has some advantages over Emacs because it is better integrated in
Lisp environment. Look for example at the class browser and class grapher.
And imagine a CLOS application with hundred of classes.
Of course Emacs is customizable and far more powerful than the IDE editor
(normally the IDE editor is not customizable, however as you can have
access to the source code it is feasible)
In practice I use the IDE editor, and quite rarely I switch to emacs for
some tasks (to make search and replacement in a set of files - you can do
this in the IDE but the Emacs commands are better - and when I need to
define keyboard macros).
--
Francis Leboutte
www.algo.be +32-(0)4.388.39.19