I have been programming for 10-12 yrs. I have always used MS-DOS the
MSWindows environment programming in C, C++, basic(+modern variations). I
have always wanted to learn LISP. I have learned AutoLISP which I understand
is a kind of "broken" common lisp. I have been trying to find a real MSWin
editor that uses lisp the way GNU Emacs or XEmacs does. These to editors are
arcane and completely out of date. I can't remember when I had to use dir
*.* to find a file. Which appears to be the way *Emacs works. Never mind the
whacky file dialog. I realize that these may be fighting words in this group
but, as much as I will probably be screamed at for saying it. It is a fact
these apps are arcane and out of date. Help files are really weird and can't
perform a look up of say "html*" if the html is not installed and you can't
figure out why.(eventually did get it) Let me make clear that ALL this is
from a MSWin perspective. If UNIX users and programmers feel that MSWin
should rightly be ignored as a viable and real OS then ignore this message.
When I used AutoLISP I always felt that it is a GREAT language to work and
write in. Why are there no REAL MSWin programming editors using this
language? Why is Autodesk going to drop LISP? Even now they are running
their LISP implementation through AppBasic to keep backward compatibility. I
find it hard to believe that it's because it wasn't powerful enough. For all
intents and purposes LISP is nonexistent in MSWin and therefore difficult to
support.
I WANT TO USE LISP NOT UNIX!!!!!! From what I have used of it it blows away
all other languages. What is out there that is a real MSWin app that I can
write apps in LISP? UNIX users will have no idea what I'm talking about, and
I know this message will get me screamed at. I hope that someone is
listening. The only reason that I'm not running a UNIX pc now is because of
the UNIX world bickering about a shrink wrap version in the early '90's when
IBM, Microsoft, Various UNIX vendors were in a horse race to get a 32bit
shrink wrap OS to market At that time Microsoft had NO advantage. MSWin won.
Like it or hate it they won. I don't like it. It sure wasn't because it's
the best OS particularly early on. Is LISP on the same road? Is it so tied
to the OS that it can't cross over? If this is true I think it would be a
terrible loss. I think it is terrible that there is no real competition to
Visual Basic. I HATE BASIC!!!! I USE BASIC EVERYDAY!!!!! Only because there
is no real alternative in MSWin. I don't mean to compare VB and LISP on a
"power of language" basis, only ease of use. Or should I say what should be
ease of use in the MSWin world.
I know after reading this newsgroup for a while I'm not alone! HELP!!!!
We are still early in the overall history of what will be the WorldWideWeb.
LISP is HIGHLY appropriate for this medium, which is why I have a renewed
interest, but it has to be EASILY(use, not the act of downloading) available
in the LEADING OS in the industry. Like that OS or hate it.
--
David L. Greene
111 Park Street, Apt 6D
New Haven, CT 06511-5429
Tel 203-624-6860
Fax 203-624-9795
··············@home.com
"David L. Greene" <··············@home.com> writes:
> I have been programming for 10-12 yrs. I have always used MS-DOS the
> MSWindows environment programming in C, C++, basic(+modern variations). I
> have always wanted to learn LISP. I have learned AutoLISP which I understand
> is a kind of "broken" common lisp. I have been trying to find a real MSWin
> editor that uses lisp the way GNU Emacs or XEmacs does. These to editors are
> arcane and completely out of date. I can't remember when I had to use dir
> *.* to find a file. Which appears to be the way *Emacs works. Never mind the
> whacky file dialog. I realize that these may be fighting words in this group
> but, as much as I will probably be screamed at for saying it. It is a fact
> these apps are arcane and out of date.
Arcane? Certainly. Out of date? Not a chance.
The MS Windows world bends over backwards to make you happy in the first two
hours of use. Sometimes this even works out to making things easy for a couple
of days while you are learning the features. This strategy invariably leads down
a dangerous path in which your whole world can only be set up properly by 1000s
of mouse clicks.
Emacs really gives basically 0 to the new user. It does not inspire a sense of
"wow, this is really neat" to the uninitiated. This is a real pain. It hurts
to learn emacs because it is not immediately accessable in the first 2 hours, and
really it takes a few weeks before you have enough command over the help facilities
and how to use them, that you are over the hardest part of the learning curve
(although getting an emacs book can help decrease this).
If you are a programmer the first 2 hours is meaningless. The first week of use
means basically 0 when learning an editor/programming environment. I expect most
programmers spend 10s of hours a week coding, over months.
The amount of time I save by being able to edit/compile/checkin/checkout/checkout-merge/
lookup function definitions/find out who is calling a function/ etc, etc, etc all from
the same environment with a few key strokes, has completely overtaken the first 2 weeks of
learning. I expect that if you resign yourself to learning emacs you will find this
to be true as well.
As for finding a file, you have not found out how to use dired which does what you want
I expect ("C-x d" or "M-x dired"). This will let you browse directories using either the mouse
or the keyboard to open files, and accend/decend directories as well as a slew of other
things that you should probably read in the documentation (also try "M-x info").
P.S. I do my coding at work in an MS Windows environment with Emacs and ACL.
--
Gavin E. Mendel-Gleason
(let ((e-mail-address ·········@VGIHKRR.TKZ"))(loop with new-string = (make-string (length e-mail-address))
for count from 0 to (1- (length e-mail-address)) for char-code = (char-code (aref e-mail-address count))
for new-char-code = (if (and (> char-code 64)(< char-code 123))(+ (mod (+ 13 char-code) 52) 65) char-code)
do (setf (aref new-string count) (code-char new-char-code)) finally (return new-string)))
>What is out there that is a real MSWin app that I can
>write apps in LISP?
Have you tried Allegro CL? There is a version for windows with IDE which is
quite similar to VB IDE. You can find a trial version for windows on the
webpage: www.franz.com. Btw personally I think that it is really hard to get
better combination than emacs and Lisp, and it's worth to read stuff about
emacs to get as much as possible out of lisp. All materials are available on
www.gnu.org.
Regards,
J-
> I have been programming for 10-12 yrs. I have always used MS-DOS the
> MSWindows environment programming in C, C++, basic(+modern variations). I
> have always wanted to learn LISP. I have learned AutoLISP which I understand
> is a kind of "broken" common lisp. I have been trying to find a real MSWin
> editor that uses lisp the way GNU Emacs or XEmacs does. These to editors are
> arcane and completely out of date. I can't remember when I had to use dir
> *.* to find a file. Which appears to be the way *Emacs works. Never mind the
I'm a recent escapee from the DOS/Windows environment. It was
literally making me depressed. Every project faced the same old bugs
showing up the same old way. I started with Linux a few years ago
because I just couldn't stand Visual Basic, screwy Visual C++, lame
servers and expensive software anymore.
From a DOS/Windows perspective, some Unix-ish stuff looks decrepit and
more looks positively baroque. This is partially due to having the
assumption that good = fancy gui = popular = modern ground into you as
you run on the upgrade treadmill. As you become acclimated, the
interfaces become less relevant because you can choose those that suit
while you focus on the job at hand.
If your issue is with the clunky appearance of various interfaces and
weird assymetries, I suggest abandoning your preconceptions about how
things should look and act, dive in and work. Its a very different
culture and far more diverse than anything you can imagine in the
Windows world. Sometimes its strange and broken, but generally it
works very well.
I sympathize wrt Emacs. I found it frustrating at first because its
defintely not friendly to an inexperienced user. Thats because its
designed to help the more experienced user and then to get out of the
way. If you acclimate yourself to it, the payback is well worth the
effort- in the process you'll learn just how limiting and annoying
many aspects of Windows can be.
Gregm
* "David L. Greene" <··············@home.com>
> I have been trying to find a real MSWin editor that uses lisp the way GNU
> Emacs or XEmacs does. These to editors are arcane and completely out of
> date.
Um, this indicates a certain lack of investment in effort on your part.
You have indicated up front (thank you) that you are committed to the
Microsoft Weltanschauung, but the part of that commitment that I will not
accept or respect is that the rest of the world is wrong or that just
because it requires new investment on your part, that it is misdesigned.
You have _had_ to invest a tremendous amount of effort to grow into the
Microsoft Weltanschauung, but going about it like a Borg discovering Unix
is not conducive to your own development and happiness with Common Lisp.
> I can't remember when I had to use dir *.* to find a file. Which appears
> to be the way *Emacs works.
The keyword here is "appears". Just because you see a directory listing
does not mean your old scars have to be reopened and the Borg implants
have to be inserted all over again.
> Never mind the whacky file dialog.
I am quite sure that our excellent hospitality does not suffer from this.
You are quite welcome to insult what you do not know in order to ask for
help in becoming more used to it. Why, lots of tourists behave that way.
Few of them stay, but that is mostly because they really never left home.
> I realize that these may be fighting words in this group but, as much as
> I will probably be screamed at for saying it.
Well, contrary to your premature, prejudicial, and counterproductive
opinionating, _lots_ of Common Lisp people work with Windows these days.
You are not addressing a frigging "group", you are addressing _people_.
I realize that this may be hard for you Microsoft Borgs, but outside of
Redmond, WA, there is this thing called "individuals" that you can talk
to one on on one and who are not linked with the whole bloody Collective.
> It is a fact these apps are arcane and out of date.
Oh, Christ, you do not even know the difference between your own value
judgements and facts. Well, no wonder you are a Microsoft drone.
> If UNIX users and programmers feel that MSWin should rightly be ignored
> as a viable and real OS then ignore this message.
People who actually know how to use a system productively actually manage
to use it productively. Did that trivial fact shock you? It should not,
but it sounds like you needed to hear the obvious. You see, your lack of
knowledge is no match for their superior skills when to comes to making
statements about suitability.
> For all intents and purposes LISP is nonexistent in MSWin and therefore
> difficult to support.
Well, well, well. The tourist certainly knows a lot! Why, is he really
here to ask questions and perhaps learn something? No, no, no! _Our_
excellent tourist is here to complain about the food and drop his
cigarette butts on the street and he thinks every girl he sees is
included in the package-deal with the cheap hotel he also dislikes.
LOOK AROUND, YOU DIMWIT! IF YOU ASK QUESTIONS, WAIT FOR THE ANSWER!
> I WANT TO USE LISP NOT UNIX!!!!!!
I think that line would sound great in one of those televised diaper ads,
but that is probably because I think those ads are secretly funded by
population control centers, abortion clinics, and companies who sell
contraceptives.
> From what I have used of it it blows away all other languages.
Yes, it does. Lisp even makes it possible for _individuals_ who are not
part of the Borg Collective to enter the world of Microsoft and still be
productive, although working at about half their normal speed even after
a year of "assimilation". It would have been impossible for _me_ to
survive working with Windows if it were not for Common Lisp, but once I
got it installed, and Emacs, too, I was actually able to work with much
the same productivity as on real computers. (You _asked_ for this snide
remark, if you are not quite fully aware of your own behavior, OK?)
> What is out there that is a real MSWin app that I can write apps in LISP?
Oh, man! He says "app", but at least his spelling is reasonabaly OK.
> UNIX users will have no idea what I'm talking about, and I know this
> message will get me screamed at.
It is your insulting, demeaning, idiotic assumption that Unix users will
have no idea what you are talking about that that gets you screamed at,
if anything. Unix users _are_ much smarter than Windows users, so they
know both worlds. (They sort of have to, consider the massive lack of
skills and intelligence in the Windows world.) Just because _you_ know
only one world does not mean that anyone else suffers from the same
mental retardation and slow uptake of contrary information that you do.
> I hope that someone is listening.
To what? Another pathetic tourist who cannot figure out which way to
hold the map? Gimme a break. Here, let me show you the wonderful Egress.
> The only reason that I'm not running a UNIX pc now is because of the UNIX
> world bickering about a shrink wrap version in the early '90's when IBM,
> Microsoft, Various UNIX vendors were in a horse race to get a 32bit
> shrink wrap OS to market At that time Microsoft had NO advantage.
Oh, Christ, take it up with your shrink and get over it.
> MSWin won.
Right. There was but a _single_ race for all the computing needs of all
of mankind. It has been completed and the results are in. There are to
be no more races, no evolving computing needs, no more development and --
what was that word, again? -- no more innovation.
You know, or, well, of course you don't, but this is a true story about
marketing, so you might learn something about marketing and winning wars.
Pepsi once figured out that people consistently liked small sips of Pepsi
better than they liked small sips of Coca-Cola. Now, Pepsi is of course
so sweet and yucky that you could kill with it, but you never notice that
if you only drink small sips of it. Coca-Cola had long ago figured out
that the best way to keep their customers is to make them want another
bottle when they finish the one they started out with. Pepsi did not
have a chance, because once people taste the Real Thing, you simply do
not switch to some oversugared syrupy gunk. The question before the Borg
of Marketing (or vice versa) is now: How to lie about this convincingly?
It was brilliant! Stage tasting competitions. When your mouth is full
of all sorts of weird stuff, a dose of extra sweet-tasting sugar does you
well. That is, after all, why people eat candy. So if you gave people a
choice between a slightly bitter, great-tasting elixir and some candy on
a bottle, they would say the candy tasted better. Of course it did, and
it is in fact true. A small plastic cup of Coca-Cola does nobody any
good, but apparently, a small plastic cup of Pepsi does. The giant lie
was that people who liked small plastic cups of liquid candy would not
want to buy a 32-pack of 16oz bottles of the great elixir and guzzle it
down with lasting satisfaction and increased loyalty. This was a hard
lie to fight, because it was true: People preferred liquid candy in small
doses, but then again, it would not be all that smart marketing to tell
people that Coca-Cola had optimized _heavily_ for repeat purchase -- that
is the kind of thing that gets nicotine pushers into serious trouble.
Pepsi won on the meta-level: They removed focus from how great the _last_
drop out of your bottle tastes to how great the _first_ drop out of your
bottle testes. Setting the stage, they could make people believe in
their lie. The proof of that was that to fight this lie, Coca-Cola tried
to come up with something that would win on the stage set by Pepsi, and
taste better in small plastic cups to people who liked liquid candy. As
we all know, it was a _major_ disaster. Fully optimized for that first-
drop experience, where it did fare much better, it was godawful and you
could barely keep from recycling the bottle contents faster than the
bottle if you tried to down it all. They lost their loyal following on
phony Pepsi's stage, but recanted and brought back the real thing amidst
much furor and sense of betrayal, but what people remember is not what
they _should_ remember: the _Pepsi_ people are bastards, not for tricking
Coca-Cola into losing lots of money, but for being such a shallow bunch
that they actually thought first impressions would be _all_ that anyone
would ever care about. Now, there is much success to be had in the first
impressions business. Microsoft has built virtually its entire world
dominance (heehee) on first impressions, or actually _future_ first
impressions -- it is your _next_ first impression of the _next_ version
of Microsoft Fraud 8.0 that will be so massively great you wish you had a
whole pint of cold Coke to get rid of the bad taste of oversweetness.
If _all_ you are into is first impressions, you will remain a tourist no
matter where you go and no matter what you do. If you are interested in
settling down with anything at all, building loyalty or communities or
> Like it or hate it they won.
What Microsoft "won" was your personal integrity. You actually _believe_
that there was a fight, that everybody took part in it, that Microsoft
came out on top, and that everybody else are now losers. Microsoft "won"
a war of _unbelievably_ dirty marketing where the idea was not to win
anything at all in the actual fights, but to set the stage so they could
trick people, just like Pepsi did, into believing that _other_ companies
should be competing about _their_ first-impressions charade.
Microsoft has won exactly nothing. They are really good at marketing.
If their great teacher, Joseph Goebbels, had been able to learn from them
instead of the other way around, the world would have a slightly more
sinister ruler today than Bill Gates. Microsoft is under really serious
threat from Linux, which in my opinion has as its main impetus the vision
of the fall of Microsoft in the near future. Nobody in their right mind
would donate so much effort for free if it did not have a very tangible
reward in front of them. Microsoft has, through its massively fraudulent
practices and its evil, rivaling both the Evil Empire and the Third Reich
in propaganda and self-serving misinformation, set itself up as The Great
Enemy. Bill Gates, the neurotic nerd, is so hysterically paranoid in his
competitiveness that his only self-defense mechanism is to grab ever
_more_ control over other people instead of trying to grow a clue and get
the very simple idea that that is precisely why he is _losing_.
The key to relinquishing Microsoft's control over your life is to realize
that you do not have to accept their paranoid competitiveness. Companies
do not "win" major fights the way Microsofts wants you to believe they
do. Everything survives and thrives for a while if it is good, and then
it dies. They key is to get more out of what you do than you put in,
overall, but if you would not _accept_ 75% failure, you are quite simply
insane, influenced beyond repair by the Borg of Marketing who have been
pushing "success" and "winning" for decades. To do well and stay sane,
you need to make enough on the things you do well that you can afford not
to do everything only sufficiently well to get by. Microsoft's paranoid
competitiveness is a result of a personal philosophy that mediocrity can
"win" if it fights hard and long enough, but mediocrity can _never_ win.
Only people who are willing and _able_ to fail can win big. Bill Gates
is so _personally_ mortally afraid of losing that he _had_ to become the
most _brutal_ and most _dishonest_ leader in the world. Read his boring
yet revealing books -- not only does he not have more genuinely new ideas
than my cat, he is a poster boy for mediocrity gone bad. He is not that
smart, either -- he is just out to compete with and screw people and he
became _really_ good at it because it is not something good people want
to become good at. Bill Gates is what happens when a criminal, bad mind
does not get into _enough_ trouble in its youth.
Unfortunately, his exceptionally evil character is contagious. People
are no longer happy to make money, they must "win". Instead of being
good at what they do and better at it than their competition, they must
instead beat their competition senseless with propaganda, false moves,
ridiculous release schedules for vaporware, etc. The result is that
nobody who _could_ be really good at anything want to work with such
people. The computer business has become an arena for ridiculous hype
much worse than the movie industry or the car industry. It permeates
every level, down to the lowly programmer who hates VB and feels that he
has somehow "lost" because the behemoth has "won". But it is simply not
true. So many computer people believe that in order to get work, they
have to have skill X. It is as if the world suddenly saw a need for
plumbers and _everyone_ wanted to become a plumber. The only way to make
that happen would be to make a disastrously evil design in the public
infrastructure so that you would _need_ a billion plumbers. Now, who
would do that? What kind of person would want to create a world that was
so broken that it needed fixing all the time? The revengeful, hateful,
paranoid, hyper-competitive nerd with more psychopathic and antisocial
personality disorders than you could document in a lifetime: Bill Gates,
and for what reason? Nothing more than that he himself can make a buck
on other people's misery. Now, good people make money on other people's
desire for something better, too, but there is a difference between he
who profits on a misery he makes sure remains and he who profits on the
misery the misery he removes. The latter I can work with, and I would
not care all that much if the misery was a lie, either -- getting out of
any sort of misery is just great. But the former -- the kind of person
who makes sure that people _hope_ for something better they never get,
who tell them that they _ought_ to live in misery but that he is making
it "easier" for them (a.k.a. "computers are so hard to use, so you have
to use this retarded GUI I have developed to make it harder and slow you
down and never realize that I am lying through my teeth to you, but at
least I tell you it will make it easier, and so do all these important
people who also think computers are too hard for the idiot masses, as
they would lose billions of dollars and lots of political power if a lot
of people woke up"), who tell them that they cannot be _expected_ to deal
with the real issues, but have to deal with some moron version, those are
much better off dead. Unfortunately, they know it. Bad people _know_
they are bad people. It is good people who are always racked by doubt
and personal problems. Bad people are bad people because they do not
care, and the one person who cares the least on this planet is Bill Gates.
The worst part of Microsoft's marketing strategy, however, is, just like
Pepsi's self-defeating first-impressions-only game (I am sure you will
say that Coca-Cola has "won"), that we have reduced all evaluation of
computer needs and solutions to first impressions and what some may
consider "user-friendliness" but which is really "skill-defeating" to the
point where _you_ have serious emotional issues with learning new tools,
even though you want to get out of a situation you admit to hate. What
do you expect? That somebody will magically change the world for you?
If so, it is the attitude that made Microsoft possible. Like a sweet
first taste and impression, Microsoft lured you into drinking the whole
bottle of Pepsi, and of course you are sick to your stomach from it, but
since you think that first impressions are what counts, you cannot fathom
that they do not count at all.
Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. NO! is the answer.
> Is LISP on the same road?
No.
> Is it so tied to the OS that it can't cross over?
*laugh* Lisp has never been tied to any operating system.
> I HATE BASIC!!!! I USE BASIC EVERYDAY!!!!!
Awwww. Give the man a Pepsi.
> We are still early in the overall history of what will be the
> WorldWideWeb. LISP is HIGHLY appropriate for this medium, which is why I
> have a renewed interest, but it has to be EASILY(use, not the act of
> downloading) available in the LEADING OS in the industry. Like that OS
> or hate it.
Check out some other vendor than Microsoft. Prepare to have your mind
explode, as your incredibly perverted view of what the world looks like
will probably be in for a really serious blow. There are many serious
offerings of really high-quality Common Lisp products for Windows.
Now, let's sit back and see how you blow up. This could be fun. But
surprise us all and show that you can actually _think_, and maybe some
Lisp people will help you figure out what your _real_ needs are.
///
Erik Naggum wrote:
> [ ... lots and lots.... and lots..... and lots, of vitriol ...]
Jeeeeezzzz Erik,
I agree with you and all that, but you should spend your considerable
talent on people you can save. Some smart guy once said he wouldn't
waste his energy on someone whose opinion he didn't respect. I
respectfully (really!) suggest you do the same rather than elevating
your blood pressure.
If the guy is a troll, just say "you are talking like a troll would, but
if you are sincere, try this...". Then go write some lisp in emacs on a
FreeBSD box, laugh at how silly people can be and spend your time with
people who didn't drink the Kool-Aid. :)
I read from your home URL that you can't tolerate incompetence. That's
ok, but might I suggest laughing at it, avoiding it and going on?
Otherwise you're just wading amongst the swine and casting pearls, so to
speak. :)
Eric
FWIW, Mr. Greene posits arguments I find to be overstated and even
self-defeating. But since programming is just as sociological as it is
scientific (often more-so given the business underpinnings of the
enterprise), he needs to be surrounded by whatever makes him
comfortable, as do the rest of us.
Since lisp is expression-based, not line-oriented, emacs or something
similar is the natural choice. All the StarTrek scenes with LaForge
never having to type a letter aside, I find that anything which takes my
hands from the keyboard wastes my time. Anything I can't configure
wastes my time. Anything I can't extend (you guessed it) wastes my time.
While one might want different key-bindings, or a keyboard that better
supported expression editing, I can't imagine anything doing what emacs
does without being just about like emacs.
And that's enough of my energy for the evening...
--
US Supreme Court hearing 00-836
GEORGE W. BUSH, Petitioner, v. PALM BEACH COUNTY CANVASSING BOARD
Justice (Scalia?) to Mr. Klock (representing Katherine Harris):
20 and therefore, I guess, whether we win, whether your side,
21 the side you're supporting wins or loses, it doesn't
22 change that, and I guess that's moot, but my question is,
* Eric Moss <········@alltel.net>
> I agree with you and all that, but you should spend your considerable
> talent on people you can save. Some smart guy once said he wouldn't
> waste his energy on someone whose opinion he didn't respect. I
> respectfully (really!) suggest you do the same rather than elevating
> your blood pressure.
I think you should be less concerned with my blood pressure than your
own. This is general advice to people who become concerned about other
people and just have to believe that others feel certain ways. In
general, they do _not_ feel the same way you do, and the closer you look
the more you extrapolate, the less the match. Respecting this is a good
start in trying to deal with the _ideas_ that some people try, largely in
vain, sadly, to communicate to others, with humor, emotion, and rhetoric.
> I read from your home URL that you can't tolerate incompetence. That's
> ok, but might I suggest laughing at it, avoiding it and going on?
So you failed to laugh at my reference to the Borg and all the other
humurous references in my article. Perhaps this should be a strong hint
that you are unable to read other people's emotions and should stick to
try to figure out what they are _saying_? It is not my fault that you
read what I write with a dead serious attitude. Perhaps this lightening
up suggestion is better served closer to home?
Generally, I am not interested in the particular _person_ I respond to.
I have yet to figure out why people are so interested in mine, but I wish
they would leave speculations, from my blood pressure to whatever else
they have a huge desire to fantasize about, alone.
///
Eric Moss wrote:
> Erik Naggum wrote:
> > [ ... lots and lots.... and lots..... and lots, of vitriol ...]
>
> Jeeeeezzzz Erik,
>
> I agree with you and all that, but you should spend your considerable
> talent on people you can save. Some smart guy once said he wouldn't
> waste his energy on someone whose opinion he didn't respect. I
> respectfully (really!) suggest you do the same rather than elevating
> your blood pressure.
...
> I read from your home URL that you can't tolerate incompetence. That's
> ok, but might I suggest laughing at it, avoiding it and going on?
> Otherwise you're just wading amongst the swine and casting pearls, so to
> speak. :)
But if Erik had done that, I wouldn't just have had a couple
of my most enjoyable minutes for a while reading his article.
You surely didn't think he wrote all that just for Mr Greene
to read, did you? (And go on, admit it. You enjoyed reading it
too. I hope.)
--
Gareth McCaughan ················@pobox.com
.sig under construc
I want to give thanks to the responses to my original article. Frustrated,
though I am, I will continue to learn LISP in spite of it's current
interface. Thanks to all. I've read too many great things about it to give
up.
In good conscience I think it necessary to write about the frustration using
the current interface for *Emacs/LISP. I know that Microsoft is BORG. I find
it's tactics abhorrent, but I can remember that I came on board because of
what was it's original concept was. Now it's on 80%(or some huge percentage)
of the PC's in the world. In the WORLD people not New Haven not Connecticut
not The United States of America the WORLD. I may hate Microsoft and it's
tactics, but something that some of us thought might never happen is here or
appears to be close at hand. I realize that close at hand is something akin
to crying wolf.(CompUServe forums circa 1990 ahhhh the BBS) A general common
interface with all it's warts flaws and genuine evils.
What frustrates me most about MS is that it didn't have to resort to the
tactics it did. I can remember when getting a Word Processor meant learning
a whole new way to deal with file management. Getting a new spreadsheet
meant learning that whole environment. Now when I get a new program to do
something ALL I have to learn is what ever the program does! Word process,
spreadsheet, whatever. IBM shot itself in the foot when it said "Our
machines are the only ones that will have OS2" If you'll remember the first
version. I do, my father worked at IBM for 30 years. However when IBM tried
to do this I thought they were suffering from megalomania and moved on. UNIX
could do nothing but bicker about who was going to be the shrink-wrap
version. I hoped UNIX would be the one. At that time Mr. Bill was WAY out on
a limb and I thought and still think that his statements and objectives with
the OS were correct. I feel the need to state again I DO NOT SUPPORT THE
SUBSEQUENT TACTICS. Microsoft DID NOT NEED THEM no one else appeared to have
their eye on the ball!!! Don't forget at that time Microsoft had angered
what appeared to be the computer god MS had NO unfair advantage then. They
wrote and still write stuff riddled with error. Still when I buy accounting
software the only thing I need to learn is how to do accounting. I don't
need to learn how to use my mouse all over again. I don't have to learn how
to save a file all over again. I'm sorry if I'm considered a bonehead for
liking what here is considered GUI-fluff. Much of it makes my day go easier
when I take control over it. Yea there's allot of stuff I have to turn
off/on in order to gain more control but, at least until I get aquatinted,
that stuff is taken care of and yes is simple to use. Is it really so bad to
expect a program to be friendly in order to get started? I've got no problem
with shutting things off because they get in my way. Boy it sure is nice to
have a helping hand until I know what I need to shut off or turn on as the
case maybe. Why am I such a jerk for wanting to be "bedazzeled" with my
first aquintance with a program? Is is so bad to want an OS that the
overwhelming majority of people use world wide?
I do respect and genuinely thank all those that have written to keep
plugging away with the arcane interface. Thanks I will.
This LISP is it powerful? Why then can't it be friendly to new users from
MSWin? For something so powerful it should be a snap to do and shut off when
appropriate! AVANGALIZE people not with words but with a friendly interface.
Won't that spread the word or does everyone here think that it can't survive
world wide massive popularity? I thought one of the things about it was to
share!
--
David L. Greene
111 Park Street, Apt 6D
New Haven, CT 06511-5429
Tel 203-624-6860
Fax 203-624-9795
··············@home.com
"David L. Greene" <··············@home.com> wrote in message ·····························@news1.rdc1.ct.home.com...
> <BIG SNIP>
> This LISP is it powerful? Why then can't it be friendly to new users from
> MSWin? For something so powerful it should be a snap to do and shut off when
> appropriate! AVANGALIZE people not with words but with a friendly interface.
I must admit to some sympathy here. People get exposed to different technologies when
learning computing now days. It's just a fact of life that some people are more
comfortable with the more GUI-oriented philosophy (usually of MSWin) vs a more
command line oriented philosophy (usually of Unix). (Note this doesn't mean Unix can't
do GUI, or to some extent that MSWin can't do command line.) There's no right or
wrong, and even if there is (perhaps time and motion studies in carefully controlled
experiments could yield data, but its not really worth it) any such issues are swamped
by matters of familiarity. If someone is a native of language A (I mean human languages
like English, French, German, etc) and doesn't learn language B until they are 30, then
they are unlikely to instinctively use language B to do mental calculations in their head.
So what I'm trying to say is that it is a fact that there is a growing (I would think)
percentage of the programming population with a predeliction for GUI-oriented
environments and it would be good if Lisp IDEs at least made as many nods in that
direction as practical (a Lisp environment is so configurable that the stuff would be easy
to turn off anyway). Here's a small example for LispWorks on MSWin. When you
enter the debugger loop on error you see a convention Lisp debug session. It is possible
at this point to go up to the menu bar for the listener and, under the Debug menu, select
"Listener/Start GUI Debugger" which then pops up quite a nice GUI interface to
move up and down the stack, examine variables, etc. Now, maybe this is me being
blind, or incomplete documentation, but I would love it if I could configure the system
to automatically kick me into the GUI Debugger on an error. This is an example of why
I have some sympathy with David's position because (IMHO) there are lots of places
in the Lisp environments on MSWin where just that little bit of extra development effort
to implement small things like my last example could go a long way to creating an
environment that is more familiar and comfortable for those of us that do lean more
towards the GUI persuasion,
Julian.
P.S. David. I hope you have investigated what _is_ out there for Lisp on MSWin.
Old threads here have the question a lot. I suggest you at least check out
LispWorks (www.xanalys.com) , ACL (www.franz.com) and Corman
(www.corman.net). At least with the first two you might be surprised to find
some quite sophisticated GUI tools like class browsers, function call trees,
etc. For what it's worth, my personal favorite is LispWorks.
"David L. Greene" <··············@home.com> writes:
> [...] Is it really so bad to
> expect a program to be friendly in order to get
> started? [..]
Readen somewhere about windows:
"I hate this goddamn OS. They try to make everything so &%*#ing
easy, but as soon as I try to do something that they didn't
anticipate, it's a nightmare. I want my Unix box back."
With windows you can save one hour within the
first eigth, but you will lose at least half hour
per day since then.
--
Eduardo Mu�oz
In article <························@news1.rdc1.ct.home.com>, "David L. Greene" <··············@home.com> wrote:
> I know that Microsoft is BORG. I find it's tactics abhorrent, but
> I can remember that I came on board because of what was it's
> original concept was.
Do you remember that that original concept was MacOS?
--
<keke at mac com>
····@ma.ccom (Takehiko Abe) writes:
>
> Do you remember that that original concept was MacOS?
Actually, that 'original' concept was preceded by the Xerox Alto and
Star. Whether these were really the first, I don't know, but they are
often touted as such.
For some nice pictures:
http://members.fortunecity.com/pcmuseum/alto.html
Back to CL.
Cheers,
Erik
--
/* I'd just like to take this moment to point out that C has all
the expressive power of two dixie cups and a string.
*/ -- Jamie Zawinski from the xkeycaps source
In article <··············@xs4all.nl>, Erik Winkels <·······@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> ····@ma.ccom (Takehiko Abe) writes:
> >
> > Do you remember that that original concept was MacOS?
>
> Actually, that 'original' concept was preceded by the Xerox Alto and
> Star.
I know the story. The point is that Microsoft Windows' 'original
concept' was to imitate the MacOS. Also OP talked about word
processors and spreadsheets with nice GUI. IIRC both MS Word and
MS Excel originally run on MacOS.
> Whether these were really the first, I don't know, but they are
> often touted as such.
I thought they were the first up until I heard of LispMs.
> Back to CL.
yes yes.
--
<keke at mac com>
"David L. Greene" schrieb:
> I want to give thanks to the responses to my original article. Frustrated,
> though I am, I will continue to learn LISP in spite of it's current
> interface. Thanks to all. I've read too many great things about it to give
> up.
I would rather suggest drscheme for the beginning because common lisp for a
starter is quite strict and way to big.
Scheme is just a simple Lisp-1 like autolisp, the vars will behave as you
might
expect them to behave (just get used to lexvars) and the superb PLT package is
free
and has everything you need. only the syntax might annoy a bit.
after some time you can come back to real lisp.
I would recommend clisp and corman, later if you want to spend money:
lww and acl.
corman is just starting with the gui tools. see the recent release. (even java
swing!)
for the editor part I can partially see your frustration. I experienced the
same,
being used to multiedit pro and vital lisp, which have much more high-end
features
than emacs. but seriously doing lisp and html and perl and php and ... there's
no way
around it.
I run circles with xemacs around my colleagues with their stupid editors.
They just don't get it. just for fancy multi-line regex multi-file
search/replace
I still have to use multiedit. I'm too lazy to write that elisp code.
--
Reini Urban
http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/acadwiki/AutoLispFaq
"David L. Greene" <··············@home.com> writes:
> I have been programming for 10-12 yrs. I have always used MS-DOS the
> MSWindows environment programming in C, C++, basic(+modern variations). I
> have always wanted to learn LISP. I have learned AutoLISP which I understand
> is a kind of "broken" common lisp. I have been trying to find a real MSWin
> editor that uses lisp the way GNU Emacs or XEmacs does. These to editors are
> arcane and completely out of date. I can't remember when I had to use dir
> *.* to find a file.
I still have to find a MSWin editor that does indentation "the right
way": i.e. the way (X)Emacs does, in any conceivable Programming
Language.
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ========================================================
NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
719 Broadway 12th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122
New York, NY 10003, USA http://bioinformatics.cat.nyu.edu
"Hello New York! We'll do what we can!"
Bill Murray in `Ghostbusters'.
Marco Antoniotti <·······@cs.nyu.edu> writes:
> I still have to find a MSWin editor that does indentation "the right
> way": i.e. the way (X)Emacs does, in any conceivable Programming
> Language.
Well, that's an easy one, FSF Emacs. Its NT Emacs port has been a
nice, Windows-native editor for some time now :)
>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas F Burdick <···@conquest.OCF.Berkeley.EDU> writes:
Thomas> Marco Antoniotti <·······@cs.nyu.edu> writes:
>> I still have to find a MSWin editor that does indentation "the right
>> way": i.e. the way (X)Emacs does, in any conceivable Programming
>> Language.
Thomas> Well, that's an easy one, FSF Emacs. Its NT Emacs port has been a
Thomas> nice, Windows-native editor for some time now :)
Likewise for XEmacs, although perhaps not quite as long.
Ray
Marco Antoniotti wrote:
> I still have to find a MSWin editor that does indentation "the right
> way": i.e. the way (X)Emacs does, in any conceivable Programming
> Language.
You can run FSF Emacs, XEmacs and Vim on Windows. Won't any
of those do what you want?
--
Gareth McCaughan ················@pobox.com
.sig under construc
················@pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan) writes:
> Marco Antoniotti wrote:
>
> > I still have to find a MSWin editor that does indentation "the right
> > way": i.e. the way (X)Emacs does, in any conceivable Programming
> > Language.
>
> You can run FSF Emacs, XEmacs and Vim on Windows. Won't any
> of those do what you want?
In all fairness, I'm sure that by "MSWin editor", Marco meant an
editor from Windows, not just one that runs on it. When I posted
about NT Emacs, I did so partly in jest, figuring that he probably
knew about it. And even though it does work on Windows (and in my
expeience [a little old, XEmacs on NT may be more mature now]
integrates with it better than XEmacs -- and I would assume vim), it's
still not a very Windows-y piece of software. Both Emacsen and Vim
are ports to Windows by people stuck in a hostile environment.
Marco Antoniotti <·······@cs.nyu.edu> writes:
> "David L. Greene" <··············@home.com> writes:
>
> > I have been programming for 10-12 yrs. I have always used MS-DOS
> > the MSWindows environment programming in C, C++, basic(+modern
> > variations). I have always wanted to learn LISP. I have learned
> > AutoLISP which I understand is a kind of "broken" common lisp. I
> > have been trying to find a real MSWin editor that uses lisp the
> > way GNU Emacs or XEmacs does. These to editors are arcane and
> > completely out of date. I can't remember when I had to use dir *.*
> > to find a file.
>
> I still have to find a MSWin editor that does indentation "the right
> way": i.e. the way (X)Emacs does, in any conceivable Programming
> Language.
On the other hand, and contrary to what has been said earlier
here: Emacs And XEmacs both provide the common functionality provided by
Windows editors. That is, the arrow keys work as expected :-)
--
Raymond Wiker
·············@fast.no
Raymond Wiker schrieb:
> On the other hand, and contrary to what has been said earlier
> here: Emacs And XEmacs both provide the common functionality provided by
> Windows editors. That is, the arrow keys work as expected :-)
and with pc-select / cua-mode even more.
but the fonts not. (doing bold without switching sizes like quieking mice
other than ugly courier on windows)
XEmacs - contrary to its name - is a very fine windows editor,
even with mswin-like menu accelerator descriptions.
--
Reini Urban
http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/home/rurban/
>>>>> "DLG" == David L Greene <··············@home.com> writes:
DLG> ... I have been trying to find a real MSWin
DLG> editor that uses lisp the way GNU Emacs or XEmacs does. These
DLG> to editors are arcane and completely out of date. I can't
DLG> remember when I had to use dir *.* to find a file. Which
DLG> appears to be the way *Emacs works.
No it isn't, and emacs does tell you that in the tutorial that comes up
when it starts.
DLG> ... Let me make clear that
DLG> ALL this is from a MSWin perspective. If UNIX users and
DLG> programmers feel that MSWin should rightly be ignored as a
DLG> viable and real OS then ignore this message.
So what do you want your editor to do? I will give you an example.
I occasionally have to use Visual C, and I will tell you specifically
what bothers me in _its_ file dialogue:
It takes a minimum of three mouse clicks to open a file, if you are in
the right directory and the file type is .c*. It takes more if the
file is in a different directory and has a different extension. It
appears I can only have one file dialogue open and the damn thing
grabs the focus for the application so I cannot even attempt to have
another one. I tried hitting help to find out if it really was
designed to be that way but you cannot do that with the mouse due to
the help link on the main bar being inactive. F1 and the little ? on
the window work, though, and bring up an inane help box that tells me
globbing is broken (* won't get you all the files because '.' is
somehow special even though multiple .'s are allowed in filenames) and
some useless info about saving (which I cannot even do from that
window). At this point the help box has the focus and and the only
thing it will do with it is to make itself disappear. Oh BTW, this
very pretty and pretty useless file find dialogue also takes up an
unresonable amount of screen real estate to give me an open button and
something to type a filename in. This bugs me so much that I want to
customize it out. So I close the dialogue, and hit help/search, which
tells me I need to reinstall MSDN. The latter bit is probably my
fault (skimping on space during installation). But I doubt very much
it would have let me customize the file dialogs. Now, please tell me
if I am wrong and tell us what you do not like in the way emacs does
this same thing. It took me about 10 minutes to go through this
exercise. So maybe you could spare the time to do the same for emacs.
DLG> [...] in the early '90's when IBM, Microsoft, Various UNIX
DLG> vendors were in a horse race to get a 32bit shrink wrap OS to
DLG> market At that time Microsoft had NO advantage. MSWin won. [...]
Huh? Would that "no advantage" be the very innovative scheme they
cooked up that enabled them to charge per machine shipped for MS-DOS
even when the machine did not have MS-DOS? (I think they got sued
and settled).
cheers,
BM