From: Joseph
Subject: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <a034c269.0201300751.5b514462@posting.google.com>
I'm basically a lisp newbie.  I had a little exposure at
University, but I don't remember a whole lot.  I would
like recommendations on Lisp environments, both in
Unix and Windows.

I believe I've settled on CLisp as my introductory Lisp
implementation.  I would like to be able to use it in
both Unix and Windows.  My Unix environment doesn't
seem like it will be much of a problem, but I'd like
suggestions anyway.

MS Windows is a different story, since use of Lisp is
command line intensive.  In Unix I have good terminals
(xterm and dtterm (Solaris)) to live in.  I consider
these to be good terminals since I have mouse support,
basically meaning I can easily copy and paste).

So how does the lisp community in general prefer to use
Lisp in MS Windows?

From: Tim Bradshaw
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <ey3d6zrvnle.fsf@cley.com>
* joedornisch  wrote:
> So how does the lisp community in general prefer to use
> Lisp in MS Windows?

I treat Windows (and to a lesser extent Unix) as a platform to run
emacs, and then all interaction with Lisp I do through that.  Ilisp
works pretty much the same on both platforms I think, so once you have
emacs working then you are home & dry.

--tim
From: Nils Goesche
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <a395g9$16cmru$4@ID-125440.news.dfncis.de>
In article <····························@posting.google.com>, Joseph wrote:
> I believe I've settled on CLisp as my introductory Lisp
> implementation.  I would like to be able to use it in
> both Unix and Windows.
> 
> MS Windows is a different story, since use of Lisp is
> command line intensive.  In Unix I have good terminals
> (xterm and dtterm (Solaris)) to live in.  I consider
> these to be good terminals since I have mouse support,
> basically meaning I can easily copy and paste).

I'd recommend using Emacs both with Windows and Unix as a frontend.
I have never tried using ILISP under Windows, but I guess it works,
too.  That way you have basically the same interface under both
OS's and also a much more comfortable one than bare xterm.

Oops, yes: ILISP is an extra package that doesn't ship with Emacs.

Regards,
-- 
Nils Goesche
"Don't ask for whom the <CTRL-G> tolls."

PGP key ID 0x42B32FC9
From: Thomas F. Burdick
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <xcvhep3r74j.fsf@apocalypse.OCF.Berkeley.EDU>
Nils Goesche <······@cartan.de> writes:

> In article <····························@posting.google.com>, Joseph wrote:
> > I believe I've settled on CLisp as my introductory Lisp
> > implementation.  I would like to be able to use it in
> > both Unix and Windows.
> > 
> > MS Windows is a different story, since use of Lisp is
> > command line intensive.  In Unix I have good terminals
> > (xterm and dtterm (Solaris)) to live in.  I consider
> > these to be good terminals since I have mouse support,
> > basically meaning I can easily copy and paste).
> 
> I'd recommend using Emacs both with Windows and Unix as a frontend.
> I have never tried using ILISP under Windows, but I guess it works,
> too.  That way you have basically the same interface under both
> OS's and also a much more comfortable one than bare xterm.
> 
> Oops, yes: ILISP is an extra package that doesn't ship with Emacs.

Does anyone know of a good step-by-step howto on getting Emacs and
ILISP running on Windows?  A friend of mine tried and tried (and
cursed ILISP for wanting him to have Make installed on Windows), and
eventually gave up and installed Debian.  Good choice, bad reason :)

-- 
           /|_     .-----------------------.                        
         ,'  .\  / | No to Imperialist war |                        
     ,--'    _,'   | Wage class war!       |                        
    /       /      `-----------------------'                        
   (   -.  |                               
   |     ) |                               
  (`-.  '--.)                              
   `. )----'                               
From: Will Deakin
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <a39kav$1ge$1@newsreaderm1.core.theplanet.net>
Thomas F. Burdick wrote in message ...
>Does anyone know of a good step-by-step howto on getting Emacs and
>ILISP running on Windows?
If you use xemacs, the packages system does a lot of this for you. The ilisp
package is a bit old -- and when I get time -- like in the next week or so -- I
will update it.

My concern is that there are some, ahem, issues with the way paths are passed
from emacs to the inferior lisp. I have a hack to sort this but would be open to
suggestions.

Best Regards,

Will
From: Dr. Edmund Weitz
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <m3g04n4p46.fsf@bird.agharta.de>
···@apocalypse.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) writes:

> Does anyone know of a good step-by-step howto on getting Emacs and
> ILISP running on Windows?  A friend of mine tried and tried (and
> cursed ILISP for wanting him to have Make installed on Windows), and
> eventually gave up and installed Debian.  Good choice, bad reason :)

Hmm, the last time that I used Emacs/ILISP on Windows I had cygwin
available, but IIRC the 'make' stuff is only about byte-compiling the
Elisp files (and concatenate them to get one big .elc file), so you
could do this manually from within Emacs, right?

Edi.
From: Thaddeus L Olczyk
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <3c585273.269500562@nntp.interaccess.com>
On 30 Jan 2002 20:26:17 +0100, ···@agharta.de (Dr. Edmund Weitz)
wrote:

>···@apocalypse.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) writes:
>
>> Does anyone know of a good step-by-step howto on getting Emacs and
>> ILISP running on Windows?  A friend of mine tried and tried (and
>> cursed ILISP for wanting him to have Make installed on Windows), and
>> eventually gave up and installed Debian.  Good choice, bad reason :)
>
>Hmm, the last time that I used Emacs/ILISP on Windows I had cygwin
>available, but IIRC the 'make' stuff is only about byte-compiling the
>Elisp files (and concatenate them to get one big .elc file), so you
>could do this manually from within Emacs, right?
>
>Edi.
I just installed ilisp on Windows.
You have to go in and modify the make file with lots of crap.
And you do need cygwin.
It sort of pisses me off because I like to setup my emacssetup so that
I can extract it from the CVS repository where I keep it, edit one
file, run one batch script to get it compiled.
( Then I setup $home/.emacs to point to the installation
directory/base file. ) 
Having to manually edit things bitches that up, and pisses me off.
From: Will Deakin
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <a39kvh$1qi$1@newsreaderm1.core.theplanet.net>
Thaddeus L Olczyk wrote:

>I just installed ilisp on Windows.
>You have to go in and modify the make file with lots of crap.
>And you do need cygwin.

No, if you use xemacs this is not true.

>Having to manually edit things bitches that up, and pisses me off.
(sigh). What can I say? Maybe a little Nietzsche ? 'What does not destroy me
makes me stronger,'

;)w
From: Geoff Summerhayes
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <a9A68.8838$2x2.360111@news3.calgary.shaw.ca>
"Will Deakin" <···········@hotmail.com> wrote in message
·················@newsreaderm1.core.theplanet.net...
> Thaddeus L Olczyk wrote:
>
> >I just installed ilisp on Windows.
> >You have to go in and modify the make file with lots of crap.
> >And you do need cygwin.
>
> No, if you use xemacs this is not true.
>
> >Having to manually edit things bitches that up, and pisses me off.
> (sigh). What can I say? Maybe a little Nietzsche ? 'What does not destroy me
> makes me stronger,'

Phew...I've managed to get ilisp running (xemacs/winNT/clisp)
To get the HS working, I replaced hyperspec.el with
hyperspec-barlow.el and modified hyperspec-lookup-lisp
  from
(thing-at-point 'line)
  to
(remove ?\n (thing-at-point 'line))
with appropriate changes in my init.el, of course.

The rest of the problems I encountered all seemed to
stem from the fact that expand-file-name doesn't care
whether the result contains slashes of backslashes.
I did things the hard way and replaced every occurrence
  of
(expand-file-name ...)
  with
(map 'string #'(lambda (c) (if (char-equal c ?\\) ?/ c))
    (expand-file-name ...))

Almost certainly overkill, I expect some of these calls
never actually pass a string from ilisp to the inferior
lisp process.

Perhaps putting in hook point between the creation of
the pathname and it's export out of ilisp would help.
Either that, or rewrite xemacs so that expand-file-name
uses only slashes.

Geoff
From: Dr. Edmund Weitz
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <m3u1t337u6.fsf@bird.agharta.de>
······@interaccess.com (Thaddeus L Olczyk) writes:

> On 30 Jan 2002 20:26:17 +0100, ···@agharta.de (Dr. Edmund Weitz)
> wrote:
> 
> >···@apocalypse.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) writes:
> >
> >> Does anyone know of a good step-by-step howto on getting Emacs
> >> and ILISP running on Windows?  A friend of mine tried and tried
> >> (and cursed ILISP for wanting him to have Make installed on
> >> Windows), and eventually gave up and installed Debian.  Good
> >> choice, bad reason :)
> >
> >Hmm, the last time that I used Emacs/ILISP on Windows I had cygwin
> >available, but IIRC the 'make' stuff is only about byte-compiling
> >the Elisp files (and concatenate them to get one big .elc file), so
> >you could do this manually from within Emacs, right?
> >
> >Edi.
> I just installed ilisp on Windows.  You have to go in and modify the
> make file with lots of crap.  And you do need cygwin.  It sort of
> pisses me off because I like to setup my emacssetup so that I can
> extract it from the CVS repository where I keep it, edit one file,
> run one batch script to get it compiled.  ( Then I setup
> $home/.emacs to point to the installation directory/base file. )
> Having to manually edit things bitches that up, and pisses me off.

So you're pissed off? Fine - either don't use it or enhance it
yourself and submit your patches to the maintainers. It's free, open
source software, you didn't pay for it and nobody urged you to use it,
so I see no reason why you should be pissed off.

Apart from that I see only these three relevant lines in ILISP's
makefile:

  compile:
          (cd extra; $(LN) -f $(HyperSpec) hyperspec.el; cd ..)
          $(EMACS) -batch -l ilisp-mak.el
  
I.e. if you don't count the HyperSpec stuff, you just have to ask
Emacs to execute ilisp-mak.el. Where's the problem?

Edi.
From: Thomas F. Burdick
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <xcvofjbs80i.fsf@famine.OCF.Berkeley.EDU>
···@agharta.de (Dr. Edmund Weitz) writes:

> Apart from that I see only these three relevant lines in ILISP's
> makefile:
> 
>   compile:
>           (cd extra; $(LN) -f $(HyperSpec) hyperspec.el; cd ..)
>           $(EMACS) -batch -l ilisp-mak.el
>   
> I.e. if you don't count the HyperSpec stuff, you just have to ask
> Emacs to execute ilisp-mak.el. Where's the problem?

Okay, so it's not too bad then.  You could probably even generate the
info pages using Emacs itself.  Maybe some charitable
Windows/Emacs/ILISP user wants to write an elisp program to build
ilisp, and write quick instructions on how to use it?  I don't use
Windows, or I'd do this myself, just out of the interest of Lisp
evangelism.  In fact, I might write up the elisp tonight, but I
wouldn't be able to check that it worked on Windows very easily.  Or,
I suppose the other answer is "use XEmacs".  Maybe I should move this
to the ilisp list :)

-- 
           /|_     .-----------------------.                        
         ,'  .\  / | No to Imperialist war |                        
     ,--'    _,'   | Wage class war!       |                        
    /       /      `-----------------------'                        
   (   -.  |                               
   |     ) |                               
  (`-.  '--.)                              
   `. )----'                               
From: Will Deakin
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <a39kp1$1nh$1@newsreaderm1.core.theplanet.net>
Dr. Edmund Weitz wrote:
>but IIRC the 'make' stuff is only about byte-compiling the
>Elisp files
That is the default make, yes. (What I mean by this is that you can do stuff
like 'make clean' which also tidies up old fasl files).

>(and concatenate them to get one big .elc file),
Sort of. IIRC this is a way of speeding up loading -- and not actually
necessary.

> so you could do this manually from within Emacs, right?
Yes. There is some other stuff, like the documentation that wouldn't get
build -- but basically yes.

:)w
From: Marco Antoniotti
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <y6c7kpsud5p.fsf@octagon.mrl.nyu.edu>
···@apocalypse.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) writes:

> Nils Goesche <······@cartan.de> writes:
> 
> > In article <····························@posting.google.com>, Joseph wrote:
> > > I believe I've settled on CLisp as my introductory Lisp
> > > implementation.  I would like to be able to use it in
> > > both Unix and Windows.
> > > 
> > > MS Windows is a different story, since use of Lisp is
> > > command line intensive.  In Unix I have good terminals
> > > (xterm and dtterm (Solaris)) to live in.  I consider
> > > these to be good terminals since I have mouse support,
> > > basically meaning I can easily copy and paste).
> > 
> > I'd recommend using Emacs both with Windows and Unix as a frontend.
> > I have never tried using ILISP under Windows, but I guess it works,
> > too.  That way you have basically the same interface under both
> > OS's and also a much more comfortable one than bare xterm.
> > 
> > Oops, yes: ILISP is an extra package that doesn't ship with Emacs.
> 
> Does anyone know of a good step-by-step howto on getting Emacs and
> ILISP running on Windows?  A friend of mine tried and tried (and
> cursed ILISP for wanting him to have Make installed on Windows), and
> eventually gave up and installed Debian.  Good choice, bad reason :)

He could have produced a NMAKE file. Now, *that* would have been
helpful.

Aside from that, there are a number of problems having any "inferior"
program running under Windows.  AFAIK, this is not a problem peculiar
to ILISP.  Then again, I am not such a big Windows user, so any
contribution is welcome.

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'.
From: Raymond Wiker
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <863d0nj0el.fsf@raw.grenland.fast.no>
···········@yahoo.com (Joseph) writes:

> I'm basically a lisp newbie.  I had a little exposure at
> University, but I don't remember a whole lot.  I would
> like recommendations on Lisp environments, both in
> Unix and Windows.
> 
> I believe I've settled on CLisp as my introductory Lisp
> implementation.  I would like to be able to use it in
> both Unix and Windows.  My Unix environment doesn't
> seem like it will be much of a problem, but I'd like
> suggestions anyway.
> 
> MS Windows is a different story, since use of Lisp is
> command line intensive.  In Unix I have good terminals
> (xterm and dtterm (Solaris)) to live in.  I consider
> these to be good terminals since I have mouse support,
> basically meaning I can easily copy and paste).
> 
> So how does the lisp community in general prefer to use
> Lisp in MS Windows?

        I think the combination of (X)Emacs and Ilisp should work well
on both platforms, and should certainly be much more comfortable to
work with than terminal windows --- with or without some sort of
command line editor.

-- 
Raymond Wiker                        Mail:  ·············@fast.no
Senior Software Engineer             Web:   http://www.fast.no/
Fast Search & Transfer ASA           Phone: +47 23 01 11 60
P.O. Box 1677 Vika                   Fax:   +47 35 54 87 99
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Try FAST Search: http://alltheweb.com/
From: Will Deakin
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <3C581AFD.80108@hotmail.com>
Raymond Wiker wrote:

>         I think the combination of (X)Emacs and Ilisp should work well
> on both platforms, and should certainly be much more comfortable to
> work with than terminal windows --- with or without some sort of
> command line editor.

I'm aware of some reports of problems of running xemacs and ilisp 
under windows. This is to do with the way in which xemacs passes paths 
to the inferior lisp process.

If anybody knows of a good fix, I would be very interested.

:)w

 
From: Joseph
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <a034c269.0201310827.2028897e@posting.google.com>
Thanks everyone for the suggestions on how to use
the lisp environment in Windows.

I had a suspicion that everyone would tell me to
use emacs before I started.  Unfortunately, I'm
an Emacs newbie, also.  I've been a Vi(m) guy for
quite some time, and know most of the Vim tricks.

I have nothing against learning Emacs, and in fact
I hope to do so.  But it sounds like getting XEmacs
to work with ILisp on Windows would be a pretty big
challenge.  I think I would be better off figuring
out how to do it on Unix first.  

Is the XEmacs/ILisp/MSWindows solution also based on
cygwin?

On a side note, are there any Vim Lisp users out there,
or is that just blasphemy :-)

-Joe
From: Thomas F. Burdick
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <xcv1yg65qda.fsf@conquest.OCF.Berkeley.EDU>
···········@yahoo.com (Joseph) writes:

> On a side note, are there any Vim Lisp users out there,
> or is that just blasphemy :-)

There are.  For a newbie, I'd recommend against it, not out of any
editor war nonsense (vim is fine editor), but because you'll be
missing out on a lot of the nice tools (read: Emacs-as-IDE).  Having
the editor easily send forms to the running image is nice.  And so is
symbol completion, getting the arguments to a function, getting a
function or variable's documentation, and looking something up in the
HyperSpec.  For an experienced Lisper, these things are niceties.  For
someone new to the language, it's gonna make the learning curve a lot
easier.

-- 
           /|_     .-----------------------.                        
         ,'  .\  / | No to Imperialist war |                        
     ,--'    _,'   | Wage class war!       |                        
    /       /      `-----------------------'                        
   (   -.  |                               
   |     ) |                               
  (`-.  '--.)                              
   `. )----'                               
From: Alexander Schofield
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <3C59879B.EDEFBB56@mailhost.njit.edu>
Joseph wrote:
> I have nothing against learning Emacs, and in fact
> I hope to do so.  But it sounds like getting XEmacs
> to work with ILisp on Windows would be a pretty big
> challenge.  I think I would be better off figuring
> out how to do it on Unix first.

Emacs is enormously fun/painful as an integration platform, and goes far
beyond the scope of vim, but as a text editor it falls short of vim.

> Is the XEmacs/ILisp/MSWindows solution also based on
> cygwin?

Don't know.  But emacs itself isn't.

> On a side note, are there any Vim Lisp users out there,
> or is that just blasphemy :-)
> -Joe

Plenty, myself included.

-- 
Alexander Schofield
From: Brian P Templeton
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <874rl0ldvn.fsf@tunes.org>
···········@yahoo.com (Joseph) writes:

> Thanks everyone for the suggestions on how to use
> the lisp environment in Windows.
> 
> I had a suspicion that everyone would tell me to
> use emacs before I started.  Unfortunately, I'm
> an Emacs newbie, also.  I've been a Vi(m) guy for
> quite some time, and know most of the Vim tricks.
> 
Emacs keybindings versus VIM keybindings is just a matter of personal
taste, habit, and working style... I recommend that you try VIPER, to
see if it meets your requirements. Emacs as an editor versus VIM as an
editor is a pointless flamewar for the most part, but Emacs is
extensible, and so does have a definite advantage over VIM, I think.

> I have nothing against learning Emacs, and in fact
> I hope to do so.  But it sounds like getting XEmacs
> to work with ILisp on Windows would be a pretty big
> challenge.  I think I would be better off figuring
> out how to do it on Unix first.  
> 
> Is the XEmacs/ILisp/MSWindows solution also based on
> cygwin?
> 
I think XEmacs recommends Cygwin, but doesn't require it. I'm not sure
about GNU Emacs. (I use GNU Emacs on my GNU/Linux system, but the one
time I've used an MS-Windows system for more than a few minutes (a few
days in that case), I installed XEmacs. It seemed to work fine without
Cygwin for the short time that I used it.)

Also, it's an excellent idea to try to make a solution with
MS-Windows... MS-Windows is quite good at dissolving bonds between
symbols and values, and between pointers and objects that are supposed
to be in certain memory locations. Unix is too stable to make
solutions with. :) And MS-Windows is obviously polar because their
so-called `tech support' always gives you the cold shoulder. :)

> On a side note, are there any Vim Lisp users out there,
> or is that just blasphemy :-)
> 
Vim Lisp?

[bpt reads the man page and googles...]

Hey! There's no such thing as Vim Lisp! You're making up eVIl lies,
trying to deceive virtuous Emacs users! Heretic! Get out the torches!
He claimed that there's such a thing as Vim Lisp, implying that Vim is
Lisp-based just like Emacs! Just like a user of the eVIl editor to do
something like that! Light the torches! Go!...

;) ;) ;)

I think there probably are, but I do think that Emacs is a better
overall editing environment... not because of the keybindings or the
actual built-in editing features, but because of the extensibility.

> -Joe

Best regards,
-- 
BPT <···@tunes.org>	    		/"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign
backronym for Linux:			\ / No HTML or RTF in mail
	Linux Is Not Unix			 X  No MS-Word in mail
Meme plague ;)   --------->		/ \ Respect Open Standards
From: George Brewster
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <a3nhn8$713$1@news.fas.harvard.edu>
On Sun, 03 Feb 2002 12:15:39 -0500, Brian P Templeton wrote:

>> I had a suspicion that everyone would tell me to use emacs before I
>> started.  Unfortunately, I'm an Emacs newbie, also.  I've been a Vi(m)
>> guy for quite some time, and know most of the Vim tricks.
>> 
> Emacs keybindings versus VIM keybindings is just a matter of personal
> taste, habit, and working style... I recommend that you try VIPER, to
> see if it meets your requirements. Emacs as an editor versus VIM as an
> editor is a pointless flamewar for the most part, but Emacs is
> extensible, and so does have a definite advantage over VIM, I think.

I'll second the suggestion to try VIPER. I used VIM writing lisp for a
while because I like VI keybindings better, but I never got it to 
indent exactly how I wanted, and missed the ability to interact with a
lisp process. I have since switched to VIPER and have pretty much
discovered my perfect editing environment... All the extensibility and
functionality of Emacs with VI keybindings.
From: Dan Andreatta
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <Xns91AB7A4D4F81Dandreattamailchemsce@12.253.140.251>
···········@yahoo.com (Joseph) wrote in 
·································@posting.google.com:

> On a side note, are there any Vim Lisp users out there,
> or is that just blasphemy :-)
> 
> -Joe
> 

I am just an amateur, but I usually use VIM both in Linux and Win.
To use it w/ lisp, just set
:set showmatch
:set lisp
and eventually
:set autoindent
and it works reasonably well (syntax highlight, matching parentheses...).

-- 
D. Andreatta
Univ. of S. Carolina
Chemistry Dept.

Bruce I:   ... American beer is a little like making love in a canoe!
Bruce III: Making love in a canoe? 
Bruce I:   It's f***ing close to water!

--- Monty Python, "The Bruces", Live at the Holliwood Bowl
From: Marco Antoniotti
Subject: Re: newbie: lisp environment
Date: 
Message-ID: <y6c4rkwud17.fsf@octagon.mrl.nyu.edu>
···········@yahoo.com (Joseph) writes:

> Thanks everyone for the suggestions on how to use
> the lisp environment in Windows.
> 
> I had a suspicion that everyone would tell me to
> use emacs before I started.  Unfortunately, I'm
> an Emacs newbie, also.  I've been a Vi(m) guy for
> quite some time, and know most of the Vim tricks.
> 
> I have nothing against learning Emacs, and in fact
> I hope to do so.  But it sounds like getting XEmacs
> to work with ILisp on Windows would be a pretty big
> challenge.  I think I would be better off figuring
> out how to do it on Unix first.  
> 
> Is the XEmacs/ILisp/MSWindows solution also based on
> cygwin?
> 
> On a side note, are there any Vim Lisp users out there,
> or is that just blasphemy :-)

Vi(m) by itself is not blasphemy.  It's masochism. :)

Cheers

-- 
Marco Antoniotti ========================================================
NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group        tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
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