Hello,
I'm started bodging together a home-made lisp - yes, I have my reasons :op
I want to embed it into a Windows app, for which I'll need an suitable
Windowsey editor which can cope nicely with Lisp code. Ideally a
control that I can compile into my app, otherwise a free-standing editor
with the ability to do back-and-forth comms with the app.
I've found a few editor components around, one even with a lexer for CL
syntax colouring. But none make any attempt at helping with
indentation, and also don't allow for REPL style interaction.
Anyone know of something I could use?
thanks,
G.A.
One option is to code up an editor your self essentially by modifying
the win32 EditControl and RichEditControl. I did this for an
integrated editor once and it's a fair amount of work, several weeks
work in fact.
But it does give you 100% control of the editor functionality which you
will need to provide your own brace matching and indenting, etc.
The other approach is to find an open source editor component you can
use. You mention that you found one but that does not do indentation or
REPL. Well, the REPL should be fairly simple, you just need to add
support for running eval on your editor window, perhaps subselections
within it, and perhaps a command line which would be a seperate Edit
Control beneath.
Check out the project Ilisp C++, which does most of what you want
already and includes a lisp interpreter...
http://cyber.miem.edu.ru/~shestero/
Glen,
There are several embeddable versions of Scheme, as well as ECL, which
stands for Embeddable Common Lisp.
Some of these (Bigloo, Gabmit, and others) even have Scheme-to-C
converters so you can convert your Lisp/Scheme code to C and
incorporate it into your project that way. If I recall correctly, ECL
compiles to byte code. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong).
Given the wide array of options, I second Pascal's vote of not
greenspunning yourself to death.
I too, use an embedded Lisp in a project that runs on two platforms.
I use Emacs for my editor, but I have a simple embedded editor built
with wxWindows. However, it's very poor. I'm considering embedding
Scintilla/Scite in the future. Or maybe I will figure out how to link
Emacs to my plug-in.
If you are interested in joining forces, let me know.
Chris Perkins
cperkins ! medialab.com
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Lisp-aware editor for Windows?
Date:
Message-ID: <ur7f611d3.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
···············@yahoo.com writes:
> Yes, http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/
I'm an Emacs (GNU Emacs for Windows, XEmacs
on Windows and Linux, Lispworks editor,
and occasionally FRED) user, myself.
And since that's also what most serious Lisp
users prefer, that's what I'd recommend, too.
While Emacs enjoys considerable popularity,
especially on Unix, a lot of people coming
from Windows don't like it very much.
The legitimate complaints are that it lacks
certain features they are used to, that it
is not sufficiently like a graphically
integrated Windows application, and that
the chord-based key bindings are not their
kind of style (and are hard to learn).
As far as I know, the next closest thing to Emacs
was a product called Luguru/Epsilon anymore?
Does it have features that make it more Windows-friendly?
Does it have basic Lisp (eg. indentation) support?
Could SLIME be ported to it?
I used Epsilon a little bit, not too many years ago,
and have some vauge recollection that some people really
liked it better than Emacs. But perhaps that was just
because Emacs was not yet running well on Windows,
or they didn't like extending their editor in Lisp!
What non-Emacs editors do people like on Windows?
······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) writes:
> I used Epsilon a little bit, not too many years ago,
> and have some vauge recollection that some people really
> liked it better than Emacs. But perhaps that was just
> because Emacs was not yet running well on Windows,
> or they didn't like extending their editor in Lisp!
Hey, Emacs still doesn't run well on Windows. It aggressively tries
to pretend it's running on a Unix system. XEmacs is somewhat better
in this regard, but far from satisfactory.
> What non-Emacs editors do people like on Windows?
The built-in editors in most of the newer non-Lisp programming
environments are becoming tolerable. (The syntax analysis support is
often especially good, far better than what any Emacs offers.) Alas,
their macro support is still wanting.
From: Robert Uhl
Subject: Re: Lisp-aware editor for Windows?
Date:
Message-ID: <m3psup6qf0.fsf@4dv.net>
Carl Shapiro <·············@panix.com> writes:
>
> Hey, Emacs still doesn't run well on Windows. It aggressively tries
> to pretend it's running on a Unix system.
Isn't that a bit of a non sequitur? Making Windows as Unix-like as
possible is the only way to survive in it;-)
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
`...quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est.'
[...a sword never kills anybody; it's a tool in the killer's hand.]
--(Lucius Annaeus) Seneca the Younger (ca. 4 BC-AD 65)
Robert Uhl writes
>Carl Shapiro <·············@panix.com> writes:
>> Hey, Emacs still doesn't run well on Windows. It aggressively tries
>> to pretend it's running on a Unix system.
>Isn't that a bit of a non sequitur? Making Windows as Unix-like as
>possible is the only way to survive in it;-)
Exactly, but I don't follow the original posters point anyway. I've
been running emacs under Cygwin and using it for a wide range of
editing tasks in the windows environment. Fortunately even copy and
paste works within other real windows apps.
Robert Uhl <·········@NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
> Carl Shapiro <·············@panix.com> writes:
> >
> > Hey, Emacs still doesn't run well on Windows. It aggressively tries
> > to pretend it's running on a Unix system.
>
> Isn't that a bit of a non sequitur? Making Windows as Unix-like as
> possible is the only way to survive in it;-)
This is the bad attitude which makes most application ports from Unix
(and large tracts of Emacs) utterly worthless. Like it or not,
Windows is not a subset of Unix and shims like Cygwin do little to
change this. If I am working on a Windows machine, I want to get my
work done leveraging all the useful functionality Windows exposes. I
do not want to spend my days fighting to do things the UNIX way by
means of a of schizophrenic program like Emacs or Cygwin. If I need
to use a UNIX system, I know where to find one.
Carl Shapiro <·············@panix.com> writes:
>> Isn't that a bit of a non sequitur? Making Windows as Unix-like as
>> possible is the only way to survive in it;-)
>
> This is the bad attitude which makes most application ports from Unix
> (and large tracts of Emacs) utterly worthless. Like it or not,
> Windows is not a subset of Unix and shims like Cygwin do little to
> change this. If I am working on a Windows machine, I want to get my
> work done leveraging all the useful functionality Windows exposes. I
> do not want to spend my days fighting to do things the UNIX way by
> means of a of schizophrenic program like Emacs or Cygwin. If I need
> to use a UNIX system, I know where to find one.
What? You know where to find a unix and you're still using MS-Windows?
;-)
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
In a World without Walls and Fences,
who needs Windows and Gates?
On 14 Jun 2005 21:01:56 -0400, <·············@panix.com> wrote:
>Windows is not a subset of Unix and shims like Cygwin do little to
>change this. If I am working on a Windows machine, I want to get my
>work done leveraging all the useful functionality Windows exposes. If
>I need to use a UNIX system, I know where to find one.
Indeed. With samba, you get the best of both worlds, mounting the
windows disk someplace on a local *nix box. I can run a looping
javascript app on Windoze and fix the code via a Linux based Emacs,
ignoring any silly restraints in the Windoze program about it needing
to be "on top".
--
The LOOP construct is really neat, it's got a lot of knobs to turn!
Don't push the yellow one on the bottom.
Carl Shapiro <·············@panix.com> writes:
> If I am working on a Windows machine, I want to get my
> work done leveraging all the useful functionality Windows exposes.
Which usefuk functionality? I'd be glad if there were any
functionality at all.
> I do not want to spend my days fighting to do things the UNIX way by
> means of a of schizophrenic program like Emacs or Cygwin.
Well, with UNIX you do not have to fight and with Windows it is
useless to fight since it won't work whichever way you try.
> If I need
> to use a UNIX system, I know where to find one.
Then hurry up and use it!
'Andreas
--
Wherever I lay my .emacs, there's my $HOME.
Andreas Eder <············@gmx.de> writes:
> Carl Shapiro <·············@panix.com> writes:
>
> > If I am working on a Windows machine, I want to get my
> > work done leveraging all the useful functionality Windows exposes.
>
> Which usefuk functionality? I'd be glad if there were any
> functionality at all.
Hey, don't knock Windows functionality. You can now change your IP
address most times without rebooting. And remember, any crashes are due
to something you did wrong, not a bug in the OS.
Gregm
Greg Menke <············@toadmail.com> writes:
>address most times without rebooting. And remember, any crashes are due
>to something you did wrong, not a bug in the OS.
Well, to be fair, most real crashes on Windoze today seem to happen
because of broken 3rd party device drivers and only very few because
of core bugs. That is, if you exclude the presence of any worms or
viruses, of course.
mkb.
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> Greg Menke <············@toadmail.com> writes:
>
> >address most times without rebooting. And remember, any crashes are due
> >to something you did wrong, not a bug in the OS.
>
> Well, to be fair, most real crashes on Windoze today seem to happen
> because of broken 3rd party device drivers and only very few because
> of core bugs. That is, if you exclude the presence of any worms or
> viruses, of course.
>
> mkb.
I guess it is important to distinguish between them. The driver bugs
presumably blow the kernel and most of the kernel bugs lock up the
desktop in various ways- and as a measure of the improvement in the
kernel, the desktop can be coaxed into restarting more often than in
previous versions. But once the registry gets messed up.... <shudder>
Gregm
Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> writes:
> Greg Menke <············@toadmail.com> writes:
>
> >address most times without rebooting. And remember, any crashes are due
> >to something you did wrong, not a bug in the OS.
>
> Well, to be fair, most real crashes on Windoze today seem to happen
> because of broken 3rd party device drivers and only very few because
> of core bugs. That is, if you exclude the presence of any worms or
> viruses, of course.
>
That somehow reminds me of when MS was claiming that NT had the
highest level of security certification, but when you looked at the
small print, it required that the system was not connected to a
network - MS is stable and reliable as long as you don't use 3rd party
drivers and avoid virus/worm/trojans and of course, thats best
achieved by never having it connected to a network.
On a serious note, what is it I'm missing about emacs that so many
seem to have problems with - I've yet to find an environment which
runs on multiple platforms with the use functionality of emacs + slime
and there is nothing schizo about it I've seen on any of the platforms
I've used it on.
Tim
--
Tim Cross
The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is
to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you
really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!
Tim X wrote
"On a serious note, what is it I'm missing about emacs that so many
seem to have problems with - I've yet to find an environment which
runs on multiple platforms with the use functionality of emacs + slime
and there is nothing schizo about it I've seen on any of the platforms
I've used it on. "
I don't know, a lot of people seem to be put off by the key combo's and
that's nuts. The keys are designed so that you don't have to take your
fingers off the keys when in a touch typing position. Ctrl-X B for
example, looks like a lot to do to change buffers, yet is so natural to
do once you're used to it.
The real power of emacs that people overlook is the extensibility. You
can program it to do so much, and so easily, once you learn elisp and
how the system works.
Tim X <····@spamto.devnul.com> writes:
>> Well, to be fair, most real crashes on Windoze today seem to happen
>> because of broken 3rd party device drivers and only very few because
>> of core bugs. That is, if you exclude the presence of any worms or
>> viruses, of course.
>
>That somehow reminds me of when MS was claiming that NT had the
>highest level of security certification, but when you looked at the
>small print, it required that the system was not connected to a
>network - MS is stable and reliable as long as you don't use 3rd party
>drivers and avoid virus/worm/trojans and of course, thats best
>achieved by never having it connected to a network.
Well, I don't know what security certification was being used but I
wouldn't be surprised if the "highest level" of that certification
explicitly demanded that the system must be disconnected from any
network.
On the 3rd-party driver issue.. I really don't think it's a MS
problem. In fact, they even provide some driver signature thing. At
least, when I install the shipped driver for some random consumer
product, I often get a warning "driver not signed by Microsoft,
installation not recommended", or somesuch, even though that of course
is of little use for the typical enduser (but may be significant in
larger companies with certain software deployment policies).
And taking the shoddiness of Linux binary-only drivers from nVidia and
ATI as an example, I'm quite sure, that the situation would be exactly
the same on Linux and other systems, were it customary for hardware
vendors to provide their own binary drivers for these systems. Only
very few vendors actively maintain open-source drivers _in_ the OS
system source (like a certain RAID controller vendor does for FreeBSD,
for example).
mkb.
From: Edi Weitz
Subject: Re: Lisp-aware editor for Windows?
Date:
Message-ID: <uy88zlwc2.fsf@agharta.de>
On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 12:53:04 +0200, Andreas Eder <············@gmx.de> wrote:
> Carl Shapiro <·············@panix.com> writes:
>
>> If I am working on a Windows machine, I want to get my work done
>> leveraging all the useful functionality Windows exposes.
>
> Which usefuk functionality? I'd be glad if there were any
> functionality at all.
Wrong forum. Unsubstantial rants like this one are usually posted on
Slashdot.
Cheers,
Edi.
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
> Hey, Emacs still doesn't run well on Windows. It aggressively tries
> to pretend it's running on a Unix system.
How so?
I haven't used Emacs on Windows for ages; I'm strictly a Unix guy.
But I don't remember it being particularly misanthropic.
Indeed, I sometimes tend to think of Emacs as trying to pretend that
Unix is really ITS...
joelh
Joel Ray Holveck <·····@juniper.net> writes:
> > Hey, Emacs still doesn't run well on Windows. It aggressively tries
> > to pretend it's running on a Unix system.
>
> How so?
The file system interface is probably the first source of impedance
mismatches you'll notice. The second is the inferior process mode,
especially the shell-mode stuff. Yuck.
Glen Able <·········@gmail.com> writes:
> I'm started bodging together a home-made lisp - yes, I have my reasons :op
Instead, consider ecls.sourceforge.net. ECL is an Embeddable Common
Lisp that ou can put into your application instead of Greenspuning to
death.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
You're always typing.
Well, let's see you ignore my
sitting on your hands.
Glen Able a �crit :
> Hello,
>
> I'm started bodging together a home-made lisp - yes, I have my reasons :op
>
> I want to embed it into a Windows app, for which I'll need an suitable
> Windowsey editor which can cope nicely with Lisp code. Ideally a
> control that I can compile into my app, otherwise a free-standing editor
> with the ability to do back-and-forth comms with the app.
>
> I've found a few editor components around, one even with a lexer for CL
> syntax colouring. But none make any attempt at helping with
> indentation, and also don't allow for REPL style interaction.
>
> Anyone know of something I could use?
Have you considered J ? http://armedbear-j.sourceforge.net/
It is "free-standing", has syntax colouring and automatic indentation.
It is even provided with an implementation of CL targeting JVMs. I let
you decide for the back-and-forth comms with the app.
Glen Able wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm started bodging together a home-made lisp - yes, I have my reasons :op
>
> I want to embed it into a Windows app, for which I'll need an suitable
> Windowsey editor which can cope nicely with Lisp code. Ideally a
> control that I can compile into my app, otherwise a free-standing editor
> with the ability to do back-and-forth comms with the app.
>
> I've found a few editor components around, one even with a lexer for CL
> syntax colouring. But none make any attempt at helping with
> indentation, and also don't allow for REPL style interaction.
>
> Anyone know of something I could use?
>
> thanks,
> G.A.
Thanks for the suggestions. One of these should do the trick (not emacs :)
This spare-time project is ultimately just a proof-of-concept and I'm
happy to spend time putting together my own minimal lisp interpreter.
I have an impression that it won't take many features to make it
usuable (I wonder what minimal subset of lisp features would still be
better than C?) It's turning out to be a really good exercise in many
ways, and fun.
If anyone's willing, I've another few questions.
What would you expect (+ . 5) to evaluate to?
Symbols have slots for a function and a value but not for a special form
or macro. How do the latter two generally get resolved during parsing?
thanks all.
From: Marco Baringer
Subject: Re: Lisp-aware editor for Windows?
Date:
Message-ID: <m2mzpqu440.fsf@soma.local>
Glen Able <·········@gmail.com> writes:
> What would you expect (+ . 5) to evaluate to?
compile time error. (+ 5) however sholud evaluate to 5 plus nothing,
aka 5.
> Symbols have slots for a function and a value but not for a special
> form or macro. How do the latter two generally get resolved during
> parsing?
special forms have to recognized by the compiler since there's no way
to implement them all in portable lisp (that's why their special), at
best you can implement some of the special forms and use those to
implement the others (block/return-from for example can be implemented
in terms of try/catch (and vice versa)). macros can just keep a
macro-function in their function slot (and the compiler will need to
be able to distinguish between a regular function and a macro
function).
--
-Marco
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget the perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen
Marco Baringer wrote:
> Glen Able <·········@gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>>What would you expect (+ . 5) to evaluate to?
>
>
> compile time error. (+ 5) however sholud evaluate to 5 plus nothing,
> aka 5.
My interpreter sees the cdr of (+ . 5) is not a cons and so passes an
empty arg list to + which returns 0. This was an accident, but I see
that CLISP gives the same answer (although, oddly it rejects this form
if it's in a function), so I wondered if this was correct or not.
>>Symbols have slots for a function and a value but not for a special
>>form or macro. How do the latter two generally get resolved during
>>parsing?
>
>
> special forms have to recognized by the compiler since there's no way
> to implement them all in portable lisp (that's why their special), at
> best you can implement some of the special forms and use those to
> implement the others (block/return-from for example can be implemented
> in terms of try/catch (and vice versa)). macros can just keep a
> macro-function in their function slot (and the compiler will need to
> be able to distinguish between a regular function and a macro
> function).
OK, so special forms are probably best handled by having them as tokens
the lexer can recognise.
thanks for your help
From: Marco Baringer
Subject: Re: Lisp-aware editor for Windows?
Date:
Message-ID: <m2ll59xf66.fsf@soma.local>
Glen Able <·········@gmail.com> writes:
> Marco Baringer wrote:
>> Glen Able <·········@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>>What would you expect (+ . 5) to evaluate to?
>> compile time error. (+ 5) however sholud evaluate to 5 plus nothing,
>> aka 5.
>
> My interpreter sees the cdr of (+ . 5) is not a cons and so passes an
> empty arg list to + which returns 0. This was an accident, but I see
> that CLISP gives the same answer (although, oddly it rejects this form
> if it's in a function), so I wondered if this was correct or not.
why do you pass an empty arg list? (i can't find the part of the spec
which specifies what should happen when evaluating a dotted list)
>>>Symbols have slots for a function and a value but not for a special
>>>form or macro. How do the latter two generally get resolved during
>>>parsing?
>> special forms have to recognized by the compiler since there's no
>> way
>> to implement them all in portable lisp (that's why their special), at
>> best you can implement some of the special forms and use those to
>> implement the others (block/return-from for example can be implemented
>> in terms of try/catch (and vice versa)). macros can just keep a
>> macro-function in their function slot (and the compiler will need to
>> be able to distinguish between a regular function and a macro
>> function).
>
> OK, so special forms are probably best handled by having them as
> tokens the lexer can recognise.
not so much the lexer as the code walker. for example:
(defmacro my-quote (&rest stuff)
`',stuff)
you don't want your lexer to get stuck on:
(my-quote (unwind-protect 1 2))
since the occurence of the symbol unwind-protect in that form is as
data, not code. your compiler (or interpreter) is the one who will
need to notice the defference between a literal list and a form.
--
-Marco
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget the perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen
Glen Able a �crit :
>
> Symbols have slots for a function and a value but not for a special form
> or macro.
What does make you think that ? The function namespace is used also for
special forms and macros.
[1]> (defmacro foo ())
FOO
[2]> (fboundp 'foo)
T
[3]> (fboundp 'if)
T
Glen Able wrote:
> (I wonder what minimal subset of lisp features would still be
> better than C?)
Actually, it might be useful to make a language which was C, but with
Lispy syntax. You could then write a program in Common Lisp which
translates this to C code.
The advantages:
* You can include a macro facility, which should probably use CL. This
would bring full macro ability to C.
* Easier editing. Personally, I like the parentheses now that I've
discovered how to edit them properly.
* Easy use of C libraries. Just call them like regular functions.
* You can add higher-level stuff on top. Want built-in list support? Go
ahead, add it. Want garbage collection? Link in the Boehm GC by
default.
The disadvantages:
* It won't be as good as CL. In order to make something as good as CL,
you need a runtime that supports a REPL and plenty of introspection
features.
* It requires knowing two different languages at once. Your head might
explode from the pressure!
* In order to edit it properly, you'd need to make a special editing
mode. I'd try to modify emacs' lisp-mode.
I'd like to see how that would turn out. I might try it myself
sometime, but right now I've got other projects to worry about.
-Peter