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4:13:45
lukego
Hey sorry about my emacs cheerleading in here yesterday. The modern Lisp Machine dream is a good one and I also get into that frame of mind off and on. Just that sometimes I feel Emacs despite its faults is under-appreciated and get worn doing being expected to apologise for it. I propose a truce :)
4:34:27
beach
No need to apologize. Emacs is great. It's just that, for editing Common Lisp code, it is quite mediocre.
4:36:32
beach
So the (my) plan is to create an editor for writing Common Lisp code that is so much better than Emacs that Common Lisp programmers will use this new editor for writing code, and Emacs for everything else, at least to start with.
4:38:01
beach
Then, I think McCLIM will play the role that Emacs now plays for various things that have nothing to do with editing text. Like Clouseau is already much better than the SLIME inspector. And there is no particular reason to display PDFs in an Emacs window if you have an entire CLIM environment available. Stuff like that.
4:39:09
beach
So I see a situation where people can start migrating some Emacs "modes" to the new editor, and some to other CLIM-based components that have nothing to do with editing text.
4:40:24
beach
But already when we have the planned editor, I hope and think it will be irresistible for Common Lisp programmers to use it, rather than Emacs.
5:18:43
lukego
I dunno. "The best is the enemy of the good." My take is that Emacs has excellent support for Common Lisp editing and that this is something to celebrate. If the modern Lisp Machine dream means that we can't appreciate what we have, and have to denigrate that instead, then I don't really want a part of it.
5:19:22
lukego
But that's a reason to look for common ground so that you can work on a pure CL editor, and I can work on Emacs, and our efforts can support each others' goals.
7:56:36
jackdaniel
lukego: alas, no need to apologize. I hate Emacs either way ,-) it is a positive McCLIM exposure and I encourage any cool hacks with it
8:44:42
lukego
it's still at the granularity of bounding boxes. great if it could be made pixel-perfect especially for e.g. PCB designs. but one step at a time.
8:45:15
lukego
don't have the input type translation stuff in there yet either but hopefully that fits with the existing machinery i.e. Lisp just sends Emacs a list of all IDs that are acceptable.