Re: Do shorthands break basic tooling (tags, grep, etc)? (was Re: Shorthands have landed on master)

[João Távora]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> It shouldn't be very hard [IOW, I encourage some of the readers here to
> go out and do it] to refine/extend the `find-function-regexp-alist`
> mechanism so that `M-.` jumps directly to the actual `:constructor`
> thingy or to the actual field corresponding to an accessor.

Regexps.... Ugh.  Shouldn't we invest in a proper macro-expanding and
source-tracking reader?  I've recently some work for a Common Lisp
annotation-based stepper that correlates each evaluated form with a
source position.  I built a working system and published a paper.  Is
there interest in such a deeper Lisp introspection features for Emacs?

>>> Long names being "tedious" (quoting the new info manual) to read
>>> and write seems like an insufficient reason, IMHO.
> As a researcher in programming languages, I tend to take it for granted
> that "syntax doesn't matter", but in reality details of syntax have
> enormous impacts on how languages are used and perceived,

Yes, when you're transferring programs between two well-behaved robotic
entities, syntax doesn't matter.  But when human's squishy matter is
interacting with them (and we do that a lot, unfortunately), it matters.


João         "You think you have a problem, you use a regexp...."  :-)