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Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Extension language


From: Stephen J. Turnbull
Subject: Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Extension language
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 15:46:00 +0900
User-agent: Gnus/5.1002 (Gnus v5.10.2) XEmacs/21.4 (Portable Code, linux)

>>>>> "David" == David Brown <address@hidden> writes:

    David> On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 12:58:42PM +0900, Stephen
    David> J. Turnbull wrote:

    >> Isn't it possible that vim users simply don't have an
    >> extension- writing culture?  I mean, if writing extensions came
    >> naturally to them, wouldn't they be Emacs users instead?

    David> Not a good place for an editor war...

C'mon, we have to discuss this issue if we're going to use vim's
experience to assess how different ways of "wrapping" arch
functionality are likely to play out.

I didn't say anything about startup time or "editor features" (until
others mentioned them, and even there I turned it back to the issue of
how "user cultures" differ).  I only suggested that (compared to Emacs
users, who are overrepresented in the crew asking for language
bindings) vim's experience is likely to be an underestimate of how
successful provision of various language bindings is likely to be.

    David> I guess I missed what these extensions are for.  Are we
    David> talking about well-integrated bindings so that it is easy
    David> to write perl/python/ruby/ocaml/cobol code to manipulate
    David> arch things?

Yes.  This also frees tla developers to improve the user interface,
since humans are likely to be pleased when typos are corrected and
ambiguities clarified, or redundant options removed.

I want XEmacs to have Lisp bindings to arch internal functions so that
I don't have to change my parser every time somebody fixes a typo or
lack of clarity in a message or makes things more terse, and change my
wrapper function when somebody gets rid of a tla option or ....

I imagine Pythonistas using IDLE feel the same way, etc, etc for other
potential language bindings.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.




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