Re: Patch (Re: [Texmacs-dev] Once again: automatic quoting)

[Henri Lesourd]

> > But perhaps I don't look exactly at the right
> > place : could you elaborate more on why, precisely
> > you feel that Scheme is one of the more uncomfortable
> > languages for you ?
>
> I think it is for a large part the syntax. There are other functional
> programming languages that have a greatly improved syntax compared to
> the old style Lisp. (Haskell, Ocaml and others)
>  
Yes. But there are not very embeddable. In this
respect, Guile is very good. The only other potential
embeddable replacements would be Python, or the more
recent (and very nice indeed) Lua. But these ones didn't
exist in the beginning of TeXmacs, I think.

> First, one should get rid of all the parenthesis. Then, there should be
> sane infix notations for operators.
>
> Finally, it would also be possible to use a syntax that is very near to
> what people know from imperative languages. Fact is: the majority of
> programmers has experience in C/C++, only few are comfortable with
> functional programming. It is possible to hide the functional character
> of a language to a large extent. Basically, Scheme already is not purely
> functional any more. One could very well adjust the syntax to that fact.
>
> There are many more points. Hard to solve this problem here and now.
>  
It seems. But adding more easy macros, providing more help (including
pointers to good Scheme tutorials) is a feasible solution that could
lead to a more easy life for potential contributors.