From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Keisuke Nishida To: Jim Blandy Cc: guile-emacs@sourceware.cygnus.com Subject: Re: guile-emacs GC (was special forms) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:14:00 -0000 Message-id: References: <87n1o1p9kt.fsf@PC486.Niemitalo.LAN> <873dpsauvn.fsf_-_@PC486.Niemitalo.LAN> X-SW-Source: 2000-q1/msg00020.html Jim Blandy writes: > Honestly, this doesn't seem like a good idea. There are zillions of > useful Emacs Lisp functions that are part of Emacs right now, and it > would be a fatal mistake to push a design which doesn't encourage the > Lisp and Scheme worlds to share data freely. > > The best approach is to change Emacs Lisp to use Guile objects. That > is, Fcons (if I remember correctly) should call SCM_NEWCELL, and so > on. That way, the two languages operate on a common GC, and can share > data freely. I know that it is the right way; however, it takes time. People and I do not want to wait that long. See Ken Raeburn's web page. It counts only two hundreds of accesses. Most people are interested in the editor which they CAN use without many problems. I guess that is one reason why many people have not been interested in merging Guile with Emacs. I do not like this situation. I could write a editor that at least worked fine with Guile. And I could advertise it with some interesting facilities such as the GNOME/GTK+ interface. Then, more people will come here (I believe). I do not mean that I am discouraging people from using Scheme data from Lisp programs. I just mean it is not that time. I understand there are so many useful Elisp programs (including mine), so I encourage people to use them from Scheme programs. But the other side is not necessary true at this moment. If there are so many people who want to use Scheme data from Lisp programs, they will do so by replacing the Lisp evaluator with Guile. I just think, that is not my work. > Ken Raeburn has already done a lot of this work. You really should > look at his patches. Yes, I did (about a half year ago), and I appreciate his work. So I am not going to do the same work as his. I intentionally choose a different approach. When more and more people get interested in Guile Emacs, that is the end of my approach and the time to switch to his approach. If there were more people who worked on Guile-based Emacs, I did not need to do this now.