From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: emacs and guile (Re: ehelp woes, or why I hate a module that I love so much) Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 10:54:41 -0600 (MDT) Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: <200207191654.g6JGsfu27015@aztec.santafe.edu> References: <20020704135240.4CBB.LEKTU@terra.es> <20020704164911.4CC1.LEKTU@terra.es> <200207181456.g6IEu0J25108@aztec.santafe.edu> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1027097826 10578 127.0.0.1 (19 Jul 2002 16:57:06 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 16:57:06 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org, mvo@zagadka.ping.de Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 17Vb3w-0002kU-00 for ; Fri, 19 Jul 2002 18:57:04 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 17VbGP-0001nx-00 for ; Fri, 19 Jul 2002 19:09:57 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 17Vb3w-00030l-00; Fri, 19 Jul 2002 12:57:04 -0400 Original-Received: from pele.santafe.edu ([192.12.12.119]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 17Vb1e-0002qy-00; Fri, 19 Jul 2002 12:54:43 -0400 Original-Received: from aztec.santafe.edu (aztec [192.12.12.49]) by pele.santafe.edu (8.11.6+Sun/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g6JGskB11490; Fri, 19 Jul 2002 10:54:46 -0600 (MDT) Original-Received: (from rms@localhost) by aztec.santafe.edu (8.10.2+Sun/8.9.3) id g6JGsfu27015; Fri, 19 Jul 2002 10:54:41 -0600 (MDT) X-Authentication-Warning: aztec.santafe.edu: rms set sender to rms@aztec using -f Original-To: raeburn@raeburn.org In-Reply-To: (message from Ken Raeburn on Thu, 18 Jul 2002 15:54:43 -0400) Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.11 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:5911 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:5911 Actually, the issue is the symbol's value(s). Scheme symbols don't have separate function and value slots. Emacs Lisp symbols have a few other fields associated with them, like indirect_variable, that also don't fit the basic Scheme model. And if we separate the name from the values, there's the question of what exactly a symbol is. There are several ways to deal with this. Some involve changing Guile's symbol representation to have the extra fields. If that gives good and clean results, we should use that method, for efficiency's sake. IMNSHO this is tantamount to declaring Scheme not to be up to the task of implementing Lisp, and I'm not prepared to believe that. Our goal is to support Scheme, but this doesn't mean we have to be purists about how we do it. We can bring Guile "up to the task" by adding a facility to add extra slots to a symbol, for application-specific purposes. Rather than a kludge for Emacs, this will be a general Guile feature with wider usefulness.