From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs and Guile Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:29:26 +0300 Message-ID: <83iph66815.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87k41ofsl8.fsf@gnu.org> <87d37p1o7u.fsf@gmail.com> <83ehrw6p26.fsf@gnu.org> <871unvkun8.fsf@olor.terpri.org> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1334129519 16937 80.91.229.3 (11 Apr 2012 07:31:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 07:31:59 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: BT Templeton Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Apr 11 09:31:55 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1SHs1x-0006if-3Z for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:31:53 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:60379 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SHs1w-0001GU-F0 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 11 Apr 2012 03:31:52 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:49725) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SHs1o-0001Cx-OY for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 11 Apr 2012 03:31:50 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SHs1i-0003bv-5j for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 11 Apr 2012 03:31:44 -0400 Original-Received: from mtaout23.012.net.il ([80.179.55.175]:47742) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SHs1h-0003bZ-U6 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 11 Apr 2012 03:31:38 -0400 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.a-mtaout23.012.net.il by a-mtaout23.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0M2B005000II7000@a-mtaout23.012.net.il> for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:31:16 +0300 (IDT) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([84.229.57.204]) by a-mtaout23.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0M2B0056B0W32KG1@a-mtaout23.012.net.il>; Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:31:16 +0300 (IDT) In-reply-to: <871unvkun8.fsf@olor.terpri.org> X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Solaris 10 (beta) X-Received-From: 80.179.55.175 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:149593 Archived-At: > From: BT Templeton > Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2012 19:57:15 -0400 > > Guile would need better Microsoft Windows and MS-DOS support before > using Guile as the default Elisp implementation. But that's not a reason > to delay work on Guile-Emacs for free systems. Please don't make this a free vs non-free systems argument; it's not. Please try to read the threads I pointed to as a sign of immaturity of Guile on _any_ platform. Otherwise, I will regret I ever spoke, because nothing but flames will come out of this thread. > In what respect does Guile need to catch up on GNU/Linux? I gave one example: support for non-ASCII characters. I have bad feelings about a few others, but I think someone who knows Guile better should look into this. One area I'd love expert opinion is how will Guile GC interact with Emacs memory management. Anyway, I hope you are not saying that just GNU/Linux is enough for serious use of Guile in Emacs. > > To me, the failure to build in these cases is a clear sign of a > > package that is not ready for prime time. > > ...on non-free, non-POSIX platforms, yes. Not just. One of the threads I pointed to clearly says that Guile is being tested on 2 or 3 platforms. That's way too few, IMO, and I think it goes a long way towards explaining the problems. > > Or consider Guile's support of non-ASCII characters, which relies on > > libiconv with no additional features -- we cannot possibly consider > > this complete enough to replace what we have in Emacs now. > > Fortunately, Guile doesn't need to immediately replace what Emacs has > now. It's less elegant to make Elisp strings a separate type, and would > make interaction with Scheme less pleasant, but for an experimental > version it would be acceptable. I disagree. Strings are very fundamental to Emacs. I don't see how Guile can be basis for any significant feature in Emacs without supporting the emacs-internal encoding of characters. If I cannot safely pass a string from Emacs to Guile and back, then the range of possible Guile-based applications in Emacs is quite narrow, I'd say. > > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2012-01/msg00130.html > > I don't see the significance of this particular thread; it's a trivial > problem that was quickly resolved. The fact that this trivial problem was present is telltale, IMO. There's some history behind it. I was the one who bumped into that problem as soon as I built Make with Guile on MS-Windows. My first thought was that something is wrong with the way I invoked Guile from Make. So I asked Paul Smith about this, and he said he didn't see this problem, but the way I called a Guile function was correct. I next thought that my Guile build is botched in some fundamental way. But then Paul tried Guile 2.x and hit the same problem. So not only there is a "trivial problem", but also there are still significant changes between Guile 1.8 and 2.0. These are all signs of immaturity IMO.