Re: Generators (iterators) for Gnu Emacs

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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  > I wonder whether perhaps Richard ran into the need to use prefixes
  > so much because he was implementing the CL package system, and not
  > just making normal use of it.  Just a conjecture.

I implemented all the Common Lisp features (of which the package
system was one) in the Lisp Machine operating system, which included
lots of programs to do lots of things.  (An Emacs-like editor was one
of them.)

In practice, the goal of using names without prefixes via importing
namespace did not work out.

I make the conjecture that name space importing is convenient when you
have lots of small modules, each with its own name space and not many
names, and each referring to just a few other modules.  That's not how
the Lisp Machine system was written, and it's also mostly not how
Emacs was written.

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Dr Richard Stallman
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