Re: emacs roadmap

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> Is there a long term roadmap for Emacs research and development that
> someone could point to?  Having done my homework I find nothing out
> there except rumour and myth.  For instance:

There isn't a very clear roadmap, indeed.

> - Is multi-threading coming to emacs 25?

Maybe not multi-threading, but I do hope to get some kind of concurrency
in there, yes.

> - Is there realistic support for replacing elisp with guile?  Is that
>   considered possible even?

Replacing Elisp with another language seems rather unlikely.  As for
replacing the Elisp implementation with another one, e.g. based on the
Guile VM, that is indeed possible.
But there's nothing concrete on the horizon.

> - If elisp is the future, what type of changes are envisaged?  
>   - double escape regex fix? 

Would be nice, but again: nothing concrete on the horizon.

>   - lexical closures (to support no namespaces)?

Lexical closures are supported natively since Emacs-24.  Namespaces are
another beast altogether, and there's not much on the horizon there either.

>   - first-class print for functions?

Not sure what that would be.

> More generally, when can we get turtles all the way down and enjoy the
> return of the symbolic machine?

My experience with Lisp machines has been fairly limited, so I'm not
sure what would be the thing that is most sorely missing.


        Stefan