Re: as for Calc and the math library

["Gerd Möllmann" <gerd.moellmann@gmail.com>]

Gerd Möllmann <gerd.moellmann@gmail.com> writes:

> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>
>>> From: Nicolas Martyanoff <nicolas@n16f.net>
>>> Cc: arthur miller <arthur.miller@live.com>,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
>>> Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 13:23:27 +0200
>>> 
>>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>>> 
>>> >> From: arthur miller <arthur.miller@live.com>
>>> >> Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 05:30:08 +0000
>>> >> 
>>> >> Even better, given people proper FFI so they can import and use any of the tens
>>> >> or hundreds of quality math libraries available.
>>> >
>>> > Not going to happen, and you know it.
>>> 
>>> Naïve question, why?
>>
>> Because providing FFI would allow using non-free libraries in Emacs.
>>
>> We made the effort to allow loading dynamic modules precisely for this
>> reason: to allow free libraries to be used, but not non-free ones.
>
> There is an item in etc/TODO about adding FFI, as an important feature:
>
>   ** FFI (foreign function interface)
>   See e.g. https://lists.gnu.org/r/emacs-devel/2013-10/msg00246.html
>
>   One way of doing this is to start with fx's dynamic loading, and use it
>   to implement things like auto-loaded buffer parsers and database
>   access in cases which need more than Lisp.
>
> Now I'm confused.

I guess an FFI is already there? Or was there because it looks kind of
dead:

  https://github.com/tromey/emacs-ffi

Tom Tromey says in one of the issues

  https://github.com/tromey/emacs-ffi/issues/20

that John Wigley asked him on IRC to submit it for inclusion. Can't find
anything on emacs-devel though.