Hi Xah, Well, I use gmail to manage all of the mailing lists I am on - makes it much easier to keep track of things as it keeps track of the threads and everything for me :-) I might have a look YaSnippet and possibly make comments on the Emacs Wiki page as to how it compares - something which is sometimes not easy because many packages have strengths and weakness, so drawing comparisons is not always straight forward! :-) I have done some experimentation with generating "autocompletion" with ELSE templates in the past (autocompletion in the sense of the user trying to complete a function call) - this was done with Python. From memory it went quite well, but I never polished it off and took it to completion - probably because of the general lack of desire in people to have autocompletion or template systems in general i.e. why put in work when nobody will use it? :-) Anyway, all the best with your efforts, I see a lot of emails from you on the mailing list, so you are obviously putting a lot of effort into using Emacs and trying to make it better! So thanks for that :-) Pete On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 8:37 AM, Xah Lee wrote: > 2008-12-14 > > On Dec 7, 11:14 am, "Peter Milliken" wrote: > > Hi Xah, > > > > I'd be interested in your opinion of ELSE. I haven't tried some of the > > others that you mention - ELSE suits me fine. I have tried tempo and > > skeleton etc but were turned off by the "intrusive" and horribly awkward > > interfaces that they presented to the user. I had been exposed to DEC's > LSE > > in the past (circa 1985), and found that it didn't "get in my face" or > cause > > awkward usage problems, so I decided to "port" their language sensitive > > editor functionality to Emacs (hence E(macs)LSE :-)). > > > > But facilities such as ELSE, tempo, skeleton etc are obviously not very > > popular (which I have never been able to understand!) i.e. I have shown > many > > fellow programmers ELSE over the years and not a single one of them has > ever > > taken up it's use. In fact, through all the time ELSE has been available > on > > the Internet, I have only ever received less than 10 queries/expressions > of > > interest in it - which may argue that it just doesn't hit the mark! :-) > But > > given the alternatives that were available (especially in the "early > days") > > I don't think that was the case. Of course, these days, it is even less > > likely because Emacs just isn't that popular as an editor i.e. there are > > probably 30 - 40 programmers at my current place of employ and there is > only > > one other programmer here that uses Emacs - so the opportunities for > > creating "converts" are not good at all! > > > > ELSE does not use (e)lisp like syntax. It has it's own template file for > > generating new templates. It has (what I believe is) extensive > documentation > > - something that has always annoyed me about many Emacs packages (such as > > tempo and skeleton) - when they were first available it was very much > "read > > the code and examples" - I believe that has changed for skeleton but I > had > > long since lost interest by the time somebody rectified that! > > > > So I would echo Drew's call - by all means do a comparison and share the > > results if you can with us all. > > > > Peter > > > > On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 11:34 AM, Drew Adams > wrote: > > > > there seems to be a lot elisp packages for defining templates. Has > > > > anyone studied them and can give a comparison? Basically, i just need > > > > a brief explanation of their syntax and feature. > > > > > > the emacswiki page > > > >http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryTemplates > > > > is very helpful in listing them but a clear summary and comparison is > > > > lacking. here's what i found so far.... > > > > > Good idea. Please update the wiki with a summary of the info you found > and > > > whatever else comes out of this thread that might be helpful. The next > > > person > > > who looks where you did will then find that missing help. ;-) > > Hi Peter, > > Sorry i missed your post. (i use google groups and sometimes i miss > posts. (regular newsgroup client won't help much in this regard)) > > Anyway, i've followed Drew's advice and cleaned up the emacswiki a bit > based on what i've studied. > > http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryTemplates > > though, i haven't looked into ELSE. Right now i pretty much settled on > yasnippet. > > I really feel sorry emacs's user base is dying. The most important > thing i think is to get emacs to use modern terminologies and be > compatible with the minimum of standard modern UI. On the Mac, emacs > modernization is a huge success with Aquamacs Emacs, which is emacs > with pretty much complete Mac OS X UI. On Windows, there's EmacsW32 by > Lennart Borgman, but i think it primarily just changes emacs the Alt > key to conform to Window's Alt=Menu behavior and the core philosophy > of EmacsW32 is a emacs add-on improvement, as opposed to a whole, > complete, "download and use it" software. If Lennart would change his > philosophy and marketing a bit, i think it'd complete revolutionize > emacs overnight, together with Aquamacs, solves the emacs > modernization problem like XEmacs did 18 years ago. > > In this year since June, i've filed 40 bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs. > ( > http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.bug/search?q=xah&start=0&scoring=d& > ) > About maybe 20 has been fixed. About maybe only 5 of my all reports > are suggestions. (these are really conservative ones, most of these > suggestions are suggested by other developers's encouragement for > sending it to bug-gnu-emacs, as opposed to my owe ideas of critical > modernization issues) Roughly, anything that's not bugs are either > receives no reply, or marked as not bug with a explanation (e.g. emacs > does it THIS way), or piled to "wish list". > > Xah > ∑ http://xahlee.org/ > > ☄ > >