Re: what is the important uses of emacs lisp?

[pjb@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)]

Evans Winner <thorne@timbral.net> writes:

> Michael Ekstrand <michael@elehack.net> writes:
>
>     Now, to attempt to answer your question: everything.
>     Emacs Lisp is used for extending, customizing, and
>     implementing Emacs.  Most of Emacs itself is written in
>     Emacs Lisp.  Emacs users use Emacs Lisp to customize
>     their Emacs (setting variables and writing functions in
>     their .emacs file, typically) and add new features to
>     it.  Software developers use Emacs Lisp to write new
>     packages adding additional features and capabilities to
>     Emacs.
>  
> But seriously folks, why, why, oh why is Emacs so rare in
> this regard?  I mean, maybe I'm just another Emacs religious
> nut, but I just can't fathom why anyone wants their software
> to be exclusively mouse-driven, rigid, inflexible,
> un-extensible, un-customizable, un-self-documenting, non
> language-based, etc.  I really am surprised sometimes that
> the whole lisp machine concept never took off.  I mean, I'm
> not really surprised -- after all, originally most people
> who could benefit from PCs knew nothing about them and were
> understandably intimidated and so they welcomed the whole
> point-and-grunt model of machine-human interaction.  But
> now?  Sheesh.  Isn't it time for people to start using
> computers like intelligent civilized humans?
>
> And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse than the
> old Macintosh model of if-it-ain't-got-a-button-
> it-ain't-gonna-happen user interface, now everybody wants to
> write their user interface in some kind of Frankenstein's
> monster of web browser typesetting widgets and ad-hoc
> scripting languages and the result is that while at least
> the data entry people could really get good with keyboarding
> around the green screen crud screens once upon a time, now
> even the best of them is reduced to the data throughput
> level of a three year old[1].
>
> At least that's how it seems to me.
>
> I'm on a bit of a rampage of late because I just took a new
> sysadmin job and found that the IT department policies are
> so absurdly strict that I can't even install my choice of
> text editors on the PC there.  There is a short (very short)
> list of allowed software (almost all of it proprietary, of
> course) and I'm just stuck with it.  There I am running a
> million-dollar system running (nee) OS/400 and on the front
> end I'm stuck with Windows and notepad.exe.  Point...
> grunt...  point...  grunt.

If you can have a program such as putty.exe authorized, that'd be an
escape route.  Even without putty.exe, IIRC, telnet.exe comes standard
with MS-Windows.  Otherwise, there are ssh-enabled java terminal
emulators running in web browsers... http://www.javassh.org/


> I'm so extremely sorry to have wasted everyone's time with
> all this ranting... though evidently not sorry enough to
> rethink sending it.

That's ok, to share the feeling. ;-)


> Anyway, long live Emacs lisp.
>
> Footnotes: 
> [1]  Not that I have anything against the mouse or GUIs; on
> the contrary I think they can be very useful.  I just don't
> think they are a good substitute for those things... for
> which they are not a good substitute... like, er, most user
> input, for instance.


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/

"I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth
contest.  They will not concern us again."