Re: newbie elisp help ??

[jadamson@partners.org (Joel J. Adamson)]

William Case <billlinux@rogers.com> writes:

>      4. I wanted to avoid the need for variable arguments, parameters
>         and hooks by writing a simple set of functions where I could
>         copy and manually substitute ';' and '#' for '/*  */' commenting
>         out symbols.  Hooks, buffer/file names, etc. might come later.

I understand completely all your desires to learn: I'm doing the same
thing myself.  To accomplish 4, I suggest checking out ESS, which is a
set of major modes for various statistical applications.  It's mostly
aimed at R, however I use it for Stata; it has all the different
comment syntaxes worked out.  I've only recently discovered the
sh-mode has the ability to stick in complete templates for whiles,
fors and conditionals --- it's pretty cool.

>      5. I did not ask for advice on the emacs mailing list lightly.  I
>         did my due diligence with manuals, info, wiki, archives, google
>         and trial and error.  I thought that after several hours of
>         frustration it would be appropriate to ask for guidance.
>
> My understanding was that this emacs mailing list is for beginners and
> experienced people alike.

No problem: your post just reminded me of all the times I've thought
of doing similar things and discovered that (a) Emacs already does
what I want or (b) there's a much simpler way to do it that does not
involve any Lisp.  This is somewhat of a shame, since I am always
trying to find a reason to learn more Lisp (right now I'm studying
Scheme more than Emacs Lisp).  Unfortunately much of the time Emacs
already does what I want and I have no reason to learn:

DAMN YOU EMACS LISP DEVELOPERS AND YOUR EXCELLENT PRODUCTS AND
EXTENSIONS!  YOU'RE RUINING IT FOR THE REST OF US!

Have a nice day,
Joel


-- 
Joel J. Adamson
Biostatistician
Pediatric Psychopharmacology Research Unit
Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, MA  02114
(617) 643-1432
(303) 880-3109

"It can be interesting to study ancient philosophy, but more as a kind
of accident report than to teach you anything useful."
                                        --Paul Graham
					http://www.paulgraham.com/raq.html