Re: Clojure mode

[Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

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> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
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>
>   > > This could be done by getting copyright assignments for code in the
>   > > NonGNU ELPA package, or by writing new code to replace it, or by a
>   > > mixture of the two.
>
>   > The issue here is, that the clojure-mode developers are mostly averse to
>   > assigning their code to the FSF.
>
> What those people think should not be a crucial issue, because writing
> a major mode to handle a language is not a big job.  We have dozens of
> them in Emacs.  Lots of us here would be able to replace it.

IMO it really depends on the level of integration one is aiming for.  As
mentioned in my last message, if it is just basic syntax support, then I
guess anyone with a language specification could do it.  But since
Closure is some sort of a mock-lisp, a user might be interested in
having more complex features such as REPL integration and perhaps some
kind of proper indentation for macros (assuming Clojure has macros). 

> The trick is to start thinking of it as a module to be written,
> rather than as a need for something that we can't have;

I still question the need for replicating the labour, if the only
advantage the user has is that they don't have to M-x package-install
the existing major mode from NonGNU ELPA.  Especially when given
functionality like what the "gnu-elpa" package provides, in being able
to suggest the right packages for a file type (which is currently
underutilised and IMO should be moved into package.el itself).

>   > , but one idea might be to extend lisp-data-mode by whatever the
>   > syntactic differences are, to at least have some basic visual support in
>   > terms of syntax highlighting and the like.
>
> It is fine to copy some code from an existing mode.  I just advise
> people not to try to arrange to share the code between the two modes.
> I expect that the sharing would make for more complexity than it is
> worth.

-- 
Philip Kaludercic