Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

[Stefan Monnier]

Sorry to spam here a little, but I was looking into how we should
integrate something like cl-font-lock
(https://github.com/cl-font-lock/cl-font-lock) into Emacs and then
I started to wonder...

Who uses `lisp-mode`?  IIUC neither SLY nor SLIME actually use
`lisp-mode` itself, they use some other major mode with its
fontification function, right?

So do they already highlight built-in functions, types, and variables in
a special way (presumably by querying the underlying Lisp process)?

Do they actually use a proper child-mode of `lisp-mode`?

Do they (re)use the font-lock keywords of `lisp-mode` at all, or do they
use something completely independent?


        Stefan

Re: Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

[Luke Gorrie]

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I'm the one most out of the loop so I rely on someone to correct my
misinformation :) but the way I remember it at least from the early days is

SLIME is a minor-mode below lisp-mode that reuses the lisp-mode
functionality like navigating by sexp, font-lock, indentation, etc. The
dynamic indentation stuff in SLIME, like detecting &body in macros, is used
to configure property lists that lisp-mode will see. So really relying on
and heavily using lisp-mode.

That could well be wrong and/or out of date though. Just answering due to
the novelty of being asked something about that code :)



On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 at 01:00, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
wrote:

> Sorry to spam here a little, but I was looking into how we should
> integrate something like cl-font-lock
> (https://github.com/cl-font-lock/cl-font-lock) into Emacs and then
> I started to wonder...
>
> Who uses `lisp-mode`?  IIUC neither SLY nor SLIME actually use
> `lisp-mode` itself, they use some other major mode with its
> fontification function, right?
>
> So do they already highlight built-in functions, types, and variables in
> a special way (presumably by querying the underlying Lisp process)?
>
> Do they actually use a proper child-mode of `lisp-mode`?
>
> Do they (re)use the font-lock keywords of `lisp-mode` at all, or do they
> use something completely independent?
>
>
>         Stefan
>
>

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Re: Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Why call it "SLIME"?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

[Luke Gorrie]

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On Sun, 12 Apr 2020, 04:41 Richard Stallman, <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> Why call it "SLIME"?
>

Eric Marsden wrote it originally as a quick weekend hack and named the
files slim.el and skank.lisp after the song he was listening to at the time
(Fat Boy Slim.)

I picked up development and renamed the files slime.el and swank.lisp so
the buffer names wouldn't collide in my Emacs session.

Hadn't anticipated that the code would be so long lived or maybe we could
have chosen a better name :).

>

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Re: Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Hadn't anticipated that the code would be so long lived or maybe we could
  > have chosen a better name :).

It is not too late.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

[Luke Gorrie]

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On Mon, 13 Apr 2020, 04:21 Richard Stallman, <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > Hadn't anticipated that the code would be so long lived or maybe we
> could
>   > have chosen a better name :).
>
> It is not too late.
>

True!

Maybe we could rename Emacs to iMacs at the same time to make it more
contemporary.

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Re: Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Maybe we could rename Emacs to iMacs at the same time to make it more
  > contemporary.

I think you are joking, but I was being serious.  If you're proud
of your work, and you consider it useful, how about putting on
a name that isn't derogatory?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

[조성빈 via "Emacs development discussions.]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> 작성:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>> Maybe we could rename Emacs to iMacs at the same time to make it more
>> contemporary.
>
> I think you are joking, but I was being serious.  If you're proud
> of your work, and you consider it useful, how about putting on
> a name that isn't derogatory?

I’m not the original dev, but I fail to see why SLIME is ‘derogatory’.
Also, SLIME has existed since 2003 (and is very popular) - arbitrarily
changing names will only confuse the users.

As a side point: A big amount of people consider GIMP as derogatory
(and it's name actively harms it’s reputation), but GNU is refusing to
rename it. Maybe instead of SLIME, renaming GIMP might be more useful?

> -- 
> Dr Richard Stallman
> Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
> Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

You seem to be taking offense, and I don't understand why.
Can you help me understand?

I didn't mean any offense.

  > As a side point: A big amount of people consider GIMP as derogatory
  > (and its name actively harms its reputation),

Sorry, I don't follow.  What is derogatory about "gimp"?  I understand
it to mean a person who walks a little unevenly, perhaps due to a
long-ago leg injury.

						  but GNU is refusing to
  > rename it.

The GNU Project can't "rename" a GNU package just by saying so.
It would be the wrong way to treat the GIMP developers.  It would
be the wrong way to treat you, too.

I suggest we all reread the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines and
think about how they might apply to this conversation.  They help us
avoid hurting each other's feelings.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

[Andrea Corallo]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > Hadn't anticipated that the code would be so long lived or maybe we could
>   > have chosen a better name :).
>
> It is not too late.

Hi Richard,

I think you could be missing the humour within the SLIME name.  This
stands for "Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs".

Andrea

-- 
akrl@sdf.org

Re: Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I think you could be missing the humour within the SLIME name.  This
  > stands for "Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs".

I didn't know that -- thanks for informing me.

I have a hunch I am far from the only person who sees the name SLIME
and does not know what it stands for.  I saw several messages about it
on this list, and I don't think any of them explained, until you did
just now.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

[Stefan Monnier]

Luke Gorrie [2020-04-11 06:58:29] wrote:
> SLIME is a minor-mode below lisp-mode that reuses the lisp-mode
> functionality like navigating by sexp, font-lock, indentation, etc. The
> dynamic indentation stuff in SLIME, like detecting &body in macros, is used
> to configure property lists that lisp-mode will see. So really relying on
> and heavily using lisp-mode.

Teemu Likonen [2020-04-11 08:36:48] wrote:
> Slime uses lisp-mode with Lisp files but adds some minor modes on the
> top of it. The most important addition is slime-mode but there are
> usually other minor modes too, depending on the configuration. I happen
> to have slime-autodoc-mode and slime-trace-dialog-mode.

João Távora [2020-04-11 16:38:27] wrote:
> No. Both SLY and SLIME use lisp-mode. They augment it with minor modes
> which are added to lisp-mode-hook. slime-mode and sly-mode are such
> minor modes and they are active wherever Lisp-related features are
> required (finding definitions, describing symbols, inspecting values,
> etc).

Thank you very much for the quick answers.  It gave me the info I needed
right away, and helped me find quickly the rest of the answers I needed.
I'm surprised and glad to see `lisp-mode` is so actively used
(tho it hasn't seen much activity over the years).


        Stefan

Re: Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

[Teemu Likonen]

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Stefan Monnier [2020-04-10T18:59:55-04] wrote:

> Who uses `lisp-mode`?  IIUC neither SLY nor SLIME actually use
> `lisp-mode` itself, they use some other major mode with its
> fontification function, right?

Slime uses lisp-mode with Lisp files but adds some minor modes on the
top of it. The most important addition is slime-mode but there are
usually other minor modes too, depending on the configuration. I happen
to have slime-autodoc-mode and slime-trace-dialog-mode.

Slime's REPL is a major mode (slime-repl-mode) which uses a couple of
Slime's minor modes too.

-- 
/// Teemu Likonen - .-.. http://www.iki.fi/tlikonen/
// OpenPGP: 4E1055DC84E9DFF613D78557719D69D324539450

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Re: Common Lisp in Emacs (lisp-mode, font-lock, SLIME, SLY, ...)

[João Távora]

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On Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 12:00 AM Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
wrote:

> Sorry to spam here a little, but I was looking into how we should
> integrate something like cl-font-lock
> (https://github.com/cl-font-lock/cl-font-lock) into Emacs and then
> I started to wonder...
>
> Who uses `lisp-mode`?  IIUC neither SLY nor SLIME actually use
> `lisp-mode` itself, they use some other major mode with its
> fontification function, right?

Hi Stefan, how are you?

No. Both SLY and SLIME use lisp-mode. They augment it with minor modes
which are added to lisp-mode-hook. slime-mode and sly-mode are such
minor modes and they are active wherever Lisp-related features are
required (finding definitions, describing symbols, inspecting values,
etc).

SLY differs slightly from SLIME in that it additionally has the
sly-editing-mode minor mode, which turns on source-code editing
facilities (which shouldn't be active in other non-source buffers where
some SLY functionality is active).

> So do they already highlight built-in functions, types, and variables
> in a special way (presumably by querying the underlying Lisp process)?

No.  As far as I know, they both use "static" highlighting techniques,
i.e. font-lock i.e. something like:

   (defvar sly-additional-font-lock-keywords

'(("(\\(\\(\\s_\\|\\w\\)*:\\(define-\\|do-\\|with-\\|without-\\)\\(\\s_\\|\\w\\)*\\)"
1 font-lock-keyword-face)
      ("(\\(\\(define-\\|do-\\|with-\\)\\(\\s_\\|\\w\\)*\\)" 1
font-lock-keyword-face)
      ("(\\(check-\\(\\s_\\|\\w\\)*\\)" 1 font-lock-warning-face)
      ("(\\(assert-\\(\\s_\\|\\w\\)*\\)" 1 font-lock-warning-face)))

The only example of font-locking by querying the underlying Lisp process
happens for reader conditionals like #+foo.  The reader conditional is
evaluated in the underlying Lisp process and decides if the form
following the #+foo is fontified as a comment or not.  I don't know
_exactly_ how this is done (didn't touch this part of the fork much).

The corresponding code in SLY lives in contrib/sly-fontifying-fu.el

> Do they actually use a proper child-mode of `lisp-mode`?

No.  All the extra behavior is added via minor modes, _not_ major-mode
inheritance (but see PS).

> Do they (re)use the font-lock keywords of `lisp-mode` at all, or do they
> use something completely independent?

I think they reuse some of the keywords.

João

PS: The only exception to this is sly-xref-mode and slime-xref-mode,
which do infact derive lisp-mode but it's basically a hack on both
counts, it doesn't really use most of lisp-mode.  I've been meaning to
migrate SLY's cross-referencing facilities to Emacs's xref.el anyway,
but they're very slightly incompatibles and I haven't had the time to
merge the two.

PS-2: By the way, IMO cleaning up the indentation code is something more
pressing in terms of well-behaving SLY/SLIME.  When loaded, they both
override Emacs's built-in lisp/emacs-lisp/cl-indent.el with libraries
that aren't quite the same.  There is a long-standing SLY issue opened
by Jonas Bernoulli which is currently stalled because we don't know what
do do.  See
https://github.com/joaotavora/sly/issues/92#issuecomment-329559333 and
maybe offer your advice there.

Also note that indentation is where both SLY and SLIME do query the Lisp
process.  They discover the syntax of each macro and indent accordingly
(so indenting produces different results depending on whether you are
"offline" or "online").

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