From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Miles Bader Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: elisp's cl package. Don't understand the notice about eval-when-compile Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:01:56 +0900 Organization: NEC Electronics Message-ID: References: <558fb909-6290-4c04-88a3-ad385d75f456@e1g2000pra.googlegroups.com> <9032ef00-187f-47ad-a2de-e0d07a3303ee@s38g2000prg.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1238550055 6994 80.91.229.12 (1 Apr 2009 01:40:55 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 01:40:55 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Apr 01 03:42:14 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1LopSy-0000Lx-EF for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:42:08 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:55183 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1LopRa-0000ip-Rq for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:40:42 -0400 Original-Path: news.stanford.edu!headwall.stanford.edu!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs,comp.lang.lisp Original-Lines: 39 Original-X-Trace: individual.net G+V64sqHWFNx8/aC6q8GIwOpOr59aeHmUbMWjr/34wJw+iN3hA Cancel-Lock: sha1:4x0GrBxocGzsvM+LPelwJ7b+Ubg= sha1:KciT1QPIRDt/6ppUXQH+CFrY5dQ= System-Type: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu Blat: Foop Original-Xref: news.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:168141 comp.emacs:98091 comp.lang.lisp:263883 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:63426 Archived-At: "Thomas F. Burdick" writes: > If you just have an elisp package that you want to make publicly > available, I see no need to avoid cl.el. It's distributed with emacs, > so there's no reason not to use it. Just, stick to the tasteful > parts :-) ... > It's both. I think RMS has an irrational hatred of CL, so there are a > lot of the useful things in cl.el that should have migrated into the > core elisp. As it is, they're ghettoized along with the parts of that > package that exist just as a crutch for Common Lispers. The problem with cl.el is that it's a giant glutinous mess, that seems to offer the vague promise to be kinda-like-common-lisp, but really isn't (it can't be, the elisp core cannot support much of common-lisp efficiently), and as a result is kind of misleading to users (especially to common-lisp users, who might think "oh great, I can just use common-lisp!" ... hahaha, sorry bub...). I agree that many _parts_ of cl.el are quite good, and useful, but while you may be able to pick and choose wisely, I think many users aren't as skillful, and would end up using the horrible grotty bits as well -- and we really don't want to increase the number of dependencies on horrible grotty things. Personally, I'd use a different tactic for addressing this problem -- I'd try to split out the useful parts into separate packages (maybe a "setf" package, a "struct" package, a "sequence" package etc), and pull the best and simplest bits into core elisp -- but rms's approach is at least simple and easy. [Maybe in the future, elisp will gain more features will allow it to better implement some of the parts it now can't do very well (e.g., multiple return-values and keyword arguments), but for now that stuff is just muck.] -Miles -- Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think we think.