From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: emacs roadmap Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:02:32 -0500 Message-ID: References: <09655BCF-9C06-4ABC-904A-FCE78028E28C@gmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1355803360 2542 80.91.229.3 (18 Dec 2012 04:02:40 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2012 04:02:40 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs devel To: Tony Day Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Dec 18 05:02:54 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1TkoOM-0001Xn-9g for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 18 Dec 2012 05:02:54 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:55686 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TkoO8-0004Ua-T4 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:02:40 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:39318) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TkoO6-0004UV-KK for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:02:39 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TkoO5-0004ig-Dm for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:02:38 -0500 Original-Received: from ironport2-out.teksavvy.com ([206.248.154.182]:61160) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TkoO5-0004ia-A0 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:02:37 -0500 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Av0EAG6Zu09FxLDj/2dsb2JhbABEtBGBCIIVAQEEAVYjBQsLDiYSFBgNJIgcBQu5fpBEA4hCjWiNCYFYgwc X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.75,637,1330923600"; d="scan'208";a="210145305" Original-Received: from 69-196-176-227.dsl.teksavvy.com (HELO fmsmemgm.homelinux.net) ([69.196.176.227]) by ironport2-out.teksavvy.com with ESMTP/TLS/ADH-AES256-SHA; 17 Dec 2012 23:02:35 -0500 Original-Received: by fmsmemgm.homelinux.net (Postfix, from userid 20848) id 8A772AE3F9; Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:02:32 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <09655BCF-9C06-4ABC-904A-FCE78028E28C@gmail.com> (Tony Day's message of "Tue, 18 Dec 2012 12:36:07 +1100") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3.50 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 206.248.154.182 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:155639 Archived-At: >> Lexical closures are supported natively since Emacs-24. Namespaces are >> another beast altogether, and there's not much on the horizon there either. > Ok, so now I understand defvar, lol. Not much use of lexical scoping in the > wild - this was all I could find: http://github.com/nicferrier/elnode Use of lexical-binding restricts the code to Emacs-24, so it's understandably not used very much in the wild yet. But if you grep for `lexical-binding:' in the emacs/lisp/**/*.el or elpa/packages/**/*.el files, you'll see that such code does exist. >>> - first-class print for functions? >> Not sure what that would be. ELISP> (defun foo () '(1 2 3)) ELISP> (as-string 'foo) > (defun foo() '(1 2 3)) > Would be very useful for debugging. (symbol-function 'foo) gives you something pretty close for interpreted functions. For byte-coded functions, we don't keep enough info to get this data, but `C-h f foo RET' should give you a hyperlink to the function's actual source code. > Tounge was slightly in cheek. What annoys me 100 times a day is having to > switch away from the emacs environment to a browser and I was imagining that > the technical difficulties involved in getting a decent browser rendering > might coincide with the point at which C is needed to get closer to the *nix > machine metal. I'm half hoping that things like guile 2 pushing lisp > further down the chain might one day lead to an emacs os (a personal > preference not a recommendation). Implementing a browser in Elisp is of course problematic because of the lack of efficiency of Elisp. But even if Elisp/Guile were super efficient, keeping up with the web standards is a big job in itself, so we don't want to go there anyway, and instead we'd want to rely on external libraries. Still, a close integration between those libraries and Emacs is a non-trivial problem. A lot of people would be happy to see some progress on this front, indeed. Stefan