From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tom Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs learning curve Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2010 18:39:01 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: <10954D02-E217-49F3-8824-757DA34074AB@gmail.com> <83zkxzakr0.fsf@gnu.org> <83pqyva8ms.fsf@gnu.org> <834ofczxv2.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1280774368 5319 80.91.229.12 (2 Aug 2010 18:39:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2010 18:39:28 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Aug 02 20:39:26 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Ofzv1-0000El-Fh for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:39:25 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:41636 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Ofzv0-0002Se-Py for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:39:22 -0400 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=35407 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Ofzut-0002RX-76 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:39:16 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Ofzus-000801-3C for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:39:15 -0400 Original-Received: from lo.gmane.org ([80.91.229.12]:36677) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Ofzur-0007zC-OX for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:39:14 -0400 Original-Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Ofzup-00009c-DI for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:39:11 +0200 Original-Received: from 94-21-223-107.pool.digikabel.hu ([94.21.223.107]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:39:11 +0200 Original-Received: from levelhalom by 94-21-223-107.pool.digikabel.hu with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:39:11 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 42 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: sea.gmane.org User-Agent: Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/) X-Loom-IP: 94.21.223.107 (Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 6.1; U; en) Presto/2.6.30 Version/10.60) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:128148 Archived-At: Eli Zaretskii gnu.org> writes: > I already wrote long ago in this thread that to make Emacs more > attractive, we need to add to it hot new features that target software > developers. And why not add these by simply reusing the work of others? The most requested and popular features are code completion, refactoring and such. I know CEDET can do some of these, but I wonder if Emacs should harness the effort put into these areas by other development teams. Take a look at the screenshots IdeBridge for example: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/IdeBridge It uses SharpDevelop libraries to provide completion. I know a pure elisp solution would be the best, but given the plethora of languages it's not a realistic goal to provide a comprehensive Elisp backend solution for everything due to limited developer resources. The best approach may be to provide a standard code completion (refactoring, documentation lookup, etc.) frontend in Emacs into which any backend implementation can be plugged. People would write bridge code like in the above example to handle communication between the frontend and the selected backend. There are no licensing issues, because it can work with process communication. If only Emacs is installed on the machine the default backend could be CEDET, but if, for example, Eclipse is installed then the user could configure Java completion to use the Eclipse backend instead if it provides more complete code analysis than CEDET. Or .NET libraries for .NET Why should Emacs reinvent everything in Elisp when it can stand on the shoulder of other development teams?