From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Sam Steingold Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: over-engineered (and under-standardized) inferior interfaces Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 15:20:32 -0400 Organization: disorganization Message-ID: Reply-To: sds@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1408648868 5535 80.91.229.3 (21 Aug 2014 19:21:08 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 19:21:08 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Aug 21 21:21:04 2014 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 1XKXux-0006sN-KY for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:21:03 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:33777 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XKXux-0003eo-3m for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 21 Aug 2014 15:21:03 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:43090) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XKXuq-0003eR-KN for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 21 Aug 2014 15:21:00 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XKXum-0002US-Fn for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 21 Aug 2014 15:20:56 -0400 Original-Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:40605) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XKXum-0002Ti-8o for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 21 Aug 2014 15:20:52 -0400 Original-Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1XKXui-0006kN-Go for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:20:48 +0200 Original-Received: from 66.9.135.66 ([66.9.135.66]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:20:48 +0200 Original-Received: from sds by 66.9.135.66 with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:20:48 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 64 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.9.135.66 User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.4.50 (darwin) X-Attribution: Sam X-Disclaimer: You should not expect anyone to agree with me. Cancel-Lock: sha1:OqdTWirvP0VUWdJhAgiaBCsK/dg= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 80.91.229.3 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:173789 Archived-At: Hi, I am talking about the various inferior-FOO modes which run on top of the comint mode and talk to an underlying interpreter. E.g., sql, R(ESS), lisp, bash, python, pig, &c &c &c. There are two main problems I have with them: 1. Over-engineering of connecting to the interpreter. Take a look, e.g., at sql.el:sql-product-alist with its program, options, login &c. It all makes perfect sense, I am sure, most of the time. However, sometimes the way I connect is more convoluted, e.g., I need to ssh to server, then sudo to the right user, only then invoke a command. This means that I have to set sql-program to "ssh", then pull all the sudo &c into sql-options, then disable login-params because sql.el stuffs them into the command line too early. It would be nice if, as an alternative to all the many options, I could just tell Emacs "run this command line as is and ask me no questions". 2. Lack of standardization in interaction and keybindings. The few standard interaction operations are: -- start an interaction (e.g., run Python on a python-mode buffer) -- switch to an existing interaction -- send a region, paragraph, function, line standard options are -- switch to the interaction buffer after sending the code there? -- display the code sent in the buffer? these things are done differently (if at all) in all the various modes. E.g., not all modes bind C-c C-z to switch to the interaction buffer. Not all even have a function to send the current line and move to the next line (granted, this does not make sense for _all_ languages). I wonder if it would be possible to abstract this into a macro: (define-interaction name get-interaction-buffer-function map) which will define all those functions and options above (and add standard bindings to the map) Thank you for your attention. PS. I know that ESS, pig-mode and some others are not a part of Emacs. -- Sam Steingold (http://sds.podval.org/) on darwin Ns 10.3.1265 http://www.childpsy.net/ http://ffii.org http://jihadwatch.org http://palestinefacts.org http://camera.org http://pmw.org.il Bill Gates is not god and Microsoft is not heaven.