Some thoughts about raising the profile of Lisp
I must be mellowing in my old age (possibly as opposed to bellowing) because I have been getting praise and compliments recently on comments in various places.
Don't worry, there are still people angrily shouting at me as well.
This was the earlier comment, I think... There was a slightly forlorn comment in the Reddit Lisp community, talking ( Read more... )
Don't worry, there are still people angrily shouting at me as well.
This was the earlier comment, I think... There was a slightly forlorn comment in the Reddit Lisp community, talking ( Read more... )
Yes, Stallman will be an immovable blocker on this. From what little I understand of the Emacs development process, the _only_ way will be to do it out of the main tree. Either a big add-in of some kind, or a fork but intentionally done so as to be able to be merged back in.
And because of the legacy weight of olde phartes who won't cooperate, it must be very easy to turn off.
A very big point is that it must be *very easy to install*. The conventional Emacs way of configuration is completely impenetrable to newbies; I speak from a decade of direct personal experience.
Writing Lisp into a config file is no bloody use at all. It needs an installer of its own that finds the config file and modifies it.
This sounds like snark. It isn't. I have been experimenting with ErgoEmacs for years.
The official module thing is here: https://ergoemacs.github.io/
I can't install it.
They tell me bizarre arcane bollocks about MELPA or whatever. No use to a newb. The "hard" instructions are to add it to your config file, but they are unable to assimilate the notion that you may not have one and may not know how to edit it.
I spent *days* trying to explain this on their mailing list but they don't, can't, get it.
So I have to use an obsolete version from the original author:
http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/ergonomic_emacs_keybinding.html
Emacs folk can't even talk normal computer language. They don't even know that they can't. "Add a line to a file" is beyond them, it's all bloody C-m M-c M-butterfly.
I'm not exaggerating: you need to add incantations to a file they assume I have (I don't), which may be in multiple places (I don't know which is "right"), that I must add stuff after certain stuff they assume exists (it doesn't; mine are empty), and that I can read the code in the file to know where and how to add it (I can't). You can't just add lines on the end, or to the start; it's not just a config file, it's a program, and you can't just bung stuff in at random.
Emacs people assume you know how to do this, and I don't. Result: I can't even try it.
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