Let's begin SchemeOS

[Christian Lynbech on satellite]

>>>>> "Chris" == Chris Bitmead <chrisb@ans.com.au> writes:


Chris> Unlike others, I'm not overly concerned about getting emacs
Chris> working. The reason is that current implementations of Emacs,
Chris> are very much devoted to the UNIX view of the universe. That
Chris> is, everything is a text file, and everything is stored in a
Chris> UNIX file system.

This, I guess, depends on your point of view (fanatism warning: I
*love* emacs). While emacs does have a number of filesystem oriented
functions, these a by no means essential.

The basic structure is the `buffer' which basically just is a string
with associated information (with the concept of buffer local variables
probably being the most important).

Chris> In any case, text files will be much less important in Scheme
Chris> OS, and therefore Emacs will be quite a lot less important too,
Chris> since it is primarily a text editing tool.

Well, text remains an important part of users life, no matter how it
is stored, and it would takes something of a hack to beat emacs at
editing text.

Chris> Until SchemeOS gets it's own text editor, we can use a UNIX
Chris> editor

Then why not simply use UNIX emacs?

Chris> I've never used a Structure editor, so I don't know how good
Chris> they can be

I have somewhere some references to a couple of articles written by
Richard Stallmann and (I think) Erik Sandewall in ACM Computing
Surveys (I think) discussing the pros and cons of structure editors. I
can try to dig them up if you like.


---------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
Christian Lynbech          | Telebit Communications A/S                       
                           | Fabrikvej 11, DK-8260 Viby J                 
Phone: +45 8628 8176       | email: chl@tbit.dk --- URL: http://www.tbit.dk
---------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
Hit the philistines three times over the head with the Elisp reference manual.
                                        - petonic@hal.com (Michael A. Petonic)