Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.lisp.franz
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!news.sprintlink.net!in2.uu.net!netnews.jhuapl.edu!aplcenmp!hall
From: hall@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu (Marty Hall)
Subject: Re: Best Emacs for Lisp Development
Message-ID: <DGLwJt.Fp5@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu>
Organization: JHU/APL AI Lab, Hopkins P/T CS Faculty
References: <DERWAY.95Oct17090941@alumni.ndc.com>
Distribution: inet
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 18:55:05 GMT
Lines: 40
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.lisp:19551 comp.lang.lisp.franz:582

In <DERWAY.95Oct17090941@alumni.ndc.com> derway@ndc.com (D. Erway) writes:
>
>So some people swear by lucid emacs, (now xemacs), over the latest gnu
>version.  Why?  What are the advantages either way?  What specifically
>regarding lisp development?

IMHO, the main reason is that XEmacs comes bundled with ILISP; GNU
Emacs doesn't (at least as of 19.28), so you have to get it and
install it yourself. XEmacs comes bundled with a bunch of packages
like this, which is convenient but not vital.

In the past, XEmacs also had dramatically better X support. Nowadays
I'm not so sure if the differences in that regard are very
significant. I still prefer it personally, but probably mostly because
I'm accustomed to it.

>Has anyone gotten allegro CL well integrated with gnu emacs?

ILISP works fine for the basic ACL. Works more or less out of the box
on GNU Emacs 19.2x or XEmacs 19.xx. If you care, I have an XEmacs menu
interface to some of the ILISP functionality (plus turning
font-lock-mode on, etc). However, if you have Composer, you will need
to use Franz' interface instead of ILISP. This works on either emacs.
I can send the customizations I use if you are interested.

One plus of the Franz interface, even if you don't use Composer, is
that it gives online access to an extended version of _Common Lisp:
The Reference_. However, the clman program is freely available on
ftp.uu.net, and non-Allegro users can install it so that they can call
"clman <symbol>" from the UNIX prompt. I have a 10-line function that
non-Allegro users can use to let you do M-x clman <symbol> (from
either emacs) in such a case. Given that CLtR is a bit out of date and
CLtL/2 is available on the Web, this may not be such a boon, but our
users here still find it quite useful. Doing "M-x clman subseq" is
sometimes easier for the beginner than searching CLtL/2 online for
SUBSEQ. 

Cheers-
						- Marty
(proclaim '(inline skates))
