Olin Shivers <shivers@lambda.ai.mit.edu> writes:
[much stuff about the merits and flaws of using Scheme as an
interactive shell deleted ]
> I would further suggest that you'd be even better off punting this whole
> idea of the command-line/transcript model of shell interaction. You could
> instead use the emacs editor Edwin (written in Scheme) together with the
> Unix API provided by scsh to do a screen-oriented shell, where common
> commands would be bound to control keys, less common commands invoked from
> meta-x, and complex operations performed by entering fragments of Scheme
> and scsh process notation. Best of both worlds -- interactivity and
> programmability.
>
> I've always wanted to do this, but it's not the sort of thing for which
> I'm promoted.
> -Olin
While I know it's LISP based and not Scheme based, wouldn't this same
sort of thing be possible with regular XEmacs or GNU Emacs? I find
MIT-Scheme and Edwin rather difficult to 'get comfortable with' for a
number of reasons, but most of all it's _BIG_ and _SLOW_. I know
these same arguments get leveled at emacs all the time, but a fair
amount of work has gone into adressing some of these problems...
I suppose that the fact that emacs lacks some of the more prominent
Scheme-isms like lambda forms and continuations could be crucial, but
it might be a nice middle ground until the above ideal becomes reality
:) (I'd think that having the shell hiding in the background as a
sub-process and piping your commands to it would be fairly doable like
this)
Also, does Scsh (and/or the Scheme48 it's on top of) support Edwin?
Last I looked it was pretty much joined at the hip to MIT-Scheme with
all its pecularities and quirks... (Not saying anything bad about
MIT-Scheme, I lack the necessary crufty-old-scheme hacker points to
make assertions about anything)
This might also be made easier if the rumor I hear (that guile will be
used as a basis for an Uber-Emacs) come to fruition - it would be
rather neat if such an effort were ever undertaken to 'get in on the
ground floor' and make this super-Scheme-Shell be part of the default
design.
Great idea - I just think it would be Hard with current scheme
implementations, perhaps it'd be better to make sure the necessary
hooks are in place while a suitable foundation is being built for a
new house altogether :)
-Chris P. (I've plumbed the depths of csh and.. It's gross down there :)
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Chris Patti feoh@dayroom.org <preferred> "Do ducks really sit?
H:(617)731-6399 feoh@gnu.ai.mit.edu<backup> if so - Why?"
W:(617)563-5681 Christopher.Patti@fmr.com<Work> -_Starship Troopers_, Heinlein
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