Good text editors for Lisp
==========================
This is a small survey of editors available with Lisp support.
1. vi
2. axe
3. Emacs
1. vi
--
Platforms: Unix, DOS, Win32...
(We recommend especially vim and elvis.)
Characteristics:
- Text mode editor.
- Full GUI in elvis 2 and vim 6.
Features:
- Fast, small.
- Automatic backup.
- Extremely handy search / replace / repeat functions ("/", "s", ".").
- Deals well with big files (provided enough room in /tmp).
- Syntax highlighting in recent versions of elvis and vim.
Drawbacks:
- User needs to constantly switch between "command mode" and "insert mode".
- Typos in "command mode" are not undoable.
Lisp support:
- Parenthesis matching function ("%").
Recommended in the following situations:
- All kinds of minor editing operations.
- Non-Unix platform.
2. axe
---
Platforms: Unix X11.
Characteristics:
- X11 GUI editor with pull-down menus.
Features:
- Fast, small.
- Multiple windows.
- Easy to use.
- Optimal Cut & Paste functionality.
- Two kinds of search / replace functions.
- Opening a new window from the shell command line ("faxe") is very fast.
Drawbacks:
- Nonstandard menubar layout.
- Slow cursor positioning in files larger than 1 MB.
- Not 100% stable: dumps core with a small probability in certain situations
(faxe calling, or after search & replace), so it's best to save your files
regularly.
Lisp support:
- Parenthesis matching (blinks once).
Recommended in the following situations:
- All kinds of major editing operations.
* How to customize axe in general?
The default font is bold. To choose another font globally, add the
following to your .Xdefaults:
Axe*ed*Font: 6x13
To choose this font only for text pieces, but not for dialog boxes
(this is prettier), instead add the following to your .Xdefaults:
Axe*ed.?.Font: 6x13
Axe*ed*Text*Font: 6x13
The font must be one existing in your X11 font directory
(/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts or something like that).
3. emacs, xemacs
-------------
Platforms: Unix, Win32.
Characteristics:
- GUI editor with pull-down menus.
Features:
- Can also be used in text mode.
- Lots of customization packages exist.
- Good integration with Lisp process.
- Automatic backup.
- Extremely powerful.
- Highly customizable for those willing to dig into Emacs Lisp.
- No problems whatsoever with big or huge files.
Drawbacks:
- Needs proper configuration. By default, it doesn't do cut & paste the way
it is normally done in X11, and sometimes the backspace key is configured
to trigger a help screen.
- Heavyweight. On a 8 MB machine with X11, Emacs causes much swapping.
Moreover, process size increases with time.
- The editor is often unresponsive, because of
- normal Unix swapping,
- Emacs' conservative GC (incremental and generational GCs don't cause
noticeable interruptions),
- automatic backup.
Often, you click on the menubar and have to wait 10 seconds for the menu.
- Inconsistent user interface:
- Few functions are available through menus, some through keybindings,
others only through M-x.
- Using the scrollbar repositions the cursor.
- Need to press C-g twice to abort incremental search.
- many more details like this...
Lisp support:
- Parenthesis matching (blinks once).
- Helps indentation of Lisp code.
- Display Lisp keywords, comments, strings in different colours
(font-lock-mode).
- Keybindings for evaluating forms, macroexpanding forms.
Recommended in the following situations:
- Professional programmer with fast machine needs good integration with
Lisp running as a separate process.
Discussion:
* What is Emacs good for?
1. Fill your machine's memory. Remember, EMACS means "Eight Megabytes
Always Continuously Swapping". And on my 8 MB machine, this is true!
2. It gives a better interaction with CLISP. When you use CLISP on a
console, terminal or xterm, your interactions with CLISP are
limited to:
- typing text,
- scrolling in the history,
- see parentheses matching,
- cut & paste from/to the xterm.
In Emacs, you have the entire interaction in a buffer. You have
a keystroke for evaluating a form, macroexpanding a form etc.
* Which Emacs to use?
To date, we have the choice between
* Emacs 18.58 (text mode only);
* Emacs 19.34 (GUI for X11 and Win32);
* Emacs 20.7 (ditto);
* Emacs 21.1 (GUI for X11, Win32 and MacOS);
* XEmacs 19.16 (GUI for X11);
* XEmacs 20.4 (GUI for X11);
* XEmacs 21.1 (GUI for X11 and Win32).
We recommend using the latest (21.*) version of either
- Emacs <http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/> or
- XEmacs <http://www.xemacs.org>.
* How to customize Emacs in general?
1. Create a file called .emacs in your home directory. (This file
is called \!EMACS on DOS, and _emacs on Win32.)
The file called etc/sample.emacs in the XEmacs distribution might
be a good starting point.
2. Get rid of tabs. When you cut & paste some lisp text to clisp, tabs in
it will make the readline library think that user want completion of
a symbol, thus causing delays, beeps and general annoyance. Therefore
don't use tabs at all, except in Makefiles where they are syntactically
required.
Add the following to your .emacs:
;; Tabs are anachronistic.
(setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil)
3. Set the path for "info" documentation. If "M-x info" gives an error,
it is most likely that you have to set a the list of directories
where Emacs searches its documentation, roughly like this:
;; GNU Info pages.
(setq Info-default-directory-list
'("/usr/local/info/" "/usr/info/"))
4. Choose the default font. On my screen, "6x13" looks better than
the default "9x15" font, so I put into my .emacs:
;; Default font for GNU Emacs 19.
(if (not (string-match "XEmacs" emacs-version))
(set-default-font "6x13"))
For XEmacs, you set the default font through an X resource in your
.Xdefaults file. Get some inspiration from the file called
etc/sample.Xdefaults in the XEmacs distribution and the files
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/*/fonts.alias of your X11 distribution.
5. Make the X11 selections work the normal way (i.e. as in xedit and
axe). With recent versions of GNU Emacs and XEmacs, it is sufficient
to add to your .emacs:
;; X11 mouse and selection handling.
(setq-default mouse-yank-at-point t)
* How to customize Emacs for use of CLISP?
1. When you load a Lisp file (extension ".lisp") into Emacs, it
automatically switches to `lisp-mode', magically by a variable
called `auto-mode-alist'.
One feature of the lisp-mode is that the tab key indents the current
line, which makes typing Lisp programs easier because you don't have
to type the whitespace.
The lisp-mode is not well suited for Common Lisp.
In particular, IF forms get badly indented.
To fix this, add the following to your <.emacs>:
;; Common Lisp indentation.
(autoload 'common-lisp-indent-function "cl-indent")
(setq lisp-indent-function 'common-lisp-indent-function)
2. You might try out syntactic colouring of your Lisp programs.
Just after loading the first Lisp file into Emacs, type
M-x font-lock-mode RET
You can also add
(global-font-lock-mode 1)
to your <.emacs>.
3. The easiest way to start CLISP under Emacs is to type C-c C-z in a
Lisp buffer or M-x run-lisp RET anywhere. This creates a Lisp
interaction buffer in `inferior-lisp-mode'.
(CLISP is by no means "inferior" to Emacs Lisp, but CLISP is
running "under" Emacs, thus the name).
For this, add to your .emacs:
;; XEmacs doesn't autoload inf-lisp.el, load it now.
(load-library "inf-lisp")
;; Define the program to be called by M-x run-lisp.
(setq inferior-lisp-program "clisp -I") ; the "-I" is important.
;; Add new keybindings: C-x C-e evaluates the *next* form,
;; C-x C-m macroexpands the next form.
(defun lisp-eval-sexp (&optional and-go)
"Send the next sexp to the inferior Lisp process.
Prefix argument means switch to the Lisp buffer afterwards."
(interactive "P")
(lisp-eval-region (point) (scan-sexps (point) 1) and-go))
(defun lisp-macroexpand-region (start end &optional and-go)
"Macroexpand the current region in the inferior Lisp process.
Prefix argument means switch to the Lisp buffer afterwards."
(interactive "r\nP")
(comint-send-string
(inferior-lisp-proc)
(format "(macroexpand-1 (quote %s))\n"
(buffer-substring-no-properties start end)))
(if and-go (switch-to-lisp t)))
(defun lisp-macroexpand-sexp (&optional and-go)
"Macroexpand the next sexp in the inferior Lisp process.
Prefix argument means switch to the Lisp buffer afterwards."
(interactive "P")
(lisp-macroexpand-region (point) (scan-sexps (point) 1) and-go))
;; Define the great keybindings.
(inferior-lisp-install-letter-bindings)
(define-key lisp-mode-map "\C-x\C-e" 'lisp-eval-sexp)
(define-key inferior-lisp-mode-map "\C-x\C-e" 'lisp-eval-sexp)
(define-key lisp-mode-map "\C-x\C-m" 'lisp-macroexpand-sexp)
(define-key inferior-lisp-mode-map "\C-x\C-m" 'lisp-macroexpand-sexp)
In this mode, M-p cycles through the history.
The keybinding C-x C-e, which may also be issued from
another lisp-mode buffer, evaluates the form before(!) the cursor.
If you want to start clisp in different configurations, you can make
different commands for it, like this:
(defun clisp ()
(interactive)
(setq inferior-lisp-program "clisp -I -q")
(run-lisp inferior-lisp-program))
(defun clx ()
(interactive)
(setq inferior-lisp-program "clx -I -q")
(run-lisp inferior-lisp-program))
(defun garnet ()
(interactive)
(setq inferior-lisp-program "garnet -I -q")
(run-lisp inferior-lisp-program))
4. There is an even better Emacs mode, called ilisp-mode.
[Merge here stuff from Marcus, Matthias, Peter.??]
XEmacs 19.14 comes with ILISP version 5.7. A newer version with much
better support for CLISP is at <http://ilisp.cons.org/>.
