🚀 go-pugleaf

Jeff Dwork writes:

   BTW, the selection of lines is not purely binary.  Each line has an
   integer, the select level, assigned to it.  Lines with select level
   equal to display level (or between display levels n1 and n2) are
   displayed.  Edit operations are on displayed lines only or on all
   lines depending on the setting of scope.  Select levels of lines
   may be set absolutely or may be incremented or decremented.

I can see the usefullness of this in certain situations, but I don't
believe that, in general, it is worth the added expense of complexity
in storing all this information.  Lastly, can you, under Xedit,
maintain the information between sessions.  IMHO, if you can't do
this, it isn't that useful, not to me anyway.

   I wouldn't call REXX a shell.  It's a procedural language with some
   very nice features, including some good regexp stuff.  Substantial
   portions of XEDIT are implemented in REXX as "XEDIT macros"
   (functions in emacs).  I think that elisp is a better language for
   implementing an editor - more of emacs is elisp than XEDIT is REXX,
   but REXX is VERY MUCH EASIER for a non-lisper to use to write
   one-shot functions that are smarter than emacs' macros.

Ah yes, but I find Lisp easier than REXX for me (I'm a Lisper).  It is
all POV (point of view).  I do think Emacs needs a little more of the
'quick and dirty' keyboard macros (like a couple of addition C-x e
combinations).  This would be very handy.

   Maybe we should encourage high schools to teach lisp?

I have always felt that Lisp (or more appropriately Scheme) should be
THE FIRST language ALL CS majors are taught, and extending it down to
high school would not be a terribly bad idea.  The idea of symbolic
computation is wonderful, and should be taught early on.  I curse the
people who tried to teach me BASIC, I guess I subverted their efforts
by writing in Assembler... :-)

Chris
--
| Chris Petrilli
| petrilli@gnu.ai.mit.edu
| I don't even speak for myself.