>>>>> "Hrvoje" == Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic(a)srce.hr&gt; writes: Hrvoje> sperber(a)informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor]) writes: Hrvoje> Lots of elisp code can run under Common Lisp almost Hrvoje> unchanged. This is not true for Scheme. >> >> Please substantiate this. By default, for instance, `let' is >> lexically scoped in Common Lisp, which is clearly incompatible with >> Emacs Lisp. Hrvoje> Not so by design. In fact, we were discussing introduction of a Hrvoje> lexically scoped `let' to elisp many times. And guess what? The Hrvoje> proposed semantics were equivalent to those used by CL -- lexical Hrvoje> scope by default, dynamic scope for special variables. Great. While I don't remember the proposed semantics, and don't necessarily agree with this, this is just as easy to implement in Scheme.

Hrvoje> I don't care. Emacs is not ANSI CL. If that was the Hrvoje> impression I was giving, I apologize, because that is not Hrvoje> what I meant. One important benefit in swapping the extension language would be that we could use library code not specifically written for XEmacs. There's lots and lots of library code for both Scheme and Common Lisp. Stripping down the language would mean we couldn't use much of it.

If we're going to hook to a Lisp engine maintained by someone else (which we hopefully will), there's no reason to take only a part of it.

Hrvoje> The Scheme users and implementors don't have the constraint Hrvoje> of previous implementation of Common Lisp idioms. We do, Hrvoje> and I would like us to preserve them. Sure. Let's.

Hrvoje> I don't like CMU CL (far too slow and buggy IMHO), Actually, CMU CL produces pretty much the fastest CL code around. Unfortuntately, it only works on very few architectures.

Hrvoje> and I haven't worked with GCL much. It might be usable. Now *that*'s what I would call slow and buggy. (...)