Re: Perl embedding: trial balloon
Hrvoje Niksic writes:
John Tobey <jtobey(a)channel1.com> writes:
> I would like you folks' comments on the possibility of porting
> Perlmacs (an embedding of Perl in GNU Emacs) to XEmacs.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, adding the feature
for the users who want it has always been a policy in XEmacs, as
opposed to FSF Emacs.
But on the other hand, I don't really see a use for Perlmacs in the
XEmacs core. XEmacs is based on Lisp, and it won't go away. Teaching
people to utilize the Lisp interpreter they have is a worthy goal
which I feel is threatened by allowing Perl to be used instead.
Perl is popular. Perl is hype. People who have never heard of Emacs
Lisp but know Perl, will want to use the new capabilities, and then
we'll be stuck with supporting Perl. I don't like that prospect.
Mmm, well, Elisp is hype too. The bottom line is, all of these
languages have significant followings. I'd like to be better at elisp
than I am, but I'd also like it if XEmacs were just a little easier to
extend when I'm in a hurry, which would certainly be facilitated if
there were some more mainstream ways to program it. I would
definitely like to have the ability to write XEmacs extension modules
in other languages in addition to elisp.
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