Need internal help please (dynamic loading support)

Hello all. Over the weekend I had what I thought was a bright idea. While Elisp is ummm ... fine and dandy, I figured it would be nice if it were possible to extend XEmacs using dynamically loaded objects. For those applications that are very CPU intensive, it would make more sense (and make for much greater speed) if they were written in C and then loaded into emacs. A faster HTML parser would be a good example. So I styarted hacking about in the source and I now have rudimentary support for this. I have added the commands for loading in .sos and I am doing almost everything right. However, there are some problems. I would like to enlist the help of an XEmacs internals guru to get me over these hurdles, if you think this would be a worthwhile exercise. I already have things set up such that compiling modules is trivial (and will work the same way on all platforms that support dlopen()). Here is what I dont know how to do, or do properly: a) Getting DOC strings for variables defined correctly. When the .so is loaded in, a special function is called which does the moral equivalent of DEFSUBR() or DEFVAR_LISP() et al. I can see the variables defined but I dont know how to go about making the doc string visible. b) When i DEFSUBR() a function that was declared in the .so, and try to execute it, I get a SIGSEGV in Fcommanp when it calls SUBRP(fun). There is deep dark stuff I dont understand too well and would like to. Such as: 1) What is staticpro? 2) When do I need to GCPRO and when not? Whats the difference between GCPRO and NGCPRO? 3) Since this is all dynamic, after Emacs has dumped, how do I avoid purespace? Do I need to? Can I use xmalloc() for internal data? 4) If there is an existing Lisp or even intern function, can I replace its definition with a new one? How? Same thing for variables. Any help at all would be GREATLY appreciated. If it would help to talk by phone rather than email, let me know and I can either call or give you a 1-800 number for you to call me at. If you can help out, I would appreciate it if you could respond privately, as I dont read the whole list very often. I will summarise my findings. Thanks in advance, -- J. Kean Johnston | "Truth and beauty, beauty and truth. This is all we know, Engineer, SPG | and all we need ever know." -- John Keats, Endymion Santa Cruz, CA +---------------------------------------------------------- Tel: 408-427-7569 Fax: 408-429-1887 E-mail: jkj(a)sco.com