Hrvoje> sperber(a)informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor]) writes: Hrvoje> Common Lisp is much closer to elisp than any Scheme dialect Hrvoje> is. Hrvoje> Lots of elisp code can run under Common Lisp almost unchanged. This Hrvoje> 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. Consequently, you would need a library of macros and procedures to emulate/translate Emacs Lisp functionality into Common Lisp. The same holds true for Scheme, and I actually have large parts of such a library. Hrvoje> Using Scheme as a primary language in XEmacs will alienate a Hrvoje> large number of our contributors, and I, for one, do not Hrvoje> want to see that happen. Hrvoje> I don't want us to find the evidence for it the hard way. Neither do I. Let's include more people in the discussion and hear what they say. Hrvoje> I believe clisp is small enough, especially if we remove the parts we Hrvoje> don't need. This, however, means that Emacs CLisp won't be a standard Common Lisp implementation anymore, and surely old CL buffs will complain. Hrvoje> My point is that choosing Common Lisp is a better idea because it is Hrvoje> closer to Emacs Lisp. The thing I'm having trouble is that you have not substantiated this statement based on the nature of the three languages involved. We really need to get down to the technical issues of this, and you haven't addressed them. I did outline what would be needed to adapt Scheme to Emacs Lisp. Someone should do the same for Common Lisp, and we can compare. Hrvoje> Does it? Not for me! Well, a lot of Scheme users and implementors disagree with you. Most Scheme implementations come with precisely such libraries. Usually, their designs are generalizations and improvements over their CL equivalents (if they indeed exist), but they easily scale down. Hrvoje> Yes, that's what we were doing with Emacs Lisp, and I don't really Hrvoje> like the "poor man's common lisp" any more. In Scheme, you could actually implement a "rich man's Common Lisp" and model the stuff that's currently impossible to model in Emacs Lisp. Hrvoje> Yes, but all the "Lisp engines" you mention are Scheme engines. Yes, because that's what I have personal experience with. Send me a write-up on CLisp or GCL or CMU CL, and I'll put it up. Hrvoje> I've argued for Common Lisp, both in this thread and elsewhere, but Hrvoje> you kept rejecting my arguments as either irrelevant or false. So I Hrvoje> don't know what else to say to you. I'll try to put up the gist of what you've said. Maybe I have indeed been partial. The thing I'm having trouble with is that I'm currently lacking arguments which actually involve the languages involved; I have mostly stuff of the nature "X is closer than Y to Z" or "X should move in the direction of Y rather than Z." This doesn't help much because it doesn't refer to the concepts, features, or idioms of X, Y, and Z. -- Cheers =8-} Chipsy Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla