What If Python Replaced Elisp?

[Fredrik Lundh]

taashlo at sandia.gov wrote:
> This morning I was making some changes to my .emacs file and I thought
> how much easier it would be to use Python instead of Elisp for this
> purpose.  And that got me to thinking about how appropriate Python
> would be in this role.

before you continue down this road, be sure you
read the many threads over in emacs land in which
people have proposed similar things.  lots of flames,
but also lots of intelligent arguments for why this
isn't necessarily a great idea.  no need to repeat
them all on this newsgroup.

(to find them, search for "Perl" on comp.emacs
and comp.emacs.xemacs).

> But is Python fast enough to be a scripting engine
> for an editor?

heck, if you know what you're doing, you can implement
the entire editor in Python, on top of a raw graphics API.
been there, done that ;-)

> BTW, are there any extensible editors out there that use Python as
> their scripting language?

sure.  lots of them.  IDLE, PythonWin, vim, and a number of
others

maybe it would be easier to start in the other end?

(that is, make one of them good enough to replace emacs -- for
your own personal use, at least.  making someone that allows
*everyone* to replace emacs would be a gargantuan effort).

</F>