Interactive Python programming in ... vi [was: Tab wars revisited]

[Martin Christensen]

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>>>>> "Steve" == Steve Lamb <grey at despair.dmiyu.org> writes:
Steve> So why, then, do Emacs people put forth an editor that, to
Steve> customize, one must learn Lisp.  I don't know Lisp.  However
Steve> from the many Lisp/Python discussions here (charitable
Steve> description, I know) I do know I don't want to learn Lisp in
Steve> general and certainly not just to tweak my editor around.

I don't have a problem with Lispdom as a whole (though I dislike the
fragmentation of the community and many dialects both, as well as the
write-your-own-ad-hoc-language principle), but ELisp - Emacs Lisp - is
just a horrible abomination of a language if you ask me. So why do I
bother with it? Well, because it makes programming my editor very easy
indeed once the initial hurdle has been overcome. I've never seen a
language with more warts, but it gets the job done. That, and it's
documented quite well... which is more than can be said of most of the
code that's actually _written_ in the language, unfortunately.

There are (usually) hooks for everything one can imagine, making it
pretty simple to tweak the editor and the applications written for/in
it in any number of ways. For instance, I use Emacs, more specifically
Gnus, for mail and news, and in less than 10 lines of code, I got it
to prompt me whether to encrypt or digitally sign all outgoing
messages. Moreover, I didn't have to change any existing code, just
add a bit of my own. And just about everything can be changed if one
should want. Perhaps the best example of this is Viper mode, which
basically gives you a vi implementation in Emacs. Apparently there are
vi people who want the power of Emacs (in the programmability sense)
enough that they're willing to put up with the beast. :-)

I caution you that I am not all that intimate with the different vi
implementations, and even less their programmability. I can get by
well enough with vi, but have never attempted to program any of the
different flavours, so I cannot make any comparisons. I only hope to
answer your question without further fanning the flames.

Martin

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