[cl-faq] draft answer for Q. Do I really have to learn emacs?

[Larry Clapp]

On Sun, Dec 18, 2005 at 08:51:15PM -0800, josh giesbrecht wrote:
> #|
> Here's my try at answering the dreaded emacs question.  I'm still pretty 
> new to Lisp, so feel free to offer revisions or correct any mistakes 
> I've made.  I've tried to be neutral on the quasi-religious editor 
> topic, but if any of it still feels too 'opinion', feel free to point it 
> out.
>   - josh g.
> p.s. I copied the lispified content formatting of the previous
> answer ... does it actually help?  I missed if it was mentioned on
> the list somewhere.
> |#

I don't know if it helps.  I made it up based loosely on a post Peter
made in the Gardeners list.  Maybe Peter will answer.

I'd think, if we adopt it or something like it, we should have a
convention where you post the initial question+answer in Lisp format
(for quick inclusion), discuss it in normal email format (like this
one), and once we finalize the entry, someone (the original poster, by
default) re-posts it again in Lisp format, with a "FINAL" tag in the
subject.  Peter could even write a procmail recipe to take final
answers and put them directly into the FAQ.  Automation Is Good(tm).

Peter has editorial control over the FAQ, so all this of course
depends on his blessing (and free time :).

> '(((:question
>      "Do I really have to learn emacs?")
>    (:answer

Formatting comment: I had imagined an optional list of parameters
after the :answer keyword, e.g. with :complete or :partial, to
indicate the scope of the answer, i.e. whether you feel you've given a
complete answer to the question, or only a partial answer.  I guess if
we version control each q+a, we could have a version there, too.

<snip>
> Of course, there are many advantages to having and learning a more 
> powerful IDE.  Even so, there are other options to an emacs-based IDE. 
> Commercial Common Lisps such as Allegro CL and Lispworks come with their 
> own fully-featured IDE

Not entirely true, I don't think.  Specifically, Allegro CL has an IDE
for Windows, but not Unix.  (Though as of 12/19/2005, the IDE is in
Beta for Linux (http://www.franz.com/products/allegrocl/ACL_8.0_beta.lhtml).)
Allegro uses Emacs as its editor.

-- Larry