Path: utzoo!yunexus!oz
From: oz@yunexus.UUCP (Ozan Yigit)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Programmable Editors
Keywords: editors, programmable
Message-ID: <2498@yunexus.UUCP>
Date: 30 Jun 89 21:44:47 GMT
Article-I.D.: yunexus.2498
References: <780@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <251@tigger.planet.bt.co.uk> <25295@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Reply-To: oz@yunexus.UUCP (Ozan Yigit)
Organization: York U. Communications Research & Development
Lines: 23

In article <25295@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> srt@cs.ucla.edu (Scott Turner) writes:
> In light of this, what is needed more than a programmable editor is
>one that can be programmed at build-time.  In some sense, any editor
>is build-time programmable - you can always hack the source code.

Indeed, there are alternative approaches, as used in DEC's TPU. I believe
this is a very nice compromise, and allows specialized editors to be built
in a language specialized for editor-building. [I will not argue whether
DEC did everything right in TPU, but the idea is very sound.] This was of
course the way the original Emacs was built: on top of Teco "editor
builder's editor". This is well worth contrasting to the current approach
of adding an interpreter/compiler into a fairly fixed editor shell. One
may argue pro/cons of each approach, but it is certain that there are
many, many ways to build editors, whether or not they are personalized
and/or specialized. Not surprisingly, Gnu/Goslings/Unipress/CCA-Emacs 
ways of doing things is not the *final word* on this area.

oz
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