Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!mordor!joyce!sri-unix!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: GNU vrs UNIPRESS
Message-ID: <117@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 14 Jun 88 04:53:25 GMT
References: <500@expya.UUCP> <114@quintus.UUCP> <6604@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 30

In article <6604@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> dowding@macbeth.PRC.Unisys.COM
 (John Dowding) writes:
>In article <114@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>>(The whole point of an editor interface like this is
>>to produce the illusion of a single program, after all.)
>
>Although I would normally hate to nit-pick a (parenthetical) comment,
>I have to make an exception in this case.  I dont think that you want the
>emacs interface to produce the illusion of a single program at all.
>In the name of this illusion, the Quintus Prolog emacs interface has
>the following "features":
[specific criticisms deleted]

There are two separate and distinct questions:
(1) whether an editor interface should present the illusion of a single program
(2) what changes to an editor are permissible/desirable in the name of
    simplifying a particular interface.

The points that Dowding criticised are all related to question (2), not
to question (1).  The changed key bindings are not at all "in the name
of this illusion", they are all things that the designers of that part
of the system thought were desirable whatever the interface looked like.

With respect to question (1), does anyone think it would be a _good_ thing
for Prolog and Emacs to have a different notion of what the current directory
is?  Or of what the current state of a file is?

By the way, if you are using Quintus Prolog and have comments about our
editor interface (or anything else), **please** send them to our
Technical Support people.  The editor interface is not cast in concrete,
but if nobody complains to us we think it doesn't need changing.