Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry G. Baker)
Subject: Re: Why do people like C? (Was: Comparison: Beta - Lisp)
Message-ID: <hbakerCy6H13.Bv@netcom.com>
Organization: nil
References: <Cxxwx0.1nC@rheged.dircon.co.uk> <hbakerCy17CC.vx@netcom.com> <LOU.94Oct24004112@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 1994 12:51:02 GMT
Lines: 44

In article <LOU.94Oct24004112@athos.rutgers.edu> lou@cs.rutgers.edu (Lou Steinberg) writes:
>In article <hbakerCy17CC.vx@netcom.com> hbaker@netcom.com (Henry G. Baker) writes:
>   As I have said elsewhere, the substitution of the Maclisp model of
>   Lisp program as a "character string" instead of the Interlisp model of
>   Lisp program as an S-expression made up of cons cells was a major step
>   backwards.  [...]
>   The proper step forwards would have been to make S-expressions
>   _persistent_, instead of bowing to the Fortran/C/Ada model of programs
>   as character strings
>
>In other words, a good editor for lisp will act at times like an
>s-expr editor and at times like a character string editor, and you can
>build such an editor on what is "really" either a character editor or
>an s-expr editor.  And either way the editor can be closely tied to the
>running Lisp core image - this is obvious for "residential" systems,
>but the interface between Allegro and Emacs shows that it can be done
>for non-residential editors as well.  (E.g., esc-A shows the arguments
>of a function, based on a query to a running Lisp.)
>
>Furthermore, programmers edit things besides programs and data -
>things like reports, email, newsgroup postings, etc.  The overhead of
>having two different editors, one for lisp and one for C, English,
>etc., is something you really do have to take into account.

I guess the problem with WYSIWYG editors is that computer people have
worked with character strings so long that they have forgotten that
they are not the only things humans ever deal with.  Non-alphabetic
languages like Chinese are actually much easier for most people to
deal with, but are harder for typesetters and computers.

So, 'what you SEE is what you get' depends a lot on what you SEE, or
want to SEE.

A student of mine did a WYSIWYG BCPL PROGRAM editor for the Xerox Alto
called 'Flash' that stored things internally in a way very similar to
S-expressions, although you didn't see parentheses on the screen.  His
major reason for doing it was that this internal form saved 50-60% of
the space in main memory, which was a critical issue on this machine.
So his editor is proof that one can do decent WYSIWYG editing on more
symbolic representations.

      Henry Baker
      Read ftp.netcom.com:/pub/hbaker/README for info on ftp-able papers.

