From: David Alan Black <dblack@...>
Date: 2000-12-02T08:21:52+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:6724] Re: Ruby and Emacs (was: Re: [...])

Hello --

On Sat, 2 Dec 2000, Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng wrote:

> Would it be practical, or really difficult, to craft an
> automatic (e)lisp to Ruby translator? (Perl had a2p, s2p...)

Practical, I don't think so.  Really difficult, definitely :-)

> If that were possible, would there be benefits in converting
> Emacs to use Ruby instead of (e)lisp?  

It would have to be not so much a conversion as a reimplementation.
The interdependence between Emacs and Emacs Lisp goes beyond language
choice or mode.  For one thing, most of Emacs is written in Emacs
Lisp.  If you were to rewrite Emacs, you'd really also have to create
Emacs Ruby, incorporating all the datatypes and primitives of Emacs
Lisp.  You wouldn't be able to translate something like this:

  (defun list-buffers-other-window ()
    "Switch to buffer-list window upon listing buffers"
    (interactive)
    (list-buffers)
    (switch-to-buffer-other-window "*Buffer List*"))

without implementing buffers in Ruby, and that's just the
beginning....

> I'm thinking of: you'd get more readable code; it might be possible
> to integrate it tightly with other ruby code, and to C using Ruby's
> API.  Could it be faster (after tuning)?  Could the Ruby syntax mode
> be REALLY intelligent if you did it this way?

I can't comment on Point 1, because I've always found elisp pretty
readable.  (Considering that it's a programming language :-)  If you're
interested in integrating Ruby into Emacs, in the sense of being able
to manipulate Emacs Lisp datatypes directly with Ruby scripts, then it
might make more sense to think about translating *from* Ruby *to*
elisp.  (I'm not volunteering, though :-)


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav