Re: The Modernization of Emacs: terminology buffer and keybinding

2007-09-29 Thread David Golden
Ken Tilton wrote:


> No wonder the GPL has gone nowhere.

Bwaahahahaha. Keep smokin' that crack, there.

> Freely. RMS reasonably wanted that 
> add-42 not get co-opted, but that in no way necessitated the land grab
> that is GPL.

You (and probably KMP) are presuming the validity of copyright monopoly
law  think.  Others do not do that. Whenever you claim a copyright
monopoly, and enforce that monopoly, you're abridging others freedom. 
It might currently be legal to do so, but "legal" and "right" are
different things.

So your beef is not _really_ with the GPL - it derives all its power
from copyright law.  The GPL is really only valid while copyright law
is: If copyright law is reduced in power and reach, the GPL is too.  So
if you don't like the GPL, push for weakened copyright law.  Heh.
Supporters of copyright monopoly law *really* don't like this
double-bind of the GPL, of course, but that's by design.

Of course, the FSF are a bunch of moderates, these days you can support
your local Pirate Party, more information at
http://www.pp-international.net/
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Re: The Modernization of Emacs: terminology buffer and keybinding

2007-06-24 Thread David Golden
Thomas Bellman wrote:
> I seem to recall that EMACS, the old TECO version on TOPS-20 and
> ITS, only supported two windows ("panes" in Twisted's words).  So
> it's not *completely* false, just extremely outdated.
> 
> 

Well, that's going back a bit.  I somehow doubt he was using that, but I
guess it's possible (he did claim emacs is a "unix" text editor
though)...












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Re: The Modernization of Emacs: terminology buffer and keybinding

2007-06-24 Thread David Golden
Timofei Shatrov wrote:
> What an idiot. At least get yourt facts straight before posting such
> bullshit.

I think at this stage it's quite reasonable to assume he's trolling, and
recycling old trolls, too. Certainly looks like someone very like him
used to haunt rec.games.roguelike.development as "Neo" and "Twisted
One", in the 2005 era. Of course, by bothering to point this out, I'm
giving him more attention, the recognition he presumably craves, my
bad. 

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.development/msg/6f0fac979ef1d117
"""

Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 19:00:06 -0500
From: Twisted One <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Emacs doesn't let you do that either. It lets you have exactly two
panes.

"""


http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.development/msg/cfd723fbdc4a93f8
"""

From: David Damerell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 23 Mar 2005 13:22:00 + (GMT)
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Quoting  Twisted One  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Emacs doesn't let you do that either. It lets you have exactly two 
>panes.

No, this is completely false.

"""


... So, probably deliberately trolling, or just maybe a learning
difficulty - literally (corrected on multiple occasions, still 
failed to learn).










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Re: The Modernization of Emacs: terminology buffer and keybinding

2007-06-23 Thread David Golden
Bjorn Borud wrote:

> [Falcolas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]
> | 
> | I guess ultimately I'm trying to argue the point that just because a
> | tool was written with a GUI or on Windows does not automatically
> | make it any less a productive tool than a text based terminal tool.
> | Even in windows, you can use the keyboard to do all of your work, if
> | you learn how (thanks to the magic of the alt key).
> 
> as I see it, the debate isn't whether GUI tools are inferior per se,
> but whether Emacs is inferior since it has its own interaction
> concepts that do not map 1:1 to GUI conventions of Windows and OSX.

I think it worthwile to point out again here that emacs does in fact
have a bitmapped, windowy GUI, has done for years - e.g.
http://oldr.net/emacshelp4.gif  ...
Some people in this silly thread (not Bjørn specifically) seem to be
labouring under the impression that it is solely a text-only
interface - "Mouse longcuts" exist for the most basic keyboard commands
when you're using emacs on a WIMP system like X11 or Microsoft Windows
(though you can turn them off to stop wasting screen real estate on
pretty-pretty once you know the keyboard commands)

> (indeed several friends of mine would like to see Emacs done in Common
> Lisp, and I seem to have some memory of such a project existing
> somewhere).
>

Climacs @
http://common-lisp.net/project/climacs/


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Re: The Modernization of Emacs

2007-06-22 Thread David Golden
Twisted wrote:

> If I sit down at a windows text editor (or 
> even kwrite or similar) I can just focus on the job. Faced with emacs
> or most other text-mode editors (but not MS-DOS Edit, interestingly)
> the editor keeps intruding on my focus. Oops.
> 

"emacs or most other text-mode editors" sounds very much like you
believe emacs works in a pure text mode too?  It can, of course, and
that's a good thing, but that's certainly not how I usually use it -
it has a GUI, you know.


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Re: The Modernization of Emacs: terminology buffer and keybinding

2007-06-22 Thread David Golden
Twisted wrote:

> You end up having to memorize the help, because *you can't 
> have arbitrary parts of the help and your document open side by side
> and be working on the document*.

WTF? Of course you can. http://oldr.net/emacs_two_frames.png

> I don't know why people keep harping about what version. 

Perhaps because essentially none of the crap you're spouting corresponds
to remotely recent versions of emacs they're are aware of.  I'd be
increasingly dubious much applies to any previous versions either.

If everyone had such bizarre problems you describe yourself as having
with emacs, well, nobody would be using it.  That is clearly not the
case.  Of course, no one's pointing a gun at you and making you use it,
either - if you like notepad or joe or whatever, just use them instead.











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Re: The Modernization of Emacs: terminology buffer and keybinding

2007-06-22 Thread David Golden
Twisted wrote:
 
> Of course not. It's too hard to get started using it, so I gave up on
> it years ago.

So wtf makes you think you're remotely qualified to comment about
emacs as it stands today? Idiot.




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Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

2006-12-14 Thread David Golden
William James wrote:

> Actually, it's 'among', not 'amongst', except to those who are
> lisping, degenerate pansies.
> 

lisping: "amongst" => "amongthpt" ?

"amongst" is a fairly common british english variant of "among".
 
>  Some pronunciations and usages "froze" when they reached the
>  American shore. In certain respects, American English is closer to
>  the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is. 


In certain respects, modern British English is closer to the
English of Shakespeare than American English is.

In this particular case, in Shakespeare's actual time, we can be pretty
sure ([1],[2]) that "parenthesis" meant the inserted parenthetical
phrase.

I do admit that since the later extension to round brackets themselves
is mentioned at link [2] below (and OED) as first appearing in 1715,
and given your later british examples, I was Just Wrong to lay sole
blame on the americans for it. 


[1]
The Arte of English Poesie by George Puttenham, 1589
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16420
Chap. XIII
"""
  [Sidenote: _Parenthesis_, or the Insertour]
Your first figure of tollerable disorder is [_Parenthesis_] or by an
English name the [_Insertour_] and is when ye will seeme for larger
information or some other purpose, to peece or graffe in the middest of
your tale an vnnecessary parcell of speach, which neuerthelesse may be
thence without any detriment to the rest. The figure is so common that
it
needeth none example, neuerthelesse because we are to teache Ladies and
Gentlewomen to know their schoole points and termes appertaining to the
Art, we may not refuse ro yeeld examples euen in the plainest cases, as
that of maister _Diars_ very aptly.
  _But now my Deere_ (_for so my loue makes me to call you still_)
  _That loue I say, that lucklesse loue, that works me all this ill._

Also in our Eglogue intituled _Elpine_, which we made being but eightene
yeares old, to king _Edward_ the sixt a Prince of great hope, we
surmised
that the Pilot of a ship answering the King, being inquisitiue and
desirous to know all the parts of the ship and tackle, what they were, &
to what vse they serued, vsing this insertion or Parenthesis.
  _Soueraigne Lord (for why a greater name
  To one on earth no mortall tongue can frame
  No statelie stile can giue the practisd penne:
  To one on earth conuersant among men.)_

And so proceedes to answere the kings question?
  _The shippe thou seest sayling in sea so large, &c._

This insertion is very long and vtterly impertinent to the principall
matter, and makes a great gappe in the tale, neuerthelesse is no
disgrace
but rather a bewtie and to very good purpose, but you must not vse such
insertions often nor to thick, nor those that bee very long as this of
ours, for it will breede great confusion to haue the tale so much
interrupted.

"""

[2] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=parenthesis
[3] http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/P/parenthesis.htm 


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Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

2006-12-13 Thread David Golden
Actually, in English, "parenthesis" means the bit in between the
brackets.

The various kinds of brackets (amongst other punctuation marks
including, in most english texts, commas) *demarcate* parentheses.

Wikipedia's "Parenthesis (rhetoric)" is, at time of writing, the correct
British English definition, citing the OED:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenthesis_%28rhetoric%29

"An explanatory or qualifying word, clause, or sentence inserted into a
passage with which it has not necessarily any grammatical connection,
and from which it is usually marked off by round or square brackets,
dashes, or commas"

The use of round brackets to demarcate parentheses in america eventually
somehow led to round brackets themselves being called parentheses in
america, but that usage still makes little sense to many native
speakers of British (or Hiberno-) English outside the computing field.

It's like calling a quotation mark a "quote" instead of a "quotation
mark".  And lo, guess who does that too...

Calling round brackets "parenthesis marks" would be acceptable but
perhaps ambiguous in British English, probably needing further
qualification like "double quotation mark", "single quotation mark".












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Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

2006-12-09 Thread David Golden
Paul Rubin wrote:
 
> Forth was always unreadable to me but I never did much.  I thought its
> aficionados were silly.  Yes if you have a complicated math expression
> in Lisp, you have to sit there for a moment rearranging it in infix in
> your mind to figure out what it says.  The point is that such
> expressions aren't all that common in typical Lisp code.
> 


I find Lisp, Forth and classic funny-symbol APL relatively readable
(well, once you've learned the funny symbols in the APL case) That
spans prefix/postfix/infix... The commonality is simple evaluation
order, no damn precedence rules.  I can _cope_ with precedence rules,
I'm not a moron, but I prefer languages that don't make heavy use of
them. Well, more accurately, sources that don't, but most coders in
communities of languages-with-lots-of-precedence-rules consider
reliance on those precedence rules in source code idiomatic.  And
precedence rules, once you get beyond a few (sometimes rather
misleading) similarities to the ones that most people are made to learn
early on for arithmetic notation, can vary a lot from computer language
to computer language.

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Re: compiled open source Windows lisp (was Re: Python becoming less Lisp-like)

2005-03-15 Thread David Golden
James Graves wrote:

> 
> But coverage in this area (compiled CL) is a bit thin, I'll admit.
> 

But who really cares?  After all, there are the mature commercial
proprietary lisp compilers for those people who insist on using
closedware OSes, and they've already proven they're willing to use
closedware.

This, I fear, is similar to Brandon's demands for a microcrap
visual-studio compatible yet open source gaming framework. or silly
expectations of microsoft suite support for various open-source
language implementations (just google search on groups for his
name...): 

Might happen (has happened, to an extent), but where's the developer
motivation?   It's not like it's hard to install linux these days. 
Most open source developers would be indifferent at best to a windows
port, it's not like it's even a fun challenge like a port to an obscure
platform like AROS would be, you just end up with
creeping hungarian notation ugliness in your code, and lots of #defines.
Most people writing open source and for the fun of it just aren't going
to go massively out of the way to support windows, and even if they do,
they're just giving the slaves another excuse not to throw off their
chains.






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