Rick, Thank you again for your multiple thoughtful and detailed replies :)
> On Jan 23, 2019, at 17:09, [email protected] wrote: > >> The discussion is not about changing anything for people who already use one >> or the other mode. It is about proposing something easy to use *and* not >> confusing to new comers. > > OK. I understand. There were also some specific questions or issues that > you noticed (e.g., on Debian-like systems) in another email you sent which I > took to mean that you did not quite understand how emacs > packages can be installed and how emacs can (maybe, should) be configured. I > tried to answer that in another email I just sent. > Sorry, if I was off base -- was just trying to help. If you already > understand all that; then, fantastic. I'm definitely not a fluent emacs user. I can find my way and when I'm lost check the documentation. So I am aware of the issues you mentioned and I do sometimes manually install emacs packages, but most of the time I just use gnu/elpa/melpa. >> Then there is literally a ressource visibility issue at least on Debian. >> This one is not easy to fix and requires information from the Debian >> packager. I can ask for more information and see if there is a relatively >> easy fix. > > The "resource visibility issue" that you described (in your other email) > sounded like a misconfigured emacs setup to me. But I'm sure you will look > into that to rule out that possibility. Thank you for looking into potential > Debian issues. I'll check that but my setting is an "out of the flashed box" Raspbian machine and the only thing that I had added was a reference to the Melpa archive to be able to install some packages. Not only couldn't I find Alexis' package, but the picolisp menu failed when I tried to run an inferior lisp on my buffer. I had to run "run-inferior-picolisp" (function name from memory) manually to make it run. That's when I started to check the various versions and found all the things I'm discussing now. I'm replying to your other mail here so as to put all the information in one place: >> 1) On debian and related distributions, the picolisp official mode is >> installed by default > > Just to be clear, there is no "picolisp official mode" Ok, but let's just call it that way for the purpose of the discussion :) > It should probably stay there solely because it is not hosted (in a > permanent sense) anywhere else AFAIK. In fact it also is hosted on Github but it looks like the hosted version and the offline versions are slightly different (my understanding from Alexis' earlier mail, I did not diff the files). >> and in fact, there is no mention of that mode in the emacs package >> manager when you look for it, > > When you say "there is no mention of that mode in the emacs package manager > when you look for it", if you mean that you can't see it when you look at the > list generated by `package-list-packages` That's correct. > Well, if you load a picolisp source file (*.l) and you are in some > picolisp-mode and you didn't cause that to happen by purposefully setting > that up in your emacs configuration, then that is simply due > to dumb luck. Not dumb luck, but Debian packaging :) My understanding is that when you select picolisp to be installed in apt then it automatically installs that picolisp mode. I'm checking that with the Debian packager, but I suspect he's trying to install everything that is available in the "official picolisp distribution" which does include that picolisp mode. >> 2) Similarly, on Debian, the alternative picolisp mode from Alexis >> is not listed in the emacs package manager. > > If "listed in the emacs package manager" means that you can see it in > package-list-packages` output buffer, then *not* seeing it there means that > your emacs configuration is *not* pointing to the melpa service -- check the > `package-archives` variable -- (because we know that > Alexis's package is registered on melpa) or your network connex to melpa was > temporarily down. > > For instance, I can see it here now in my package-list-packages output: Can you confirm that you're checking that on Debian ? The output is different on Raspbian (as far as I can tell, and I have other melpa packages visible). I don't have the box with me so I'll confirm later. > I suppose we could mention that there are a few choices of emacs major modes > for picolisp programming and even a rundown of their functionality / > capability. Sounds good. Please do that if you have > time. Thanks. I did talk about the "official" character of that mode because it is documented on the wiki documentation as *the* emacs mode. Hence my confusion. > I hope that some of this info helped. Please forgive me if I seemed > in any way lecturing. I just don't really know your skill level with > emacs or admin stuff. No worry :) I'm always learning. Jean-Christophe Helary ----------------------------------------------- http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:[email protected]?subject=Unsubscribe
