Christopher C. Stacy <cstacy@news.dtpq.com> wrote:
+---------------
| "Tayssir John Gabbour" <tayss_temp2@yahoo.com> writes:
| > I think many Lisp users are blinded to how hard Emacs is. 
...
| > The muscles need time to gain 'muscle memory' or whatever it is. 
| > This is not a criticism of Lisp or opensource developers, because
| > this is a development resource problem, but it is a mild criticism
| > of those who advocate Lisp and then make you feel like an idiot if
| > Emacs is painful.  
| 
| In order to just write Lisp source code, you need an editor that 
| can balance parenthesis and indent Lisp code. For example, on Unix,
| "vi" will do this for you (set "sm", "ai" and "lisp").
+---------------

I know some consider me a heretic for saying/doing it, but Emacs
hurts my fingers [too many years of using TECO, maybe]. I've been
coding very happily in Common Lisp for several years with "nvi-1.79"
<http://www.bostic.com/vi/>, which has "sm" & "ai", but not "lisp"
mode [it got dropped at some point as being too buggy]. Seems to
work fine, especially the "%" motion command [go forward/back to
matching bracket].

One hint: Also set "sw=1", then when you put your cursor on a paren
[left or right, either works] and type "<%" [or ">%"] you shift the
entire S-expr left [or right] one space, and by typing additional "."s
you can move further in the same direction.

And "y% and "d%" are useful, too, especially followed by a "p" or "P"
somewhere else.  ;-}


-Rob

p.s. From just a quick loop, the "lisp" mode in "Vim" seems to
sort of work. It knows about DEFUN, LET, & COND, at least...

-----
Rob Warnock			<rpw3@rpw3.org>
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