Re: Emacs learning curve

[David Kastrup]

address@hidden writes:

> David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> "Eric M. Ludlam" <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> One of the things I was most surprised by was that when CEDET was
>>> integrated into Emacs, only 2 people tried it and reported anything
>>> from this list.  I fixed those things too.  Now this list is posting
>>> things that effectively pretend CEDET doesn't exist.  What's up with
>>> that?
>>
>> For the effects discussed in this thread, it does not exist.  It does
>> much less (if at all) to make two existing separate modes more similar
>> than, say, cc-mode does.
>>
>> It may be that this situation will be different in 10 years from now,
>> but I don't see the way to there.  Cedet makes it somewhat easier, as
>> far as I can discern, to help a programmer with creating his own
>> completely idiosyncratic mode with complex functionality.
>>
>> It helps to manage complexity for the mode programmer, not unify
>> behavior for the user.
>>
>> If I am wrong, so much the better, but unless everybody else _knows_ I
>> am wrong, the consequences will be about the same.
>
> You are wrong, but you are also right that there seems to be a lack of
> understanding amongst mode coders that cedet not only provides a
> common infrastructure, but also a common user interface for many
> things. I think it would help if cedet was more used within emacs, and
> also if more cedet clients were incorporated in Emacs, such as ECB.

Well, cedet has no discernible documentation.  It has no info file.
semantics has an info file.  It talks about bovine and wisent parser
generators.  It mentions their source files.  They don't exist.  Wisent
files presumably have an extension of .wy.  The semantics documentation
claims that there is a mode for creating them.  Opening a file with .wy
extension puts it in fundamental mode.  There are no interactive
commands autoloaded starting with wisent- or bovin that would have
anything to do with writing language support using
Cedet/semantics/whatever.

If there is any usable infrastructure or documentation for creating a
mode/grammar with the current Emacs distribution, it is rather well
hidden.

In the current state of Cedet as delivered with Emacs, it is not usable
for creating new parsers for a language of your choice.  You can use the
existing parsers, but you'll have a hard time finding out what they do,
and even just what languages are supported.

Completely useless as a tool for a developer interested in developing
support for a language not already supported.

-- 
David Kastrup