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From: Alan Shutko <a...@acm.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: How to determine what is not possible in emacs?
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 17:58:09 -0600
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Mark Conrad <NoSpamDam...@invalid.com> writes:

> I have the same version  21.2.1  in my OSX here, on a Mac "Pismo"
> powerbook.  I understand this version of emacs was written way back in
> 1995.

Where did you get that idea?  I believe it was released in March
2002.  21.3 was about a year ago.  

> I don't know how difficult it is to install the more recent version of
> emacs, or if the resulting gains are worth the effort.

Should be very easy, but check
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/NEWS.21.3 to see if it's worth it.

>> Of course.  You can even  implement a full fleshed common-lisp in
>> emacs lisp.
>
> Ahh, but that is no fun, just 'calling' a better version of Lisp from
> emacs.   I want to battle the old version of emacs head-on, just to see 
> what I can force it to do by using sneaky roundabout Lisp code.

That's not what the link Pascal supplied is doing.  From its readme:

    Emacs Common Lisp is an implementation of Common Lisp, written in
    Emacs Lisp.  It does not yet purport to conform to the ANSI
    standard since, among other things, COMPILE-FILE, CLOS, and pretty
    printing are missing.  However, most other Common Lisp features
    like lexical closures, packages, readtables, multiple values,
    bignums, adjustable arrays, etc, are present.  At this stage many
    bugs remain and error checking is sparse.

Sounds like it's exactly what you want to do.

-- 
Alan Shutko <a...@acm.org> - I am the rocks.
Veni, vidi, VCR: I came, I saw, I dubbed.