hacking

[Olin Shivers]

> My schedule has been hectic, but I agree. I can try and help out as much as
> possible, time allowing.
>
> Jim, when are you usually online so we can try and get into communication?

Guys, what's the word?

I just returned from giving a talk at the Scheme Workshop, which was
in Montreal this year, and I have intelligence for the edwineditor
group:

Guile has been resurrected from the dead. It has been *massively*
cleaned up and made real. People are now working on hooking it up
to gnu emacs.

That would constitute real competition. You *really* want to get something
up & running early, to suck away the attention and volunteer-hacking cycles
from the guile/gnu-emacs effort.

I regard the guile/gnu-emacs effort as a Bad Idea. Guile is based on Aubrey
Jaffer's Scheme implementation, scm. This is *unquestionably* the worst Scheme
implementation that has ever gotten wide use. It is atrocious technology; I
mean, it's *famous* among implementors. Furthermore, gnu-emacs has deep
architectural committments that you don't want to deal with going forward. The
right thing to do is put a stake through the heart of the whole code base and
move on.

If the guile/gnu-emacs effort gets traction, however, it'll clobber the
edwin effort, just because of installed-base effects.

So the critical time is now.

So go hack.
-Olin