Re: Customizing spread sheet apps.

At 12:36 16/10/2003, you wrote:
> > Csound-X for Emacs has this and much more (matrices in score, full math
> > package, algorithmic composition embedded within csd documents, direct
> > access to csound, etc..):
> >
> > http://www.zogotounga.net/comp/csoundx.html
> >
> > ... you just have to like Emacs :)
>
>Please excuse my ignorance of Emacs  . . . so does that mean that one could
>use it as a spreadsheet where you select a certain region and then run a
>user scripted function on all material in that region? Say for instance, I
>select a column and then run 'Iain's diatonic transposition function'? And
>if so, what language(s) would I have to write these function in?


Emacs is a text editor written in Emacs Lisp (Elisp), a variant of Lisp. 
This is an interpreted language. Only the core of its primitive functions 
is written in C, which means that you can actually extend (or arbitrarily 
change the behaviour of) Emacs directly from within itself by writing Elisp 
code. Changes apply on-the-fly, there is no compilation step (only an 
optional byte-compilation provided for performance reasons), and no need to 
exit or restart the editor.

So, to take your example, in Csound-X you can indeed select a column (or 
even a matrix, that is a rectangular selection encompassing several columns 
along a number of lines), and apply any operation you want, interactively, 
through Elisp code.

That code can either be supplied directly at the prompt, or be coded in a 
file which you load either interactively or at start-up (that file would 
define a function called iain-s-diatonic-transposition, for example). Also, 
if you intend to use if often you can have it included in a custom menu, so 
that your code is only a mouse click away.

All of this is documented on my web pages, and in the package.

Now, learning Elisp is not trivial. Personaly I don't think it is any more 
difficult than another language, but some people feel uncomfortable with 
Lisp concepts. And Emacs has it own concepts layered on top of this. But 
the learning work is worth it, as you have an infinitely extendable editor 
at hand.

When developing Csound-X I looked at all the editors for Csound I could 
find (CsEdit, etc.) and stole from them the features I found nice :) Plus I 
made my own... if you want some more stuff, just ask for it !

Good luck with Emacs if you want to jump in. It certainly won't be smooth 
and easy, but after all you managed Csound: if you can do that, you can 
handle Emacs :)



cheers,

Stef






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