Using Emacs as a Lisp IDE

I have sent the following message to c.l.l. asking for feedback. I would
also appreciate any ilisp-specific tips & techniques that people might
like to share.

Thanks,
Bill

---------------------------------


Sender: Bill Clementson@C1652423-A
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Using Emacs as a Lisp IDE
From: Bill Clementson <[email protected]>
Date: 12 Jul 2003 17:35:29 -0600
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Lines: 39
User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2
--text follows this line--
I have volunteered to prepare a paper for ILC2003 on "Using Emacs as a
Lisp IDE". The aim of the paper/presentation is to identify (primarily
for newbies) the benefits of using Emacs for Lisp development work and
to describe how Emacs makes an effective Lisp development environment.
Since questions related to developing with Lisp seem to come up fairly
frequently, I also intend to publish a version of this paper on the CL
Cookbook web site.

The basic structure of the presentation is:

1. Intro to Emacs: Resources for learning emacs. Extra things that make
life easier when using Emacs (e.g. - cygwin, eshell, specific add-ons).

2. Alternative lisp development options under Emacs, including inf-lisp
mode, ilisp, ELI, with the pros/cons of each, resources for installation
and learning to use them.

3. Working with lisp source code, navigation, sexp-level operations,
completions, short-cuts. Include discussion on interaction with the lisp
listener and how that changes the way you develop code.

4. Searching/understanding lisp source code using emacs functionality,
ilisp/eli functionality, tags, ECB (Emacs Code Browser), arg lists,
macro expansion, accessing Hyperspec (and other lisp documentation from
Emacs).

5. Developing lisp code with Emacs (e.g. - project management,
debugging) with examples of how the typical development cycle differs
from other programming languages. Working with lisp images.

I would appreciate any feedback on the proposed contents I have listed
above with any suggestions as to topics that should be added. I would
also like to hear your own experiences with using Emacs and Lisp
together and the things that made developing easier/harder when using
Emacs and/or a particular lisp mode. Please feel free to email me
directly if you don't want to post directly to the newsgroup.

--
Bill Clementson



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