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I was thinking the other day, after reading the post about the Unison project, that graphical editing could be a really neat idea - "there is no syntax, you man

I was thinking the other day, after reading the post about the Unison project, that graphical editing could be a really neat idea - "there is no syntax, you manipulate the AST directly" kind of thing. Then I started to try to flesh out how such a thing might actually work and I quickly realised that it offers zero benefit over editing standard Lisp syntax with paredit. They're equivalent.

Ericson2314 11y ago
I've barely used paredit, but when I tried it it felt a bit rough---and that's not surprise since not all text is a valid s-expression. Also, tree editors make implementing additional editor features. You don't get that benefit with emacs + paredit since the data structure is still a text string at the end of the day.
melloclello 11y ago
Keep fleshing it out - indeed use your experience with paredit to guide you - the benefit would be that people who don't necessarily know emacs etc can suddenly write lisp the way it was supposed to be written. Imagine if you were new to programming and something like that was the tool you were given?
- lorddoig 11y ago
  New to programming? I've been coding since I was 12 and only recently have I become confident in the procedure to exit emacs. I shouldn't have said paredit - I thought it had become a general term (is there one?) Most of my experience is with Cursive's 'Structural Editing' (sounds general, but is it?) features, and that's what I had in mind. I wouldn't give a newcomer emacs (or vi) but I would give them the concept of paredit. The problem with that is fundamentally the keyboard, and it's a problem for the more seasoned of us too. I would kill for a programmable numpad-sized keyboard with removable caps that can be labelled by design so I can have a physical button for the operations I perform most often. I know similar things can be achieved with midi pads, but they're far from perfect. Programmable, configurable keyboards were a thing when I was at school (around the tail of the BBC Micro era) - where did they go?
  - melloclello 11y ago
    > I wouldn't give a newcomer emacs (or vi) but I would give them the concept of paredit. This is exactly what I was suggesting

Ericson2314 11y ago

I've barely used paredit, but when I tried it it felt a bit rough---and that's not surprise since not all text is a valid s-expression. Also, tree editors make implementing additional editor features. You don't get that benefit with emacs + paredit since the data structure is still a text string at the end of the day.

melloclello 11y ago

Keep fleshing it out - indeed use your experience with paredit to guide you - the benefit would be that people who don't necessarily know emacs etc can suddenly write lisp the way it was supposed to be written. Imagine if you were new to programming and something like that was the tool you were given?

lorddoig 11y ago
New to programming? I've been coding since I was 12 and only recently have I become confident in the procedure to exit emacs. I shouldn't have said paredit - I thought it had become a general term (is there one?) Most of my experience is with Cursive's 'Structural Editing' (sounds general, but is it?) features, and that's what I had in mind. I wouldn't give a newcomer emacs (or vi) but I would give them the concept of paredit. The problem with that is fundamentally the keyboard, and it's a problem for the more seasoned of us too. I would kill for a programmable numpad-sized keyboard with removable caps that can be labelled by design so I can have a physical button for the operations I perform most often. I know similar things can be achieved with midi pads, but they're far from perfect. Programmable, configurable keyboards were a thing when I was at school (around the tail of the BBC Micro era) - where did they go?
- melloclello 11y ago
  > I wouldn't give a newcomer emacs (or vi) but I would give them the concept of paredit. This is exactly what I was suggesting