Date: 17 Apr 85 15:45:42 EST (Wed)
From: Martin David Connor <mdc@MIT-HTVAX.ARPA>

    Date: Sat, 13 Apr 85 16:28:15 est
    From: Richard M. Stallman <rms@mit-prep>

    Can you help this person?  Also, can you give me the rest of ledit
    to distribute, plus some info on how to use it?

I have put the files "ledit.l" and "leditcfns.c" on prep:~mdc.
Much to my disgust ledit.l relied on some bogus little package of
functions on HT, so I had to massage it a bit.

To get it to work, one must:

   - Compile leditcfns.c with something like:

     cc leditcfns.c

   - Edit ledit.l, changing the line beginning "(cfasl" to
     have the right pathname for the cfns file you compiled in
     the last step.

   - Compile ledit.l with:

     liszt ledit.l

Then put the following lines in your .lisprc file:

    ;load in functions for emacs interface
    (load "//src//mdc//ledit//ledit")   ; Location of Ledit library
    (set-proc-str "%gnumacs")		; Name of editor

Then you can use ^E <RETURN> to get from LISP back to gnumacs.

Here is the part of my .emacs file that pertains to ledit.

    ;;; Set up ledit mode
    (setq ledit-go-to-lisp-string "%lisp")
    (setq lisp-mode-hook 'ledit-from-lisp-mode)

    Date: Sat, 13 Apr 85 11:26:32 cst
    From: neves@wisc-ai.arpa (David Neves)

    This is a documentation question.
    I cannot figure out how to use Ledit.  I suspect I need some
    function on the Franz Lisp end of things to go to Emacs and read in
    the temporary file.  Is this true?  Is the Lisp job started within
    Emacs or outside of emacs?  I'm just plain confused.  Perhaps a couple
    of words from someone in the know would help.

    A related question.  I have been using a shell buffer when interacting
    with Lisp (ie. put a definition in the kill buffer and then yank it
    into the shell buffer to redefine it).  This is nice but tends to fill
    up the shell buffer with lots of code (I'd rather keep calls to functions
    in the shell and not the functions themselves).
    My question:  Is using the shell buffer "better" than ledit?  Am I using
    it in the best way (i.e. copying definitions from an edit buffer to the
    shell buffer)?    -Thanks, David Neves

I have found that ledit works well for doing programming development
when you are changing lots of little pieces of a file and don't wish
to recompile the whole file.  Of course M-X Compile is very nice for
calling up a liszt on a buffer and watching it in the another window.
Of course the interface of something like NIL is even better because
you can compile your function directly into your lisp.  But since NIL
doesn't run under Unix, this is probably the next best thing.

I have tried the 2 window method (shell in lower window, lisp code in
upper), and have found it a little awkward.  It does have certain
advantages, but most of the time, I get be fine using M-C-D to save a
defun for lisp, and C-X Z to jump back to LISP.  C-E RETURN from lisp
is also mnemonic for getting back to gnumacs.

I hope this helps somewhat.


