Re: Proper namespaces in Elisp

[Andrea Corallo]

João Távora <address@hidden> writes:

> On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 2:34 PM Andrea Corallo <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> I believe the program wants just to return the symbol 'aaa' and does not
>> want to bother about other 1000 complications of the CL package system.
>
> But that's not the program you wrote.  If you want to return
> a symbol that is universally univocally  independent of
> context, you use a keyword, not an internal symbol.  That
> is substituting a " ' " for a " : ", a one-char change. That
> different program does what you want (which I suppose
> is not print the string "boom")

Yes is how this is worked around that in CL. It works, I'm just saying
is error prone and unnecessary complex.

> You're thinking about One Big Namespace. Fine. But that's
> Elisp. And it has the problems this thread is proposing to
> solve.  But you can go full Elisp in Common Lisp, just use
> a single package always.

No, I'm thinking to one namespace only for symbols *not* for bindings.
This is not CL or Elisp either.

>>
>> I've no doubt you can make it working with CL, guess what they have made
>> full operating systems with it... and it worked.
>
> Even if they didn't make OS's out of it.  The point is I don't need
> those to refute your particular arguments.
>
>> I'm just saying that if you look to it from another perspective is very
>> complex and error prone system and this is an example.
>
> It's not complex. It's a powerful system.  Don't use the parts you
> don't understand yet, then.  Look, if we had them, people would
> happily hack on the "Emacs" package all the time and noone
> would notice it.  But people you want to use modern-string.el
> could (use-package :modern-string) and find that s:thingamabob
> does that sweet thing they like.
>
> And when you wanted to write a library, you would learn it.
> It's not hard, believe me.

Thanks for telling me I could learn it.  I'm trying to say that I think
is unnecessary complex being too low level and that there could be
another way.  But okay if you prefer I just haven't learned how it
works.

>> That said is just my opinion (arguably shared by a number of people) so
>> please take it just for what it is.
>
> Oh I take it, sure.  I just think your particular one, based on the
> examples you gave me, it's based on very light (mis)usage of
> the package system and misunderstanding of its features.

I've just understood how CL packages works now!  Thanks I'm now finally
convinced.  No way it can work in a way that is not already this, it
would just implies the system is not understood.

BTW I leave these two papers, sad to see that they have misunderstood
the system too:

https://zenodo.org/record/2648195
http://www.flownet.com/gat/locales.pdf

Andrea

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