Re: readline and libguile

[Neil Jerram]

>>>>> "Jose" == Jose A Ortega Ruiz <address@hidden> writes:

    Jose> hi, i'm a relatively newcomer to guile. i've managed to
    Jose> compile it from the cvs tree without much trouble on a
    Jose> FreeBSD 4.5 box, with an exception: readline support seems
    Jose> to be not available: i would appreciate any clue about how
    Jose> to enable it! (btw, readline support is also missing from
    Jose> the guile 1.4 freebsd 'official' port).

Hi Jose,

Depends exactly what you mean by `seems not to be available'.
Normally one enables readline by typing

  (use-modules (ice-9 readline))
  (activate-readline)

into the REPL.  Or you can add these lines to your .guile file, but in
that case make sure that you also add

  (define-module (guile-user))

first.

    Jose> i've been playing with guile-gtk a little, and have look for
    Jose> guile bindings for (the excellent) libglade, without luck:
    Jose> do they exist? or is anyone working on them? if not, i would
    Jose> be willing to try my hand at them. i'm fluent in c/c++, and
    Jose> have used guile a little (i'm the maintainer and developer
    Jose> of GNU MDK [0], which uses guile as its extension language;
    Jose> so, i know how to embed a guile interpreter in a c app, and
    Jose> how to write little extensions). so:

I believe libglade bindings are included in Ariel Rios's gnome-guile
package, recently announced on one of these lists (probably guile-user
or guile-sources).

Caveat...  There's an ongoing rumbling as to whether things in
gnome-guile are unnecessarily dependent on the whole GNOME platform,
though, so it's possible that these bindings might not exactly meet
your needs in their current form.

    Jose> - i've read the HACKING file. are there any other
    Jose> recommended readings before starting to hack in guile?

The reference manual in Guile CVS is somewhat improved over the one on
the GNU web site.

    Jose> - would you find interesting having libglade bindings?

    Jose> - i would really appreciate any guideline/advice on where to
    Jose> start if i want to write the above mentioned bindings; also
    Jose> if you think that this task is not really adequate for a
    Jose> newcomer (too complex, too big or whatever), i will be glad
    Jose> to hear your admonitions! :-)

As mentioned above, you probably don't need to write these from
scratch.  Possibly the most beneficial approach would be to offer
Ariel a hand in sorting out the issues with unnecessary GNOME
dependence.  (Also, note that the C code for the gtk and libglade
bindings is to a large extent autogenerated from a description of the
interfaces.)

Best regards,
        Neil