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diff --git a/2024/talks/gypsum.md b/2024/talks/gypsum.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9b123326 --- /dev/null +++ b/2024/talks/gypsum.md @@ -0,0 +1,89 @@ +[[!meta title="Gypsum: my clone of Emacs and ELisp written in Scheme"]] +[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2024 Ramin Honary"]] +[[!inline pages="internal(2024/info/gypsum-nav)" raw="yes"]] + +<!-- Initially generated with emacsconf-publish-talk-page and then left alone for manual editing --> +<!-- You can manually edit this file to update the abstract, add links, etc. ---> + + +# Gypsum: my clone of Emacs and ELisp written in Scheme +Ramin Honary (he/him) - E-mail: <mailto:ramin.honary@gmail.com> - ActivityPub: @ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org - Website: <https://tilde.town/~ramin_hal9001> + +[[!inline pages="internal(2024/info/gypsum-before)" raw="yes"]] + +I would like to demonstrate an Emacs clone I have been +writing in Guile Scheme for the past year, which I am +tentatively calling "Gypsum". Unlike other editors which +only clone the Emacs keybindings (Edwin, Jed, jEdit, Jove, +Lem, MG, Yi, Zile), I hope my Emacs clone will also fully +clone the Emacs Lisp programming language well enough that +many of the packages in ELPA, Non-GNU ELPA, and perhaps even +MELPA, can be used in "Gypsum" without any modification. I +would also like to talk a little bit about the how I am +implementing it (the software architecture), and invite +others to contribute. + +I think my project is of interest to many Emacs users +because, firstly, I have personally spoken with a relatively +large number of people who have expressed interest in making +Emacs programmable in Scheme. Secondly, there is a good +amount of prior art for Scheme implementations of +Emacs. There are even builds of Emacs that link to Guile +which provides a "scheme-eval" built-in function that +translates between Elisp data types and Scheme data +types. The Guile compiler itself ships with an Emacs Lisp +compiler as well, although it does not provide enough of +Emacs's built-in functions to be of much use. + +So by using Guile, we can make use of a lot of the prior +art, in fact I am currently using the tokenizer and reader +used in Guile's built-in Elisp interpreter to implement +"Gypsum's" Elisp interpreter. That said, I have gone out of +my way to make my code fully R7RS compliant, so I hope I can +port it to other Scheme implementations like MIT Scheme, +Gambit, Stklos, and perhaps Chez Scheme with Gwen Weinholt's +R7-to-R6RS translator. I consider the Guile version of +Gypsum to be the reference implementation of what I hope +will become a fully cross-platform programming language and +text editor written in portable R7RS Scheme. + +The reference implementation of "Gypsum" is a GUI +application based on Gtk using a library called +"Guile-GI". Guile-GI uses the GObject Introspection +framework to automatically generate Scheme language bindings +to libraries like Gtk and Glib which are written in the C +programming language. There is not yet any terminal-emulator +version of "Gypsum." + +The next step of the project will be to implement enough of +Elisp that we can run tests written in the Emacs Regression +Testing (ERT) framework. We can then incorporate the +original GNU Emacs regression test suite into Gypsum. Any +new API added to Gypsum Elisp will most likely already have +regression tests we can use to make sure it is working in a +way that is compatible with GNU Emacs Lisp. I would like to +make it as easy as possible for people to contribute to this +project, and having a list of APIs to be implemented each +with a set of regression tests the APIs are expected to +pass, is a very good way to do that. + +About the speaker: + +My name is Ramin Honary, I have been a professional software +engineer of 16 years, lately mostly doing full-stack +software development. I have always been fascinated with +programming languages, and especially functional languages +like Lisp and Haskell. I have been using Emacs +since 2017. But lately it is with Scheme that I have been +spending most of my free time. I am only a Scheme +programming enthusiast, I am not involved with Scheme +professionally. + +You may also like another talk by this speaker: +[EmacsConf - 2022 - talks - Build a Zettelkasten with the Hyperbole Rolodex](https://emacsconf.org/2022/talks/rolodex/) + +[[!inline pages="internal(2024/info/gypsum-after)" raw="yes"]] + +[[!inline pages="internal(2024/info/gypsum-nav)" raw="yes"]] + + |