[slime-devel] Re: Clicky things in the REPL.

[Michael Livshin]

Luke Gorrie <luke at bluetail.com> writes:

> If CLIM used weak references, it would have the same trouble. I would
> guess they use normal references and normal GC, but I don't know.
>
> In Emacs it seems we get into distributed garbage collection, though
> probably a simple case if only Emacs can refer to Lisp and not
> vice-versa.

what you could do is resort to double indirection.  i.e. have the Lisp
side assign indices to the printed objects it gives to Emacs, and have
Emacs use those indices when the objects are clicked on.  this way you
can simply decide to keep only the last two thousand printed objects
or something, no weak hash tables needed.  and when Emacs asks for an
object whose index is too old, Lisp can unambiguously detect this and
react politely.

> How about integrating SLIME with McCLIM instead? For example, it would
> be nice to type "Edit Definition foo" in the McCLIM listener, and have
> an Emacs window pop up with the definition.

just as long as you don't slide into writing an Emacs backend for
McCLIM, I guess. :)

just kibitzing,
--m

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