[slime-devel] Re: Re: Putting REPL prompt on the mode line?

[Derek Peschel]

In article <b61efa90512220217s64926446le177758ad5d59966 at mail.gmail.com>,
Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
>Just making a guess here, I don't think that Derek wants a REPL at all
>-- probably something more like an elisp scratch buffer or a Smalltalk
>transcript.

Both REPLs and scratch buffers (or file buffers) are useful for different
reasons.

REPLs give a structure to the buffer because you can only add input at the
end.  They also make evaluation easy (just press return).  Scratch buffers
are flexible but totally unstructured -- you can edit anything at any time.
In scratch buffers, Emacs's evaluate-last-sexp, or Smalltalk's Esc (to select
what was last typed) followed by the key to evaluate the selection, give
you a little bit of structure, but not the same as in a REPL.

My big goal is to find the right concept of structure -- e.g., ordinary text
or LISP expressions or expression/result pairs or many others -- for the
task at hand.  I then want to design a set of uniform commands to navigate
and edit according to the current definition of structure.

And changing the appearance of buffers shows or hides certain kinds of
structure.  With no prompt, the REPL looks more like a bunch of LISP
expressions, but still colored to show input vs. output.

>with files.  My current slime-scratch doesn't always behave correctly,
>but if there's interest, I can clear it with my manager and post it as
>a starting point.

Please do, it sounds generally useful.  When does it not behave correctly?

-- Derek