Lisp HUG Maillist Archive

Finding Macintosh editor emulation

To make LispWorks more approachable for Mac users, I'd suggest making  
the editor emulation setting more obvious.

[WARNING: I'm a less-than-weekend programmer who thinks Mac  
programmers are users who should also have a positive, Mac-like user  
experience whenever feasible.]


I suffered with the eMacs-style editor until I happened to sit next  
to Martin Simmons at ILC 2005. He showed me how to change that,  
which, once done, I soon forgot - except for the fact that this  
preference was not where I expected it to be.

As a new LW Professional licensee, I just now had the opportunity to  
do this again, only without Martin sitting next to me. As I've seen,  
the Preferences menu is not where it happens (unless I can set it  
using some variable I don't know yet in my invisible initialization  
file). Searching through all the other menus was fruitless. (I see  
now that there is actually a menu item, Window > Window Preferences,  
and what appears as an "Emula..." tab in the dialog that comes up.)

The readme file didn't mention it.

I thought I'd search the manuals, not sure which would have the  
answer. The Common LispWorks User Guide (Chapter 12 - Editor) refers  
to the LispWorks Editor User Guide, which refers to the Common  
LispWorks User Guide.

(Is this supposed to teach me recursion?)

(And, to be picky, the Editor User Guide refers to a section called  
"Configuring editor key input," but it's actually called "Configuring  
the editor emulation.")

In any case, I checked out the tool icons at the top of an editor  
window, and sure enough, logically situated between the clone icon  
and the history icon, there was the preferences icon. The rest was easy.


BOTTOM LINE(s):
1) LW would be friendlier to Mac users if Mac editor emulation were  
the default setting (same goes for multiple editor windows, by the way).
2) In Mac software, it's customary to make preference settings  
available in a dialog window through the Preferences... menu item.  
(OK, the .lispworks file may provide more flexibility, but why not  
save that for later?) Why not put at least this one where a Mac user  
expects it? That way, someone like me can actually start writing code  
instead of floundering with the editor.
3) I promise to read more of the documentation.


Re: Finding Macintosh editor emulation

On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 18:48:56 -0600, Laughing Water <lw@mt.net> wrote:

> I suffered with the eMacs-style editor

To be picky: An "eMac" is a PC built by Apple while "Emacs" (earlier
called "EMACS") is an editor that existed long before Steve Jobs (or
his marketing department) came up with this name.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs
  http://www.apple.com/education/emac/

As for the placement of menus etc. I think it shows that the LispWorks
IDE was itself built with CAPI.  I generally agree with you that it
would be desirable if OS X and Windows CAPI applications would fully
adher to the user interface guidelines of the underlying platform (and
look like "native" applications - see similar discussions on this
mailing list and on comp.lang.lisp), but that's certainly kind of
tricky to achieve with a cross-platform toolkit.  Looks like customer
pressure concerning this particular feature set hasn't been big enough
yet...


Updated at: 2020-12-10 08:47 UTC