[foo-devel] elk readline extension

[martin r. <li...@ru...>]

dear sam,

during the further development of foo, the sound synthesis system made
with elk,  i rewrote the readline extension, which we used.

it's not longer a reader extension, but an independent dynamically
loadable extension.  it provides a (readline-read) function which is
meant as a (read) replacement for terminal input, along with some
convenience stuff like (readline-set-prompt) and
(readline-add-history).  there is also a simple toplevel symbol
completer implemented.

the patch just adds an extension directory lib/readline, adds a
slightly modified toplevel file toplevel-readline.scm which uses
(readline-read) instead of (read) and patches the lib/Makefile.am and
./configure.ac to compile the extension.  it does not yet add anything
to check for libreadline etc.

i am not sure about licensing issues.  libreadline is GPL, elk looks
like a bsd-style license, which seems no to be compatible.  i don't
know, if it is compatible for GPL-compatible projects linked with
elk.  but in any case, it's a problem to include this with elk.   i
had a look at libedit.  my readline extension compiles out of the box
with the readline-wrapper of libedit, which is BSD licensed.

the sourceforge-libeditline doesn't have an entry point of a
user-provided completion function.

what do you think, how should this extension be distributed?  included
with elk?  we could make a ./configure-option for both libreadline or
libedit support, however the user wants it, while mentioning the
license issues.

at least i hope you will like this extension...

all the best!

martin


-- 
martinrumori (ma...@ru...)
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