Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

David Kastrup writes:

 > In this particular case, the "annotated syntax tree" question in
 > particular is mostly uninteresting since we are talking about
 > characterizing identifiers.  It is "mostly" uninteresting since the
 > resolution of an identifier depends on scopes,

Nice try, but I don't think you can deprecate the value of the
information GCC is not allowed to emit that easily.

Emacs's treatment should depend on types and usage (for example, a
keyword used as an identifier in a context where that is a syntax
error should not be included in a completion candidate list at that
point).  Even if you restrict consideration to the simple context of
completion (fontification would be another application where the
additional information would be of great use), the annotation
information would improve accuracy in generating candidate lists.

And of course there are areas where Emacs lags badly (refactoring
tools) where complete information about the syntax tree would be very
useful.