Where to find the .SCM files

[John Ralls]

> On Feb 25, 2015, at 6:22 AM, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> wrote:
> 
> [ I'm answering this on the gnucash-devel list. I don't think most users are interested in this 
> technical essay. ]
> 
> On Wednesday 25 February 2015 03:37:36 David wrote:
>> Thanks Jim for the warning, I had read the link above and went to this
>> link given in that page to start learning Scheme.
>> http://www.scheme.com/tspl2d/start.html#g1546
>> 
>> But that book must be for real programmers not novices like myself.  I
>> got some of the exercises done but then ran into a brick wall when he
>> said to write a file and then invoke it.
>> 
> A guile script is in essence a plain text file written in the guile language. So you could use any 
> plain text editor to write one. It helps a lot if your text editor understands the guile language so 
> it can colorize your script. This is called syntax highlighting and makes it much easier to read 
> back what you wrote or what others have written (like the reports).
> 
> Example plain text editors on linux are gedit, kwrite or kate. Instead of a basic text editor you 
> can also go for fully fledged IDE's such as KDevelop, Anjuta or Eclipse. The latter are more 
> similar of visual studio on Windows with all kinds of development aids.
> 
> Whatever you choose, you best choose an editor that does syntax highlighting for guile/scheme. 
> I know kate and kwrite do, and that Eclipse doesn't.

And emacs not only will do syntax highlighting, indentation, and helping with all those parentheses, it can even execute the Guile/Scheme with http://www.nongnu.org/geiser/. The Guile team also recommends http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit.

OTOH, emacs has a bit of a learning curve and is decidedly old-school in appearance, to the point that some consider using it (or the equally old-school vi) a mark of an expert programmer. Your friend Chris should approve. ;-)

Regards,
John Ralls