One of the main benefits of using the built-in editor is the large number of keyboard and menu commands available which can work directly on Lisp code. As well as editing facilities which work intelligently in a buffer containing Lisp code, there are easily-accessible commands which load, evaluate or compile, and run your code in any part of a buffer.
Other tools in the LispWorks IDE are integrated with the Editor. So for example you can find the source code definition of an object being examined in a browser, or set breakpoints in your code, or flag symbols in editor buffers for specific actions such as tracing or lambda list printing.
This section provides an introduction to the Lisp-specific facilities that are available using menu commands. For a full description of the extended editor commands, please refer to the LispWorks Editor User Guide .
All of the commands described below are available in the Editor's Buffers , Definitions , and Expression menus. They operate on the current buffers, definitions, or expression, the choice of which is affected by the current view.
LispWorks IDE User Guide (Unix version) - 25 Nov 2011