Reader macros work on a per file basis so I don't think there is a way to set the proper syntax from a separate file.
You might want to consider trying to setup Slime, as it provides some really amazing Smalltalk-esque features. I detailed most of them in my blog series, Debugging Lisp[0]. Some of the ones I covered in the post are: recompilation of code at runtime, restarting of a stack frame at runtime, an object inspector, interactive restarts (restarts are a better form of try/catch), various forms of function lookup (e.g. list all functions who call function X). I haven't yet covered it, but I eventually want to, is slime-macrostep[1]. It lets you interactively expand parts of a macro step by step.
I've gotten Slime working, but so far I'm still doing the same things I would do in an interactive session:
$ emacs
M-x slime RET
# in the slime buffer
* (ql:quickload :clamp)
* (in-package :clamp)
* (use-syntax :clamp)
Is that what do you typically do?
Also, when I try to C-x C-e an arc expression in some random buffer after the above steps, it doesn't seem to remember the above commands anymore. The only thing that works is running commands at the repl.
and then whenever you open a file that ends in .lisp, it will enable slime-mode.
If you are going to get into programming Lisp with Emacs, you should look into Evil (vim bindings for Emacs), paredit (smart paren editing), ac-slime (autocomplete for slime), show-paren-mode (shows matching parens), and undo-tree (a better version of undo/redo). Although I've never used it, you might want to look at Spacemacs which is supposed to supply sane defaults for Emacs.
>If you are going to get into programming Lisp with Emacs, you should look into Evil (vim bindings for Emacs), paredit (smart paren editing), ac-slime (autocomplete for slime), show-paren-mode (shows matching parens), and undo-tree (a better version of undo/redo).
Yes, customizing Emacs is really useful for making it better to use. To help with that, here are some of my config's settings for things you've mentioned. My show-paren-mode settings are here (https://bitbucket.org/zck/.emacs.d/src/default/init.el?filev...).
Instead of paredit, I use smartparens. They do similar things, but when I looked at the two, I thought smartparens was better, although I can't remember why right now. My config is here (https://bitbucket.org/zck/.emacs.d/src/default/init.el?filev...).
I should similarly check out the other things you've mentioned (except Evil, 'cause I don't like modal editing).
