From: achow@cad093.scdt.intel.com (Abel Chow ~)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: GNU Emacs vs. the world . . . (was Re: C Programmer's Editor of Choice?)
Date: 24 Jul 92 01:35:44 GMT
	<1992Jul17.174737.8333@cs.rose-hulman.edu> <petter.03cd@pnilsen.UUCP>
	<147pqfINNoij@agate.berkeley.edu>
	<ACHOW.92Jul20104309@cad093.scdt.intel.com>
	<1992Jul23.191613.2338@sol.cs.wmich.edu>
Organization: Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA
In-reply-to: meshkin@sol.cs.wmich.edu's message of 23 Jul 92 19:16:13 GMT

Oh, boy.  An GNU Emacs vs. the world thread . . .

In article <1992Jul23.191613.2338@sol.cs.wmich.edu> meshkin@sol.cs.wmich.edu (The Hidden) writes:

> achow@cad093.scdt.intel.com (Abel Chow ~) writes:

> >There's the Amiga version of GNU Emacs which does (almost) everything

> I agree!  It does everything but write the code for you, BUT it is
> very slow to start!  I downloaded that one, unpacked it, then spend
> the next minute staring in horror as it loaded gobs of data from my
> HD before giving me a nice standard emacs screen.  If you never make
> mistakes and have to reboot your machine (thanks CBM, for your
> wonderful exception handler!)  it's great, but I usually use either
> vi, or MG if I want to be emacsy.

Hm.  I don't find loading time to be a problem (and I've got an
A500/590 with 3 MB).  It sounds like you didn't run the undumped
version.  After you dump the Emacs executable (so it doesn't have to
go through the initialization every time), Emacs loads pretty quickly.
BTW, which version did you get?

Even though I have a lowly 68000 processor, I find that the user
interface of Emacs more than compensates for the lack of speed.  I've
got the Emacs keybindings engrained into my fingertips.

I'm wondering how many Amiga users have actually used GNU Emacs.  I
have met MANY people who claim to use Emacs but don't even know how to
call up the online help (for those of you who don't know, type ^H i
[or Undo i on the Amiga]).  It just saddens the heart to see such
power go to waste.  <sigh> But . . . Emacs is actually quite new on
the Amiga scene so there's hope.  (However, the documentation is quite
hefty for those who are used to short utilities for the Amiga (kill a
tree)).

I have to admit that Emacs does have a slight learning curve, but once
I got over the slope, there's no going back to any other editor
(though I use vi for only short jobs).  It's like UNIX (OK, AmigaDOS).
Once you've learned how to use it, you never want to go back to MS-DOS
again!  I admit that Emacs is huge, but when you've got three megs of
memory, most of the memory is just sitting there doing nothing (at
least for me).  Just keep in mind that Emacs is an editing
environment, not just a text editor.  (Golly, is this really me?)

For smaller editing jobs, I use MG (which is less than 100 KB).  (I
was going to update it for 2.0 but when the Real Thing came out, oh,
well).

I encourage all C programmers to just try out the C-mode in GNU Emacs
(the other Emaxen (?) can't handle it).  Once I learned how to use it,
I'll never go back . . .  (Don't forget to try the Meta-; . . . er . .
. Alt-; function.)

>  This is the FTP Enterprise.                            ==========     ___
>  We have suffered severe       Chris Meshkin               ====\=   -==___==-
>  brain damage.                 Western Michigan University   ___\___/ /_
>  Please send help to:          meshkin@sol.cs.wmich.edu      \_WMU_1701_>-

Abel
(BTW, I only work at Intel.)
--
=E=D---Abel Chow (achow@scdt.intel.com)
Intel - Santa Clara, CA  (408)76543-95