From: michael@chpc.utexas.edu (Michael Lemke)
Subject: Re: Extension Languages
Organization: The University of Texas System - CHPC
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 23:57:34 GMT

In article <29DEC199208322560@author.gsfc.nasa.gov> rkoehler@author.gsfc.nasa.gov (BOB KOEHLER) writes:
>In article <1992Dec29.064438.24211@physiol.su.OZ.AU>, john@physiol.su.OZ.AU (John Mackin) writes...
>
>>I don't know about the merits of TPU in the abstract.  I just want to
>>discourage everyone from using nu/TPU.  It is a real pain in the bottom.
>>It has very restrictive `oh no, you have pirated me' code built into
>>it.  Now I have _not_ tried to pirate the damn thing, all I have
>>tried to do is support it for my users in a distributed computing
>>environment, and the pirate-detction stuff is very flakey: all
>>you have to do, just about, is breathe on the environment it's
>>installed in, and the damn thing decides it's been pirated and
>>refuses to run any more.  And naturally, they've taken the
>>security-through-obscurity approach (probably because they
>>couldn't make it secure any other way), so there's not a
>>shred of documentation on this stuff to help you figure out
>>what it was you did `wrong', or how to fix it or avoid
>>doing it in the future.
>> 
>>Set knows I'm opposed to commercial software in general, but
>>this sort of thing really needs to be stamped out.  Please
>>do not buy nu/TPU.
>> 
>
>   I do know about TPU's merits in the abstract, and in the practical. I have
>had no problems of any such manner with nu/TPU, and the problems I have gone
>through have been well worth the result.  A great full screen, character-cell
>as well as X11 compatable editting interface, especially for those moving from
>a VMS to UNIX or DOS environment already knowing DEC's EDT, or EVE, or
>progamming in TPU. And an extension language specifially designed for writing
>text editors (talk about the right tool for the job).  There are, of course
>competitors to nu/TPU in the TPU arena, as well as in the EDT-only arena which
>should be considered before spending money.  We consider our purchase as money
>well spent, and intend to do so again in the future. 
>

I just want to add that I also consider nu/TPU not worth any money
considerably exceeding the distribution costs.  It is still pretty buggy
although the version I am using now is a significant improvement over
the old version.  Just an example (from the old version): If you tried
to get help on TPU commands it looks up a second help library.  But it
won't find it because instead of looking at something like
.../common/tpuhelp.hlb it needs .../common/common/tpuhelp.hlb which
doesn't exit.  All help is in .../common (or thereabouts).  This is an
obvious gross bug, not a subtle logic problem. TPU is full of those and
I am really not surprized that you find problems in the licensing code.
I haven't seen them myself but I only run it on a single machine.

If nu/TPU wouldn't have these bugs it were a nice product.  OTOH as 
I detest vi and emacs is no alternative either nu/TPU is still the best 
Unix editor available to me.

Michael
-- 
Michael Lemke
Astronomy, UT Austin, Texas
(michael@io.as.utexas.edu or UTSPAN::UTADNX::IO::MICHAEL [SPAN])
Newsgroups: comp.editors