From: achow@cad093.scdt.intel.com (Abel Chow ~)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: GNU Emacs vs. the world . . . (was Re: C Programmer's Editor of Choice?)
Date: 25 Jul 92 00:18:56 GMT
	<ACHOW.92Jul23183544@cad093.scdt.intel.com>
	<mwm.1awn@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us>
Organization: Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA
In-reply-to: mwm@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us's message of 24 Jul 92 20:55:06 GMT

In article <mwm.1awn@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us> mwm@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us (Mike Meyer) writes:

> In <ACHOW.92Jul23183544@cad093.scdt.intel.com>, achow@cad093.scdt.intel.com (Abel Chow ~) wrote:
> > 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

> GNU Emacs is a subset of Emacs, not the whole thing. A fair number of
> people consider the Goslings variant to be "the one true Emacs". Guess
> what - it uses Control-H to backspace, not for help. It is very
> comparable to GNU Emacs in terms of size, functionality and features
> (i.e. - it's got more of any than you really want :-).

Hi, Mike.  Actually, it's more like the people who C-f all the way to
the end of the line rather than using a single C-e, or C-k a whole
bunch of blank lines instead of C-x C-o, or C-f character by character
instead of M-f, or C-d C-f <char> instead of C-t, etc.  <cringe> It
just drives me up a wall watching people edit in such a fashion.

OK.  I have to admit that the example that I gave was probably a bad
one (since only GNU Emacs has it), but the online help was what hooked
me into Emacs.  I'm probably the unusual case but I sat in front of
the computer for hours on end reading the WHOLE info-file.

Anyways, you're right about the other variants.  But isn't GNU Emacs
the most popular version out there?  I can't wait for version 19!

To be totally honest, I haven't met anyone at school or at work who
knows Emacs well (OK, I'm young . . . I'll wait a couple more years).
<sigh> And it all began when the place where I worked had only the raw
Unix system and one text editor--vi . . .

> In additions, there are minor variants available for most platforms
> that include enough of an extensions language that RMS wouldn't object
> to them being called emacs.

Yeah, but what about memacs?  C-x C-f is bound to quit?  It's a sorry
excuse for Emacs. <grimace> At least get the keybindings somewhat
standard.

> In other words, it's possible for someone to be *very* familiar with
> emacs, but have never used GNU emacs.

Right.  Once again, you point out another one of my oversights.  Gee.
You seem to be pretty good at this . . .  <grin>

> > 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).

> Update? What were you going to add? I use MG regularly on the latest
> thing I can get from CBM, and it doesn't have any serious problems.
> Needs a few new features, though. However, the real GNU sort of kills
> that. The trouble is, replacing all the amiga-specific functionality
> I've built around MG isn't that easy.

Actually, I was trying to make it work correctly on 2.0 (and use as
many 2.0 features as possible).  I wanted to just get rid of the
cosmetic problems first, but I never got that far.  Unless you stick
to 8 pixel high fonts, the window graphics is messed up.  The menus
don't work with proportional spaced fonts.  The system font is used
instead of the screen font.  Stuff like that.  But it's a solid
editor.  Thanks, Mike!  Anyhow, I had problems getting it to compile
under DICE, my hard drive got full, etc.  It's hard programming
without documentation (this was when the RKMs weren't available--I
just looked at the include files).

>	   <mike

Abel
(INTegrated ELectronics)
--
=E=D---Abel Chow (achow@scdt.intel.com)
Intel - Santa Clara, CA  (408)76543-95