From: gah@trc.mew.mei.co.jp (Gary A. Hildebrand)
Subject: Re: Programmer's Editors
Organization: Matsushita Electric Works Ltd., Tokyo, Japan.
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 13:02:18 GMT

I wrote:
Ralf, is Lugaru's Epsilon in the public domain or shareware?  If shareware
or commercial, what's the cost?  What kinds of objects does it tag or not?

landon@apple.com (Landon Dyer) writes:
>>Epsilon is commercial ($200-$250 depending on where you get it).
>>Worth it (my copy of Brief went into the dustbin after ten minutes
>>of working with Epsilon).
>>
>>It tags just functions ... but that looks customizable.
>>
>>[I have no connection with Lugaru other than as a satisfied customer.]

In article <29d9ad1d@ralf> Ralf.Brown@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU writes:
>>It's commercial, and lists for $250.  Check their ads in most any mag aimed
>>at programmers.  The built-in extension-language functions tag C functions
>>and #defines and asm code labels (xyz:) and procedures.  

It sounds like Epsilon might be worth a look for anyone who isn't yet
settled into a favorite editor or thinks they need to switch.  For me,
there's the inertia involved in switching -- I'm already comfortable using
what I think is a great editing environment which is free and supports
Japanese characters (the NEmacs version of GNU-Emacs).  I'm hoping DEmacs
port will be able to support all/most of what has already been done under
GNU-Emacs without change, if and when I start using the PC directly for the
editing side of development.


>>...  There's also a
>>public-domain tagfile generator available on SIMTEL20 as TAGS15.ZIP which
>>interfaces with the Epsilon, GNU Emacs, and other tags systems and will
>>tag C/C++ #defines, macros, structs, typedefs, enums, enum constants, unions,
>>global variables, global classes, functions, prototypes, externs, and static
>>declarations; and asm procedure, definition, local, macro, struc, and union
>>labels.  Each of the above may be individually enabled or disabled.

What a great tip!  I've never jumped so fast to download a piece of
public-domain software as when I heard about this (well almost).  It does
everything Ralf claims, but there is one caveat: although the documentation
for Tags Generator V1.5 claims that GNU-Emacs etags format is supported,
it's actually vi/ex-compatible ctags format!  I don't know whether
GNU-Emacs supported the ctags format in the old days, or if the author was
simply mis-informed, but the two formats are currently *NOT* the same.

Even as a vi/ex-compatible ctags format, the output file is still not 100%
correct, with C comment characters unescaped for vi-searching and a bug in
the handling of multiple #define's.  Nevertheless, the C source-code for
this wonderful utility is provided, so in principle at least you could
either modify the program to write the correct format, or change the ELisp
functions of GNU-Emacs to handle the vi/ex-compatible ctags or one of the
other three formats supported by TAGS.

Being somewhat less ambitious and under a bit more time pressure, I whipped
up some UNIX sh/sed/awk processing to make a tag file in GNU-Emacs etags
format, given the TAGS-generated files for Epsilon and what's called
"Space-Delimited format".  TAGS has to be run twice and then my stuff on
the source-code under perusal, but once the files are made, access is
blazing fast without any limitations or problems!  If anybody wants
my files, just send me an e-mail request and I'll be happy to send them!


In article <vsjj59f.xtifr@netcom.com> xtifr@netcom.com (Chris Waters) writes:
>>MicroEMACS for all platforms supports ctags internally, and scripts are
>>available to support etags.  This has been true since at least v3.10,
>>and I thought it was true of earlier versions as well.

Well, the documentation for my copy (version 3.9, circa 1987) makes no
mention of tags whatsoever, so either you're talking about a later version
than 3.9, some third-party addition, or an altogether different editor!

Gary
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