editor-p@cca.UUCP (06/05/83)
>From Laws@SRI-AI Sun Jun 5 05:01:27 1983
I believe my forwarding of this message will involve no violation of
ARPA's policies. It seems to be of general interest.
-- Ken Laws
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Date: Fri 3 Jun 83 08:58:56-PDT
From: Mike Achenbach <ACHENBACH@SRI-AI>
Subject: Editors, command modes, etc.
To: laws
I've been following the last few editor-people messages with some
interest. While I can't direct a message to the mailing list, since
it might be interpreted as comercial use of the Arpa net, I can send
one to you, since you're local.
I noticed you mentioned the MAINSAIL editor in one of your messages,
but I don't know how much you use it. It's interesting, because we
follow many (in fact almost all) of your suggestions. We found that
requiring modes (we currently have 3: command, insert, and
overstrike) was the the only way to insure portability accross a
number of terminals and systems.
Our editor was patterned after Pentti Kanerva's TVEDIT, but we have
extended it quite a bit, mostly allowing multiple files and multiple
windows. We have an undo/redo facility (we call "redo" "a" for
"again"). A nice feature is the keyboard macro facility, which
allows you to define any contol character (with a few obvious
exceptions, like ^C) and any edit-character, if your terminal has it,
to an arbitrary edit command. These macros can loop, but there isn't
any IF THEN construct in them (i.e. you can loop on a search till if
fails, which aborts the macro, but you can't say "then go insert one
more line".) You cannot pick up a string in the text buffer and
execute it as a command, as you mentioned, but it would be nice to be
able to do so, and really not all that hard to do so.
The biggest advantage to MAINEDIT, from my point of view anyway, is
the fact that it is completely portable. Since it's written in
MAINSAIL, it runs where MAINSAIL runs. I have less trouble switching
from one system to another, or even one terminal to another, with
this editor than any other I have ever used, and this includes EMACS.
The first time I ever used UNIX EMACS, I blew it up with a command
sequence that was legal on TOPS20.
[...] You might find it interesting to try our editor, in that it
gives you the same exact image from TOPS20 to UNIX to VMS to TOPS10.
We even have it running on IBM 370 running CMS, but due to the
half-duplex problems, it's kind of a pain to use.
If you have any questions or comments, send me a message, or give us
a call.
/Mike Achenbach Xidak, Inc. 324-8745
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