C70:editor-people (05/28/82)
>From COMSAT.SoftArts@MIT-MULTICS Fri May 28 00:20:47 1982
Local: Editor-People at SU-SCORE
Original-date: 26 MAY 1982 22:13:48
Remailed-date: 28 May 1982 0000-PDT
Remailed-from: J.Q. Johnson <Admin.JQJ at SU-SCORE>
Remailed-to: Editor People: ;
While we are declaring preferences:
1. Please note that there are a number of EMACS implementations
-- each with their own restrictions. For example, mine allows
multiple marks (a limit of 10 per buffer, but that is
completely arbitrary as they are dynamically allocated anyway).
2. Mine converts tabs to spaces normally. This is motivated by
the fact that tabs are foreign to Prime systems as they have
space compression in normal text files. A main motivation for
using actual tab characters is to make editing tabular data
simple, but it is not a perfect method as the problem of
jumping a tab distance when adding a single character
illustrates. The fact that the tab spacing is not standard is
a source of much confusion -- especially to recipients of
letters sent by systems whose users communities apparently
think tabs are every eight spaces.
But tabs are not necessarily for columnar data. Rubber spaces
represent an alternative. In rubber mode, any insertion will
move characters until a multiple space is encountered. The
insertion gets absorbed until only a single space is left.
Of course this is not the only such implementation. It does
have the advantage over having to predeclare columns and having
all editor functions being column-dependent. (Credit to Jerry
Roberts, formerly of ECD Corp for this rubber space
implementation).