HEDRICK@RUTGERS.ARPA (08/23/84)
From: Charles Hedrick <HEDRICK@RUTGERS.ARPA> You might want to rethink EMACS. We have some experience with this. We started out on our DEC-20 with roughly the same reaction, that EMACS was too complex for the average user. Thus we taught, and supported, a quite competent but simpler editor. Slowly but surely all of our users have migrated to EMACS, one by one as they needed some feature that only it had. Interestingly enough, we found that we had to move our secretaries first, as they needed the most serious word processing. Since EMACS is configurable, you might consider designing a word processor that you would like, and then configuring EMACS to look like it. Our two biggest breakthroughs in making EMACS generally accessible were 1) putting the most commonly used functions on a keypad, so people normally could use dedicated keys instead of those escape sequences. [This is very easy to do -- in your system-wide profile, put (bind-to-key "character sequence" "functionname")] 2) removing unnecessary commands from accessibility by novices. -------
LARRY@JPL-VLSI.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (08/23/84)
From: Larry Carroll <LARRY@JPL-VLSI.ARPA> My experience supports Charles (HEDRICK@RUTGERS) comments. At my last place of employment we used the Gosling EMACS in several ways--all of them fairly easy to set up with the Mock LISP and key-binding features of EMACS. Several people were Wordstar freaks and one project mandated EDT. We set up EMACS to look like either of them, depending on the login command file of the respective user. Within a few months both sets of users had begun to use features in EMACS which were not in their subset. Especially popular were the regular-expression FIND/REPLACE commands and the keyboard macro facility. The extensibility of EMACS has also been used in an Ada class, where its teacher set up EMACS to recognize Ada keywords and automatically supply the remaining tokens. It would also prompt for the variable parts of each command. When I left the C programmers had begun to adapt the Ada keyword recognizer to C. One of them had set up her login file so she could have EMACS spawn a subprocess to compile and link her programs in the background while she continued to use EMACS, then notify her when The only problem I noticed with Gosling's EMACS was the long time it took to come up--10 seconds with the VAX moderately loaded. I understand the version of EMACS sold by CCA (in Cambridge, Mass) is somewhat faster. Occasionally I would also notice an extension that was slow. Those I looked into hadn't made good use of the compiled primitive commands and were fairly easy to speed up. Currently I've got a proposal in here at JPL to buy EMACS for my group's VAX. After getting used to the power and ease of use of EMACS I feel crippled using other editors. Larry @ JPL-VLSI ------
chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (08/25/84)
A while ago I posted a set of diff listings to macros.c for Gosling
Emacs #264, to replace the macro initialization sort (an insertion
sort) with a quicksort, and to replace the keybound wired function
insertion code (linear search) with a quicksort + binary search. These
changes gave a somewhat significant improvement in Emacs' startup
time.
Is there any interest in my reposting the mods?
--
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci (301) 454-7690
UUCP: {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet: chris@umcp-cs ARPA: chris@marylandfbp@cybvax0.UUCP (Rick Peralta) (07/16/85)
I am looking for referances to texts on text editing. Specifically algorithims (like Knuths sorting stuff) to manipulate blocks of text. Opinions, pointers and experiences very welcome. Please reply by mail and I will summarise if there is enough intrest. Rick ...!cybvax0!fbp "A likely story. I don't believe a word of it."
g-rh@cca.UUCP (Richard Harter) (09/28/86)
Debates about editors seems to be straying from UNIX a bit, but I'll add some more input. Itty Bitty Machine Co (Remember them) actually has a very good screen editor. The current incarnation is XEDIT; my experience was with an earlier version. Some of the nice features: (1) Edit multiple files in one session, switching back and forth, a la EMACS. (2) Multiple windows including horizontal windows. I disremember whether you could display multiple horizontal windows but you could definitely edit a restricted field (e.g. columns 60-90). (3) For you mode/modeless fans: All commands were in a command window (actually line). What you typed went on the screen at the position the cursor pointed at. A single key stroke popped you to the command line. (4) Hardware delete and switch from overwrite to insert mode. (5) You could type into the screen and edit all day without interacting with the computer until you hit the enter key. Lovely on a heavily loaded system. The editor sucked in one screenful at time. Really a nice editor -- I've even heard EMACS fanatics admit that it was good. Only one small drawback -- you need an IBM terminal and an IBM operating system. -- Richard Harter, SMDS Inc. [Disclaimers not permitted by company policy.] For Cheryl :-)