preece@ccvaxa.UUCP (10/03/86)
> Is anyone still shelling out real $$$ to buy either Unipress' or CCA's > emacs programs? If so, why? ---------- There are several reasons for going with the commercial versions: Support (not every site has hordes of hackers free to hunt for problems and answer questions), features (there are still some things that they can do that GNU can't -- like pop-up windows), and libraries (some of the GNU packages are not as capable as the corresponding Gosling packages -- mail and c-mode come to mind). Support is by far the most powerful of those, especially to non-techie sites; the commercial Emacses have phone numbers you can call for help. Having said which, let me add that most Emacs users here have switched to GNU for most purposes (I still read mail in Gosling and I still do new code creation in Gosling). -- scott preece gould/csd - urbana uucp: ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!preece arpa: preece@gswd-vms
phr@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Rubin) (10/14/86)
Note that a number of people offer support services for GNU Emacs. Their rates and phone numbers are in the file etc/SERVICE, included in the distribution. This is not the same as having a central corporation standing by to answer your questions, but (for a fee) they are probably willing to do more work for you (such as writing custom macros, porting Emacs to your machine, or coming to your site to teach users) and might be nearer you (until the commercial suppliers open offices in places like Italy and Australia). Most importantly, you pay for the service only if you need it. Paul Rubin GNU collaborator (sometimes)
mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike Meyer) (10/14/86)
In article <11600018@ccvaxa> preece@ccvaxa.UUCP writes: >features (there are still >some things that they can do that GNU can't -- like pop-up >windows) GNU does do pop-up windows. At least the version I have (17.63 or so) does. On the other hand, I've never seen a version of Goslings where you could turn pop-up windows off and have things work right. To many packages assumed that change-to-buffer (may have the wrong name here) did a GNU-like "pop-to-buffer." This annoys me no end... <mike