phr@UCB-VAX.Berkeley.EDU (10/06/85)
From: phr@UCB-VAX.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Rubin) If you are choosing an Emacs to start with, GNU Emacs is clearly superior. Whether it is worth the effort of switching from Gosling/Unipress depends on how much energy you have already invested in writing extensions, etc. (Note that GNU Emacs has an mlisp code translator that does a lot of the work of converting mlisp code into Elisp for you). I don't do many sophisticated-type things (for which GNU Emacs with its Elisp would be the obvious win) but even for everyday editing I found it well worth switching because (compared with Gosling Emacs #85, I haven't used Unipress's), GNU Emacs: 1) has better built-in documentation 2) has a real manual that is very well written 3) has sophiticated C mode which actually makes life *easier* 4) has better process control, compile-command more powerful/useful 5) starts up faster, runs faster, leaves fewer turds around 6) you can interrupt runaway lisp commands, searches, etc. 7) horizontal windows are sometimes useful 8) etc. I could think of more stuff. On the minus side, the command set is different enough to be annoying til you get used to it. In my case this took about 2 days. paul rubin (GNU collaborator, sometimes)
jma@duke.UUCP (Jon M. Allingham) (10/10/85)
I haven't used gosling/unipress emacs (as far as I know), but having recently (not by choice, but by moving ) switched from Montomery's emacs on Sys V I can assure you that GNU emacs is: 1) horribly slow compared to Montgomery's emacs both in start-up and run time. 2) the 'C' mode is awful in MY OPINION. 3) doesn't do anything that Montgomery's emacs didn't that I really need to use. However, GNU emacs is better (by orders of magnitude) than vi... Jon M. Allingham, AT&T Bell Laboratories, currently at DUKE University