src@cup.portal.com (01/20/88)
Thanks to everyone who responded to the PC/MS-DOS text editor survey. Here are the results: I received about 80 replies. Many people who responded work on more than one operating system. As might be expected, Unix was the "other woman" in most cases. Among this group, editors ported from Unix to the PC environment were most popular. MicroEmacs, Epsilon, and different versions of vi scored very high and, in fact, accounted for nearly 50% of the total response. Many people also work on an IBM mainframe and these people chose to use the Kedit program which is a port of the mainframe Xedit editor. (Interesting that all these editors are ports "down" to the PC. When will one of the popular microcomputer editors be ported "up" to the bigger machines?) Of the PC-originated editors, Brief, QEdit and PC-Write were the most popular. The appearance of Brief did not surprise me, but QEdit and PC-Write did. I know QEdit is an excellent editor (I use it myself), but didn't know so many other people agreed. PC-Write is really a word processor, but it has also found a niche in the programmer's-editor field according to the people who responded. Here are the totals: Editor Users Most-appreciated feature -------------------- ---------- --------------------------------- MicroEmacs 12 users - availability of source code Epsilon 10 - MANY features, powerful MKS-vi 7 - Unix-derived Brief 6 - windowing capabilities, macros Kedit 6 - IBM mainframe-derived PC-vi 6 - Unix-derived QEdit 5 - very fast PC-Write 4 - word-processing features PE2 3 SEE (DeSmet) 3 Blackbeard 2 Borland Turbo editors 2 EDIX 2 Final Word 2 Other mentioned editors: Freemacs, BSE, Norton Editor, WEDIT (U. of Waterloo Editor), Z (Aztec), SPF/PC, Mix (Mix C), JOVE (emacs clone), WordStar (there HAD to be one!). Thanks again to everyone who responded. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Calwas | src@cup.portal.com Santa Clara, CA | ...!sun!cup.portal.com!src --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's...my business is to create." William Blake (1757-1827)