urjlew@ecsvax.UUCP (Rostyk Lewyckyj) (08/05/87)
[Who misdesigned Ed , and who signed off on it as a product??]
1) In the version of ed which came with Amigados 1.1, when I loaded
in a file, of say comp.sys.amiga articles, downloaded from the local
VAX, I would get a message indicating that tabs had been expanded
on input. In the version of ed which comes with Amigados 1.2, this
has been replaced by an alarming message "Input lines truncated".
In no cases yet have I had any "real" characters lost from the end
of any lines in my input files?
Why was the message changed? Is this a new bug? or some kind of a
feature?
2) What is the reasoning for deciding not to implement: overtyping,
block move, control characters in text (via color)?
3) Why does deleting a marked block of text take so long?
4) Why does it take so much (overhead) memory to edit files?
One has to specify size 150000 or thereabouts to edit an 80k file,
and one has to have about 250k of free memory to do this.
5) What is the reasoning behind the choice of control-keystrokes
assigned for the implemented commands?
Why were the assignments made different from those in Wordstar
and also used in the editor in Borlands Turbo Pascal for the IBM PC?
{Those assignments are especially kinesthetically mnemonic}.
6) Why does the cursor sometimes get misplaced after a block delete?
I am quite willing to admit that the ED editor which comes with
Amigados is much better than the editor which comes included
in MS/PC DOS, and perhaps slightly better by virtue of the command
line macro capability than the editor which comes with the UCSDP
system on Apple IIs. But since the Designers of ED should have known
of the UCSD editor and of Wordstar and probably other excellent
editors, I can not understand why ED was designed as it is?
I am certainly not willing to accept a rumoured reply from sales
that the company did not want to include a good editor because
it would take away an opportunity for third party developers.
Replies are especially invited from C=, and former C=.A veterans
who may be willing to shed some light on these matters.
--
Reply-To: Rostyslaw Jarema Lewyckyj
urjlew@ecsvax.UUCP , urjlew@tucc.bitnet
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