filbo@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Bela Lubkin) (06/06/89)
I'm sure I'll be roundly flamed for wanting to use the "evil" editor WordStar,
but I find it quite efficient and it is ingrained into my fingers. VI drives
me insane; EMACS is too slow and bulky to use on any of the systems I use.
What I want is a >simple< WordStar "clone" -- something akin to WordStar
version 3.3, or the editors found in Borland products such as SideKick and
Turbo Pascal. (Ideal would be a port of Kim Kokkonen's "TPE", but moving it
from Turbo Pascal/MS-DOS to C/UNIX does not sound like an appealing project
(!)). I realize that there are configurable editors out there; what I want
is both the keystrokes >and< the behavior of WordStar. I've attempted to
configure editors to my preferences in the past, and the results are never
very good unless the underlying assumptions are the same.
The systems on which I'd like to run it are: a Sun 3/50 with SunOS 4.0; a 386
box running XENIX 2.3, soon 3.2; an ISI (I believe) running 4.2BSD. If you
know of an appropriate program, please mail me an FTP address, archive server
location, or whatever. If you are also looking for such a program, MAIL me
("r" command in rn) rather than posting, and I will let you know of anything
I find. Remember, nobody cares but us WS weirdos. ;-}
* * Bela Lubkin filbo@ssyx.ucsc.edu (preferred)
* * @ filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us
* R Pentomino Filbo @ Pyrzqxgl, (408) 476-4633filbo@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Bela Lubkin) (06/10/89)
In article <1309@hounix.UUCP> chuckb@hounix.UUCP (Chuck Bentley) writes: >Some time ago I remember seeing emacs running like WS. The guy told me >he simpley customized the keys the way he wanted. There are two problems with this: EMACS is huge, and it doesn't act like WS. That is, I can bind the right keys to the right actions, but they won't do exactly the right things. This really throws me when I go back and forth between systems (and editors). e.g. in WS, blocks are marked as character streams; when a block is moved or copied, the block markers move to mark the moved/new copy; etc. There are dozens or hundreds of small behaviors like this which could be simulated in a programmable editor like EMACS, but at the expense of programming time, bugs, etc. I've done this before with "DME" under AmigaDOS. The results are decent but not very good, and some operations have to be simulated at a character-by-character level, in DME code, which makes them very slow. I now have about 10 requests for information, and one lead from a programmer who says he has an MS-DOS WS clone that is in portable C and might be brought over to UNIX. I've asked his permission to forward that message, or a new message specifically written for the purpose, to those who have requested information; I haven't gotten a response yet. I've also been told of a commercial package called Fenix. Does anyone know what it is, what it costs, etc.? A commercial package is probably not going to help -- I'm certainly not going to pay to have it put up on 3 different systems that I use -- but I'd like to know more anyway. What is the SIMPLEST full-screen editor available for UNIX, with source? I can write an editor, but not under UNIX. Memory and file management, termcap and curses would all be new to me. Examining a simple editor would give me an idea how difficult it would be to write this thing. I am astonished that no CP/M or MS-DOS programmer, frustrated with VI and EMACS, has yet written a simple WS-based programmer's editor (akin to the Turbo language editors). I'm cross-posting this to alt.msdos-programmer, but please direct followups to comp.editors only.