Dan_Jacobson@ATT.COM (06/19/91)
>>>>> "J" == Jonathan I. Kamens <jik@cats.ucsc.edu> writes:
J> I don't want to get into a religious editor flamewar, but I find it
J> necessary to point out that since GNU emacs is pretty much
J> completely customizable and programmable, you can turn it into a
J> simple editor with only basic commands accepted (and it IS possible
J> to make it do function keys, arrow keys, etc. fairly easily), and
J> disable the features that you don't want beginners to stumble over,
J> and then give make that simplified version of emacs your default.
J> The users who grow out of the simple set-up can then recustomize
J> things to get a more powerful emacs environment.
John's right. Look, full driver seat air-bag protection:
-----actual screen dump----:
You have typed C-x n, invoking disabled command narrow-to-region:
Restrict editing in this buffer to the current region.
The rest of the text becomes temporarily invisible and untouchable
but is not deleted; if you save the buffer in a file, the invisible
text is included in the file. C-x w makes all visible again.
You can now type
Space to try the command just this once,
but leave it disabled,
Y to try it and enable it (no questions if you use it again),
N to do nothing (command remains disabled).
---------------------------
See, GNU Emacs is your friend. Anyway, in the long run it doesn't
matter if you use its native emacs keybindings (an 804-line on-line
tutorial is included) or one of its vi emulations, etc... mere
inputting details... either way try to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome /
tendonitis while you're doing any typing over many years.
What impressed my a lot as a beginner was that nobody could take away
all those megabytes of source code from me---so I knew I could take my
GNU Emacs knowledge around with me and not worry too much about that
big investment in learning going to waste... I'd just recompile on the
next machine... anyway, this is one deep down long-term motivation...
protecting ones' personal learning investment.
Others have felt the same way, so we have all joined together and
added features, making the GNU Emacs world as rich as it is today.les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) (06/20/91)
In article <1991Jun19.013030.23227@cbfsb.att.com> Dan_Jacobson@ihlpz.ATT.COM writes: >What impressed my a lot as a beginner was that nobody could take away >all those megabytes of source code from me---so I knew I could take my >GNU Emacs knowledge around with me and not worry too much about that >big investment in learning going to waste... I'd just recompile on the >next machine... anyway, this is one deep down long-term motivation... >protecting ones' personal learning investment. OK, nobody is going to argue that GNU Emacs is a poor choice for a computer professional. But.... If you ever had to work on a PC or a machine as slow as the early 3B2's, or one that didn't have a compiler and many megs of disk space available, even you might reconsider. >Others have felt the same way, so we have all joined together and >added features, making the GNU Emacs world as rich as it is today. But do you really think it is suitable for someone who only wants to answer a mail message and has no intention of using any other functionality? Suppose you wanted to exchange email with some member of your family that had no previous experience with computers. Would you buy a computer capable of running GNU emacs and train them on it or would you go with something a little less "rich"? Has anyone seen the new screen editor that comes with MSDOS 5.0? Without seeing it, I'll venture the opinion that it is the one to emulate. Regardless of features or lack thereof, within a year or two more people will have it than any other screen editor and if it has the few basic functions that people have been asking for in this thread, unlike edlin it will actually be used. Les Mikesell les@chinet.chi.il.us
fangchin@leland.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) (06/20/91)
In article <1991Jun19.192526.21975@chinet.chi.il.us>, les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes: |> In article <1991Jun19.013030.23227@cbfsb.att.com> Dan_Jacobson@ihlpz.ATT.COM writes: |> |> >What impressed my a lot as a beginner was that nobody could take away |> >all those megabytes of source code from me---so I knew I could take my |> >GNU Emacs knowledge around with me and not worry too much about that |> >big investment in learning going to waste... I'd just recompile on the |> >next machine... anyway, this is one deep down long-term motivation... |> >protecting ones' personal learning investment. |> |> OK, nobody is going to argue that GNU Emacs is a poor choice for a |> computer professional. But.... If you ever had to work on a PC |> or a machine as slow as the early 3B2's, or one that didn't have |> a compiler and many megs of disk space available, even you might |> reconsider. |> Sigh... That's not it. Before I came back school for this silly grad degree, I was a aerospace engineer for five years and I worked first at Bell Helicopter and later North American Avaiation, Rockwell International. Both are primier aviation companies. At both places, MIS/technical computing control everything, even workstaions owned by my group (bought using group's budget). No one can be a root unless you are from MIS/technical computing dept. So this "carrying my learning investment" can be only realized in certain fields. Absolutely NOT possible at many many places :-( Per my colleague at Rockwell International, only until one month ago, my group's 6Mhz IBM PC/AT with 30 Megs HD was replaced by a stupid IBM PS/2 55SX. Now this is the company which designed/made the space shuttle main engine and the star war satellite killer missles. And my group was heavily involved in both. Now if anyone tells me to build GNU emacs on a PS/2 55 SX, I may burst in uncontrollable laugh....:-( As a student UNIX SA now, with Giga bytes at my disposal, I do routinely build monster pkgs. But people, this is, in my opinion, an exception rather than rules. Conclusions: Don't depend anything big and requires root privilage to install. => super simplity/smallness is MUST => NO FSF GNU emacs. ^^^^^^^^^ I do use emacs/vi/crisp/ed/xedit/textedit/..... just to prepare the day when I am no longer a super user :-( Sincerely, Chin Fang Mechanical Engineering Department Stanford University fangchin@leland.stanford.edu
Dan_Jacobson@ATT.COM (06/21/91)
>>>>> On 20 Jun 91 03:26:55 GMT, fangchin@leland.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) said:
Chin> Conclusions: Don't depend anything big and requires root
Chin> privilage to install. => super simplity/smallness is MUST => NO
Chin> FSF GNU emacs.
You don't need to be root to install and edit things with GNU Emacs.dylan@ibmpcug.co.uk (Matthew Farwell) (06/21/91)
In article <1991Jun20.235116.3132@cbfsb.att.com> Dan_Jacobson@ihlpz.ATT.COM writes: >>>>>> On 20 Jun 91 03:26:55 GMT, fangchin@leland.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) said: >Chin> Conclusions: Don't depend anything big and requires root >Chin> privilage to install. => super simplity/smallness is MUST => NO >Chin> FSF GNU emacs. >Minor correction: GNU Emacs does not require root privilege to >install. $ ftp ftp.uu.net ftp> mget emacs.tar.Z 255 You must be joking - on your quota!!!!! Dylan. -- Matthew J Farwell: dylan@ibmpcug.co.uk || ...!uunet!ukc!ibmpcug!dylan But you're wrong Steve. You see, its only solitaire.
fangchin@leland.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) (06/21/91)
In article <1991Jun21.012239.4994@cbfsb.att.com>, Dan_Jacobson@ATT.COM writes: |> >>>>> On 20 Jun 91 03:26:55 GMT, fangchin@leland.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) said: |> |> Chin> Conclusions: Don't depend anything big and requires root |> Chin> privilage to install. => super simplity/smallness is MUST => NO |> Chin> FSF GNU emacs. |> |> You don't need to be root to install and edit things with GNU Emacs. ^^^^^^^^^^^ Hmmm... I never said that one needed root privilage to "edit" things with emacs. You misunderstood me post. As a SA myself, I said "installing emacs requires root privilage" with the following understanding: Whenever BIG disk space is required, root privilage (at least stuff or source privilage) is required. I have had a quite interesting discussion with Thomas at MIT regarding this point. May I ask you, can anyone at your site write to /usr/local? can everyone at your site have more than 20 megs disk quota? (and that's just sufficient to decompress and build this thing) At our site, a typical user has only four megs, I don't think this is even good for holding the compressed GNU emacs distribution. I routinely build emacs for our four platforms, DECs, IBMs, SUNs, MIPs, I said "root privilage" required out of practical considerations. Let me mention a few more facts regarding sizes: Compressed/fully built 386 version of emacs and friends require somewhere like four megs. The binary is like 0.6 megs after everything is strip(1)-ed and mcs(1) -d -ed. For Suns/DECs, it's like 0.8~0.9 Megs. For RISC 6000s, the dumped version requires 1.7 Megs! This is just the emacs executable itself! As another perhaps interesting point here: If you build emacs on a system using Berkeley Fast File System (FFS), then a file system's last 10% (?) can be only written to by root. An example, say your /usr has 100 megs, and it has 30 megs free space left, and say you are a common user trying to build emacs in this file system, YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO, for the reason given above. I do agree with you that by itself, GNU emacs never dictates you where to put it's support files, but if you are (or were) a SA, would you put all emacs stuff in one directory? If during account checking, I find someone put a complete emacs in his/her $HOME, I would ask this user why, and why indeed. Now I hope my point is clear. Emacs is a great editor (in fact a great interface too, and I often have the suspicision that RMS wants to run UNIX as unix.el or unix.elc in it someday :-) Sincerely, Chin Fang Mechanical Engineering Department Stanford University fangchin@leland.stanford.edu
igb@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Ian G Batten) (06/21/91)
In article <1991Jun21.040309.26255@leland.Stanford.EDU> fangchin@leland.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) writes: > As a SA myself, I said "installing emacs requires root privilage" with the > following understanding: Wow. He's an SA. He must be right. I've installed emacs without being root several times. > Whenever BIG disk space is required, root privilage (at least stuff or source > privilage) is required. I have had a quite interesting discussion with Thomas > at MIT regarding this point. And I've spoken to another man to whom you can say Wow. Hint: not everyone runs BSD. And of those that do, not everyone runs quotas. And of those that do, not everyone has quotas so small you can't build emacs. > May I ask you, can anyone at your site write to /usr/local? Why would they need to? I've built emacs in /usr/igb before now. > can everyone at your site have more than 20 megs disk quota? Yes. And everywhere I've been. > (and that's just sufficient to decompress and build this thing) What else would you want to do with it? And anyway, if you know someone who has the same machine-type as you, they can compile it and give you a binary. My bare-essentials tape that I use on all the machines we used to build has emacs in about 1.8M (by deleting all the .el files for which you have a .elc, etc). > At our site, a typical user has only four megs, I don't think this is even good > for holding the compressed GNU emacs distribution. I routinely build emacs > for our four platforms, DECs, IBMs, SUNs, MIPs, I said "root privilage" required > out of practical considerations. Right. ``Because my system is so tightly regulated that I can't build emacs without being root, neither can anyone else anywhere.'' > As another perhaps interesting point here: If you build emacs on a system > using Berkeley Fast File System (FFS), then a file system's last 10% (?) can be > only written to by root. An example, say your /usr has 100 megs, and it has > 30 megs free space left, and say you are a common user trying to build emacs > in this file system, YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO, for the reason given above. Right. And if you're an SA who believes that root SHOULD write in the 10% reserve, I suggest you read a manual or two. > one directory? If during account checking, I find someone put a complete > emacs in his/her $HOME, I would ask this user why, and why indeed. You poke around in your user's directories? My, what a fine SA you are. Do your users know? ian
jimp@cognos.UUCP (Jim Patterson) (06/21/91)
In article <1991Jun21.040309.26255@leland.Stanford.EDU> fangchin@leland.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) writes: >In article <1991Jun21.012239.4994@cbfsb.att.com>, Dan_Jacobson@ATT.COM writes: >|> >>>>> On 20 Jun 91 03:26:55 GMT, fangchin@leland.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) said: >|> Chin> Conclusions: Don't depend anything big and requires root >|> Chin> privilage to install. => super simplity/smallness is MUST => NO >|> Chin> FSF GNU emacs. >|> >|> You don't need to be root to install and edit things with GNU Emacs. > ^^^^^^^^^^^ >Hmmm... I never said that one needed root privilage to "edit" things with emacs. >You misunderstood me post. >As a SA myself, I said "installing emacs requires root privilage" with the >following understanding: >Whenever BIG disk space is required, root privilage (at least stuff or source >privilage) is required. >May I ask you, can anyone at your site write to /usr/local Yes > can everyone at your site have more than 20 megs disk quota? Yes We don't bother with disk quotas at our site. I know this isn't a feasible approach at many educational sites, but it works quite well in a software development environment. Your site seems to have two classes of users: - Those with 4MByte disk quotas - Those with root privilege All you're really saying is that you need lots of disk space. If your operations group can't give someone some additional disk quota without just giving them root privilege, I think you have a serious organizational problem. Granted you will likely have to "justify" your request, but the basic problem is one of economics (you can't afford unlimited disk space). I'd also suggest that it is (or should be) a lot easier to justify 20 MBytes of disk space to your system manager than it is to justify root privilege, since the latter is basically giving away the keys to the store. Of course if you can convince your sysops to maintain emacs for you, all the better. -- Jim Patterson Cognos Incorporated UUNET:uunet!cognos.uucp!jimp P.O. BOX 9707 BITNET:ccs.carleton.ca!cognos.uucp!jimp 3755 Riverside Drive PHONE:(613)738-1440 x6112 Ottawa, Ont K1G 3Z4
gaynor@brushfire.rutgers.edu (Silver) (06/22/91)
fangchin@leland.stanford.edu writes: > At both places, MIS/technical computing control everything, even workstaions > owned by my group (bought using group's budget). No one can be a root unless > you are from MIS/technical computing dept. Who needs to be root, anyway? As long as the space and cpu cycles are available... > 6Mhz IBM PC/AT with 30 Megs HD was replaced by a stupid IBM PS/2 55SX. This is my opinion only, not a statement of fact. Your MIS/group leaders have a pretty screwed up idea of what a productive development environment looks like. Jeepers, do you have any idea of how many mips and megs you can get nowadays for a few grand? Ok, well, neither do I. I know enough that for about $5k, I could probably wind up with an Sparc SLC with a couple hundred megs. > Conclusions: > Don't depend anything big and requires root privilage to install. > => super simplity/smallness is MUST => NO FSF GNU emacs. Simplicity/smallness (ie optimized for space, speed, and simplicity) is right for the tiny little embedded systems. This is totally unacceptable for a human environment -- humans benefit greatly from a little extra effort. Computers and peripherals are becoming so cheap that there is very little reason to skimp. How much does a 10 mip processor cost nowadays? A quality 300 meg disk? Thinnet cable, per foot? Consider this cost relative to improved productivity. It _is_ reasonable for me to say that developers spend most of their time tapping at an editor, right? Suppose one person can work 5% faster because they have a superior editor at their disposal? Suppose five people work 5% faster? YOU're a scientific type, YOU do the analysis. Regards, [Ag]