tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) (10/26/89)
I recently got a request to install mg3a on our Sun 3, SunOS 4.0.3
network; right now it is running, but I haven't yet announced it.
What I would like are some outside recommendations on what would be
"the best" mini-Emacs to run. I've heard of MicroEmacs, mg, Jove,
Freemacs and one or two others.
Important considerations, from our end:
o It's got to run on our system. :-)
o It is not orphaned -- fixes of known bugs are issued in a timely manner.
o It is small. Comparison: vi on our system is ~145k; mg3a is ~96k.
o Its keybindings and extended command (M-x) structure is very GNUish
(> 95% similar for editing commands).
o Documentation is clear, complete and concise.
We already run GNU but a lot of users don't need all of that power for
just editing. Sometimes I don't. I intend to alias "vi" to whatever
we end up with, personally.
Your comments are appreciated. Thanks.
--
(setq mail '("tale@pawl.rpi.edu" "tale@itsgw.rpi.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet"))tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) (11/10/89)
In <1989Oct26.034501.12114@rpi.edu> I requested some advice in
selecting a smaller Emacs for our Sun systems. It is intended as an
alternative to vi for people who prefer Emacs editing syntax but don't
want the size and features of Emacs for basic edits (vipw, ~e in
mail(1), etc).
Based on the replies I received I was torn between mg3a and Jove. I
don't like some things about either but then I have to keep telling
myself I am a GNU Emacs weenie and I have to expect that a different
version of Emacs will have some things I don't like.
The way my initial inspection saw it:
mg3a: Good -- very small (< 100k), roughly the same mode-line and
minibuffer interaction as GNU. Help facility uses a
seperate buffer rather than "panes".
Bad -- No filename completion. Still seems to need some more
basic modes.
Jove: Good -- Filename completion. More basic modes.
Bad -- Mode-line is not aesthetically pleasing to me, nor is
mini-buffer interaction. I really hate panes for help
too. Reminds me too much of painful experiences with
PrimEmacs or whatevr Prime called it.
For now, the filename completion and modes were the deciding vote for
me so I have gone with Jove and will play with it for a while. I know
I can change the mode-line so I have to see if I can get it to be
pretty close to mg3a/GNU.
Some people practically drooled in their letters, "I saw you say mg3a
-- where did you get it?! I WANT I WANT I WANT." It's in beta-test
and available via anonymous ftp to jade.berkeley.edu in the pub/mg
directory. It is about 96k stripped on our Sun3 SunOS 4.0.3 system.
vi is about 147k stripped.
The current version of Jove is 4.14 and the current version is kept up
to date in anonymous ftp on cs.rochester.edu. It is roughly 155k
stripped. Jove is also available on tut.cis.ohio-state.edu and so it
is available via anonymous UUCP to the osu-cis archives.
My thanks to the following people for taking the time to answer my query:
Steven L. Baur <baur@venice.sedd.trw.com
Brian Glendenning <brian@radio.astro.utoronto.ca>
Johan Vromans <jv@mh.nl>
Mark D. Grosen <grosen%amadeus@hub.ucsb.edu>
Jeff Sparkes <jeff1@stretch.cs.mun.edu>
Chuck Phillips <ncr-fc!chuckp@bach@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
David Masterson <davidm@cimshop3.sun.com>
Steve Backus <backus@csc-sun.utah.edu>
Johan has also written a mini-Emacs which he calls Scame; he offered
it to me if I wanted to try it out but I imagine that offer extends to
just about everyone. Mail him for details.
[Hey Chuck, what mailer is supposed to make any sense out of that
address? :-)]
Dave