davidsen@sungod.crd.ge.com (08/16/89)
One of the changes made in later version of MicroEMACS was to use
RETURN as the internal record separator instead of NEWLINE. This
happened somewhere around 3.9e. I believe that this was done to solve
some other implementation problem, although I can't identify it.
As a result of this we lost the ability to search for an embedded
RETURN without finding all the end of lines as well. This is
particularly bad for UNIX users editing MS-DOS files, and for anyone
editing binary files.
This became such as problem to me that I changed my private version of
3.9p back to NEWLINE. What a job! I'm sure that the conversion from
NEWLINE to RETURN was not done lightly, because it takes a great deal of
work to convert back. I'm convinced that something must be broken in my
version, I just don't hit it.
Does anyone else find that not being able to tell a RETURN from a
NEWLINE results in a lack of utiltiy? Before I converted my private
version I was keeping a copy of 3.8e around (with the slow search and
all) just for binary editing.
bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM)
{uunet | philabs}!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me