greg@ncelvax.UUCP (Greg Ramsey) (11/09/88)
Hello All,
I am reviewing a government specification for a new computer system with
POSIX as it's operating system and specifing EMACS as it's test editor.
My project engineer has asked me to give him some more background on EMACS,
and I'm primairly a VI user I thought I would starting by asking the net
what they new about it.
1. When and by whom was EMACS developed?
2. What is/are the current versions out on the street today for
Sun-Microvax and larger machines running UNIX?
3. Are these versions in the public domain or who currently owns or
supplies it.
4. Does any of the popular versions support right hand as well as
left hand tabs?
5. Does EMACS support Split screens with multiple files with block copy
between them?
Any additional information they the net would care to supply would also
be greatly appreciated. E-mail answers would be preferred but postings
or US mail would af course be also appreciated.
Thanks,
--
___ Greg Ramsey
_n_n_n____i_i ________ Naval Civil Engineering Lab
(____________I I______I Code L54
/ooOOOO OOOOoo oo oooo Port Hueneme, CA 93043hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) (11/09/88)
Emacs was originally developed for ITS, an OS for the PDP-10 used at MIT and a few other places. It was initially a set of macros for ITS Teco. A version was done for TOPS-20, another OS for the PDP-10 which was in wider use. This was probably the most common editor on TOPS-20 within the research community. When people talk about Emacs these days (unless they still have a PDP-10 lying around), they generally refer to some other editor that is similar in one way or another to the original EMACS. There are several properties of EMACS that should be reproduced: - it is user-programmable. Most new Emacs'es supply you with a subset of Lisp that has added primitives for manipulating text buffers and displays. A few performance-criticial commands (inserting and deleting letters) are normally implemented directly in C or whatever, but the rest of Emacs is written in Lisp or whatevaer the extension language is. Source code is available for users, and provisions are made for users to modify functions in their own copy, and to add new facilities. In newer versions of Emacs it is possible to implement vi. - it is reconfigurable. This is reallly a subset of the above, but obviously any character can be bound to any function. - it is modeless. Initially this meant mainly that there was no "insert mode". When you type text it is entered. Commands use control characters or other characters not part of the normal printable alphabet. However newer versions have carried modelessness further. Gnu Emacs has replaced "modes" with properties of individual buffers. - the basic commands are compatible with the original Emacs. Of course since Emacs is completely reconfigurable, this is something the user can do for himself, but the default bindings should be reasonably compatible with one of the standard Emacses. - it should have the kitchen sink. There should be special packages for editing the most common programming languages, mail systems, news systems, etc. If your specification calls for a Unix-based system, you'll probably want to use one of the two "big" Unix Emacses: Unipress or Gnu. Unipress comes from Unipress in Highland Park, NJ. Gnu comes from the Free Software Foundation, and copies can be obtained many places. You'll want to look carefully at the Gnu license to see whether your organization can live with it. (It basically requires you to make source available, though you can charge for distributing it.) Both versions have a large user community and active support. Unipress has a company that you can hold accountable for support, but there are also people you can buy support from for Gnu. You'll probably want to evaluate both unless you have contractual reasons to prefer dealing with Unipress. Gnu Emacs was written by Richard Stallman, who also prepared the original ITS Emacs. So some claim it is "the official Unix Emacs." On the other hand, Unipress goes back to Gosling's port, which was around for some time before Gnu, so there would be a reasonable battle over the title. There are also several micro oriented Emacses. These generally have simple commands compatible with the "big" Emacses, and commands can be rebound to different keys. However normally their user programming facialities are limited, and they do not have all the fancy packages. However I suspect the people who wrote the RFP had in mind one of the two major versions, or something similar (there are similar ones within ATT and elsewhere, but I don't think they are as widespread).
matt@oddjob.uchicago.edu (Matt Crawford) (11/10/88)
Charles Hedrick writes:
) You'll want to look carefully at the Gnu license to see whether your
) organization can live with it. (It basically requires you to make
) source available, though you can charge for distributing it.)
No no no no NO!!! If you have a copy of GNU emacs or any other FSF
software, you are NOT required to give copies to anyone!
The true condition is that IF you give anyone a BINARY copy, you have to
make SOURCE available to them also, and anyone to whom you give any copy
must be permitted to give away copies of that copy.
Sheesh, I thought the license terms were perfectly clear, and I never
even went to law school.
Matt
"Yes, success is dangerous.. Build a better mousetrap today and the
world will beat you into a psychopath before you can reach the door."
- Porkypinehedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) (11/10/88)
>No no no no NO!!! If you have a copy of GNU emacs or any other FSF >software, you are NOT required to give copies to anyone! But the question came from somebody who was looking into delivering Emacs to customers as part of a procurement contract. This seems to imply that they are going to be giving people binary copies, so I think the requirement to make source available will apply to them.
matt@oddjob.uchicago.edu (Matt Crawford) (11/11/88)
Me: ) >If you have a copy of GNU emacs or any other FSF ) >software, you are NOT required to give copies to anyone! Charles Hedrick: ) But the question came from somebody who was looking into delivering ) Emacs to customers as part of a procurement contract. This seems to ) imply that they are going to be giving people binary copies, so I ) think the requirement to make source available will apply to them. The question came from someone at the "Naval Civil Engineering Research Labs", which sounded to me like an end user, not a vendor. If you know otherwise, I defer. But there are vendors, DEC and Encore, for example, who supply GNU emacs with systems. They include source on the tape. Matt