DAVIS@blue.sdr.slb.COM (04/30/88)
Dear GNU people
\begin{flame}
\begin{advert}
I have just spent about a month doing on-and-off development work of
GNU Emacs for users here, in particular, writing a *true* EDT
emulator, ada and TeX `compiler' error parsers, rationalising the
emacstool mouse and menu systems (mostly for help or reference
purposes), implementing modeline operations (such as modeline-dragging
and pull-down menus), and a function key utility called emap that
reads a text lines like "F2 save-buffer" and produces e-lisp code for
VT100's, shelltools and emacstools (VT200 and X versions on the
way, althought the latter is hardly necessary...).
\end{advert}
Where I work, we used to run Unipress Emacs, and when I started here I
was full of praise for the one true Emacs that we all know and love.
However, having started comparing the two, I find my doubts growing.
The implementation of window support under SunView in the Unipress
version is much more sophisticated than emacstool offers and its use of
the mouse much more usable (though I'm working on matching that).
Generally, Unipress appears more friendly, more polished: frankly - it
looks better.
Now its all very well, as e-lisp programmers, to rave about GNU's lisp
and other low-level features (such as the abscence of typeout buffers,
subsystems and so forth), but for front-end users, who don't want to
write new bits of an already huge system, but *do* want a polished,
friendly and helpful editor, my fear is that GNU does not match
Unipress.
Its true that I haven't seen GNU's X11-support yet, but I have this
nasty feeling that it could turn out to be not unlike emacstool, which
is nice, but it *isn't* polished, and sadly, I'm beginning to feel
that we're offering our users a bad deal here (we don't even save any
money, not this year anyway..).
Now, don't get me wrong - I love GNU !! In fact, its one of the most
sublime pieces of software I've seen. That doesn't detract, however,
from the fact that it doesn't compare in some vital user-level ways
with its commercial counterparts.
Why this message ? Well, how about a little moral support ? Why *is*
GNU better than Unipress ? Don't tell me about e-lisp, I want to be
able to turn around to users and say "look at the smooth, intuitive
sophisticated interface this has". I *know* that GNU has the brains -
what about the body ? You see, it occurs to me that here I am, hacking
mouse-drag-modeline until early in the morning, doing this for love
rather than money, whilst somewhere in Edison, NJ, there are guys
whose *job* it is to produce silky stuff like this, and make money
from it ... its not that GNU programmers aren't capable, but we tend
not to have the time.....
So: why no modeline dragging in emacstool ? why no decent menus ? why
no built in help-on-mouse-thing ? why no interface to font changes ?
why is apropos help so slow under GNU ? why is interactive mouse and
key binding so complicated for naive users ? why no continuous scroll
? why no up-click hooks for mouse events ? why no interface to dbm ?
why no inversion of the region ?
I am very interested, and currently working on *all* these areas,
probably in the ignorance of their completion elsewhere, and I know
its a wish list... I would like to see GNU stand up against all
comparisons, and win, but for now, when it comes to the interface....
\end{flame}
\begin{what I don't need to be told}
wait till you see Sun's new GNU-based Textedit ... ($$)
GNU's X support is perfect ...
GNU is free ...
FSF has less money than Unipress ...
\end{what I don't need to be told}
How can I best help the FSF ?
suggestions, cold-water, requests, help, info to:
Paul Davis
Schlumberger Cambridge Research
PO Box 153
Cambridge, CB3 0EH
England
davis%m_scr%sdr.slb.com@relay.csnet
[+44] 223 325282
---------------------------------------------------------------
"My boss wouldn't agree with this, but then, he's wrong....."
---------------------------------------------------------------jeff@cullsj.UUCP (Jeffrey C. Fried) (05/01/88)
exhorbitant, and the features you mentioned really amount to no more than decoration on an extremely viable product. I'm glad that you wish to enhance it, to the benefit of all of us, but consider this: does UNIPRESS provide you with the tools you need to enhance it; would they do any of these enhancements? My experience with them is that the answer is absolutely NOT. I asked them for information on how they worked with DECNET to make it possible to use GNU over the net when coming from an ULTRIX machine to VMS - one loses many control characters. They would not provide it. Up theres! I have better things to do with my life than wait for them to decide that my request will make them more money. Enhancing GNU myself is worth it to me because i can "take it with me" (as well as pass it on) so to speak. When it comes to improvements, i have a completely different list than yours: Change e-lisp to byte-code compiled to reduce size and improve speed, add a portable virtual engine so that it could run on IBM-PC's, improve the terminal support so that less screen re-painting is done, add the ability to easily rebind the help key (i want it to use a PF key), and i have more. I mention these not to lay claim to a better list, but rather to show you that it is possible that others could have a different agenda. As time permits, i will work on these problems, but i certainly don't expect others to share my agenda - its great when they do, but there is no inherent reason why they should. In summary - when compared with UNIPRESS i see no problems with GNU and it is because of people like you who enhance it. Thanks, but please don't waste your time knocking it.
barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) (05/02/88)
In article <8804300706.AA08462@EDDIE.MIT.EDU> DAVIS@blue.sdr.slb.COM writes: >So: why no modeline dragging in emacstool ? why no decent menus ? why >no built in help-on-mouse-thing ? why no interface to font changes ? >why is apropos help so slow under GNU ? why is interactive mouse and >key binding so complicated for naive users ? why no continuous scroll >? why no up-click hooks for mouse events ? why no interface to dbm ? >why no inversion of the region ? Almost all of the things you complained about are related to support for window systems and high-speed workstations. Emacs (both the GNU version and most of its predecessors and descendents) was not written specifically for such environments. It is designed to be usable on everything from printing terminals (yes, this actually works in some Emacs implementations) to Sun workstations, and the user interface is the same in all environments. Yes, there are a few mouse operations in GNU Emacs. But I suspect that most of the GNU Emacs developers are not heavily into mousing, so they didn't bother adding everything. Remember, GNU is a volunteer effort; developers implement what they think is important. The best thing you can do to advance the state of the art in using the mouse with GNU Emacs is to submit the changes you are making to be incorporated into the standard version. That is how GNU Emacs grows. Barry Margolin Thinking Machines Corp. barmar@think.com uunet!think!barmar
ron@topaz.rutgers.edu (Ron Natalie) (05/04/88)
Excuse me? You asked for information on how to Unipress did something so
you could put it into GNU and they wouldn't tell you? Not suprising. This
doesn't quite support your claim that they don't want you to enhance it.
Unipress has one of the most liberal licensing policies of a commercial
software company I've ever seen. Source is available at prevailing rates
and many customer contributed codes and gripes have been reintegrated with
the released codes.
To address you specifially, I've worked with the Unipress source and as
near as I know there is no DECNET support in it at all, so it is extremely
unlikely that they had an answer for you on the grounds that they did not
know what you were talking about.
Thirdly, if you wish to contact them about technical issues on their products,
rather than having braindamaged support questions ("The README program doesn't
work!"), you might try sending the developers email (...!unipress!emacs).
-Ron