[comp.emacs] Several things

rms@PREP.AI.MIT.EDU (Richard M. Stallman) (12/13/86)

1. I'll be happy to carry GNU Emacs to your door and install
it for you.  But you'll have to pay for this service.

Free software doesn't instantly solve all computer-related
problems--only the ones that are artificially created.

2. GNU Emacs is supposed to ask the system how much memory space is
available and give warnings as you approach full.  I've seen this work
on 4.2.  The information is accessed differently on sys V but there
is code to do it, in malloc.c.  If it does not work, I hope someone
will tell me what is wrong with it.

Do you know whether garbage collection was in progress at the time
of the crash?

3. Function keys.

Using multi-character sequences for function keys is the only way they
can be done.

Unfortunately, ANSI used a traditional Emacs command, Meta-[
(backward-paragraph), for their function key prefix.  Thus, turning on
function keys breaks this command, which is why you have to type an
explicit command to say you want to enable function keys.

4. VI emulation.

Emacs version 18 contains two of them; I don't think another is worth
writing unless it turns you on.

5. VMS.

Emacs 18.32 and up know to use Stream_LF record format for specific
files that need to have very long lines, and can write variable length
format properly for ordinary files provided their lines are all short
enough to fit that format.

By sending mail, I mean C-x m.  On Unix it runs sendmail or fakemail.
On VMS it needs to do something.  I don't mind if the something is
trivial, but I don't know what it should be.  I don't have access to
17.VMS-4, but if you can merge something from that into Emacs 18
it will do the job.  Same goes for directory listings.

I don't have the VMS PTY code either.  If someone can take the
code for that in 17.VMS-4, merge it into 18.32 or 18.33 (no difference
where these things are concerned) and send it to me, that would be
useful.  It had better work correctly; I have neither VMS access nor
time even to test it, let alone to think about fixing it.

6. Flow control.

If you have decided you can't turn off flow control, you will probably
get better results from making Emacs enable it (with set-input-mode)
than from telling Emacs to ignore C-s and C-q as commands.

karl@cbrma.UUCP (Karl Kleinpaste) (12/16/86)

rms@PREP.AI.MIT.EDU writes:
>2. GNU Emacs is supposed to ask the system how much memory space is
>available and give warnings as you approach full.  I've seen this work
>on 4.2.  The information is accessed differently on sys V but there
>is code to do it, in malloc.c.  If it does not work, I hope someone
>will tell me what is wrong with it.

There's nothing wrong with the malloc warning code in SysV.  I get the
warning buffers periodically; nothing unusual about it whatever.
-- 
Karl