[net.unix-wizards] What is the \"Rand\" editor?

Jim Guyton <guyton@rand-unix> (01/27/85)

The Rand editor "E" was developed by the Rand Corporation
of Santa Monica, and has been evolving over many years.  None
of us here use 'vi' although there are several people who
are emacs fans.

I believe E was originally derived from a full-screen editor
at Yale, and a version called "ned" was included on a Usenix
tape several years back.  Interactive (a Rand spinoff) took
a version with them and their INed editor is a relative of
the Rand editor (a pretty distant relative).

Since then it has undergone a complete rewrite (mostly by
David Yost), and is still being worked on.  David has since
left Rand and I believe is working on turning a version into
a supported product.  Rand is continuing with our version,
and has ported it to the Sun-2 workstation (4.2BSD) and
a CYB running System V (in addition to 4.2 Vaxen of course).

The editor is finally public-domain (we used to require a
non-disclosure agreement).  We do not "support" it (we're
not a software house), and charge $250 for our distribution
tape.  Several companies have inquired about including it
in their products; I believe you'll start seeing it around
a lot more now.

We've recently added a lot more smarts to the display driver
(finally using the insert/delete line capabilities of smart
terminals), and regular-expression pattern matching on
searches and replaces.  Our current version is now E18.

If anyone wants more details about what we distribute, send
mail to ...!decvax!randvax!distribu or distribu@rand-unix.

-- Jim Guyton, Director
   Information Systems Lab.
   Rand

wa371%Nosc@sdcc12.UUCP (01/28/85)

Thanks for the information on the Rand editor!
Bernd
Bernd Riechelmann                   (Not affiliated with U.C. San Diego)
UUCP: ...!ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdcc12!wa371,   ARPA: sdcsvax!sdcc12!wa371@nosc