[comp.sys.sun] Miscellaneous questions

wohlenbe@enuxha.eas.asu.edu (Gregory S. Wohlenberg) (04/11/90)

I have a few miscellaneous questions for anyone out there that may have
some information.

1. What are some of the better editors for coding that are available for
   the Suns (specifically the Sun-4)? I'd like to find something that is
   modifiable and supports language-sensitive features.  VI and textedit are
   not candidates.

[[Gnu-emacs? (Available by FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu). -bdg]]

2. Is Sun planning on shipping Open Look standard with SunOS eventually?
   It doesn't seem like something that should be an extra-cost add on.

3. As a former VMS user, I'm still looking for some way to implement the
   up-arrow (command recall) feature in SunOS. By using the "^" and "!"
   commands you can get the job done but it doesn't compare in convenience
   sometimes when you just want to delete a garbage character you
   accidentally threw on to the last command.

[[Some shells support recall/edit of previous command lines, I _think_ 
ksh is one of these. -bdg]]

Thanks,
Greg Wohlenberg    wohlenbe@enuxha.eas.asu.edu

guy@auspex.com (Guy Harris) (04/12/90)

>3. As a former VMS user, I'm still looking for some way to implement the
>   up-arrow (command recall) feature in SunOS. By using the "^" and "!"
>   commands you can get the job done but it doesn't compare in convenience
>   sometimes when you just want to delete a garbage character you
>   accidentally threw on to the last command.
>
>[[Some shells support recall/edit of previous command lines, I _think_
>ksh is one of these. -bdg]]

"ksh" is definitely one of them; it has both EMACS-like and "vi"-like
editing modes.  I think "tcsh", which is distributed in the form of
patches to C shell source, is another.  "bash", the Bourne-Again Shell, is
another as well; it's a GNU program, and is Bourne shell compatible.

Another alternative might be Ken Almquist's "atty", which is a user-mode
tty driver that offers similar functionality; it runs a pseudo-tty and
runs your program in that pseudo-tty.  It's available in the
"comp.sources.unix" archive.

wohlenbe@enuxha.eas.asu.edu (Gregory S. Wohlenberg) (04/13/90)

In article <6554@brazos.Rice.edu>, wohlenbe@enuxha.eas.asu.edu (Gregory S. Wohlenberg) writes:

> 1. What are some of the better editors for coding that are available for
>    the Suns (specifically the Sun-4)? I'd like to find something that is
>    modifiable and supports language-sensitive features.  VI and textedit are
>    not candidates.
> 
> 3. As a former VMS user, I'm still looking for some way to implement the
>    up-arrow (command recall) feature in SunOS. By using the "^" and "!"
>    commands you can get the job done but it doesn't compare in convenience
>    sometimes when you just want to delete a garbage character you
>    accidentally threw on to the last command.

Thanks to everyone who responded.

Regarding question 1, there were a number of possibilities mentioned.
GNU emacs -- most votes, can't beat the price, large executable
Epoch -- available from cs.uiuc.edu
Jove -- no information

Regarding question 3, a number of people mentioned shells that can do the job.
ksh  -- no information, but you can get it free from the net somewhere
tcsh -- available from tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
        (I checked this one out.  It does work, but I've been having problems 
         getting it to behave under Sunview.)
bash -- available from the Free Software Foundation / prep.ai.mit.edu

Also, there is a commercial product called VCL from Boston Business Computing
than apparently emulates DEC's DCL interpreter (with command recall).

Greg Wohlenberg    wohlenbe@enuxha.eas.asu.edu
                   Arizona State University