[comp.editors] Emacs......meaning???

dh130@cs.city.ac.uk (Andrew Thompson) (02/12/91)

I am writing a short paper on the using of vi, emacs 
and suntext, and need some answers to the following questions:
 
 
1) What team,where and when, developed ed --> em, ed --> ex, ex --> vi?
2) What team,where and when, developed suntext?
3) What does emacs mean? (Is it of yiddish decent as with Gulam?)
4) What is your prefered editor?
 
Many thanks to those who helped me in the past, particularly GEOFF@inmos. 
 
Andrew Thompson, City University, London.
(Is OS/2, half an operating system?)
~

jch@dyfed.rdg.dec.com (John Haxby) (02/14/91)

em comes from an old V6 enhancement done by 
one of the London colleges--Imperial perhaps?
As far as I recall, the major enhancement was the
addition of a prompt :-) Some of the ideas of em
were taken up by Nottingham University in V7 (including
the prompt) and a screen mode added--the name 'ed'
stuck. From that ed, came 'exed', written by me, which
added large file support (albeit slow), horizontal scrolling
and macros.
-- 
John Haxby, Definitively Wrong.
Digital				<jch@wessex.rdg.dec.com>
Reading, England		<...!ukc!wessex!jch>

chet@odin.INS.CWRU.Edu (Chet Ramey) (02/15/91)

In article <1991Feb12.092635.5393@cs.city.ac.uk> dh130@cs.city.ac.uk (Andrew Thompson) writes:

>3) What does emacs mean? (Is it of yiddish decent as with Gulam?)

EMACS = Editing MACroS

Due to the original DEC20 implementation as a bunch of macros for TECO.
-- 
Chet Ramey				``There's just no surf in
Network Services Group			  Cleveland, U.S.A. ...''
Case Western Reserve University
chet@ins.CWRU.Edu		My opinions are just those, and mine alone.

cur022%cluster@ukc.ac.uk (Bob Eager) (02/15/91)

In article <1991Feb14.162207.22581@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>, chet@odin.INS.CWRU.Edu (Chet Ramey) writes:
> In article <1991Feb12.092635.5393@cs.city.ac.uk> dh130@cs.city.ac.uk (Andrew Thompson) writes:
>>3) What does emacs mean? (Is it of yiddish decent as with Gulam?)
> EMACS = Editing MACroS
> Due to the original DEC20 implementation as a bunch of macros for TECO.

I always thought it was:

       Extended MACro System     (for the same reason)

RMS, are you listening? Surely you must be the definitive source?
-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
Bob Eager                | University of Kent at Canterbury
                         | +44 227 764000 ext 7589
-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------

dslg0849@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Daniel S. Lewart) (02/15/91)

dh130@cs.city.ac.uk (Andrew Thompson) writes:

> 3) What does emacs mean? (Is it of yiddish decent as with Gulam?)

EMACS = EMacs Ain't Cambridge Sed
	--    -     -         -   :)

Daniel Lewart
d-lewart@uiuc.edu

cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) (02/18/91)

cur022%cluster@ukc.ac.uk (Bob Eager) writes:

}In article <1991Feb14.162207.22581@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>, chet@odin.INS.CWRU.Edu (Chet Ramey) writes:
}> In article <1991Feb12.092635.5393@cs.city.ac.uk> dh130@cs.city.ac.uk (Andrew Thompson) writes:
}>>3) What does emacs mean? (Is it of yiddish decent as with Gulam?)
}> EMACS = Editing MACroS
}> Due to the original DEC20 implementation as a bunch of macros for TECO.

}I always thought it was:

}       Extended MACro System     (for the same reason)

}RMS, are you listening? Surely you must be the definitive source?

I'm not sure that RMS reads comp.editors, but "Editing MACros" is correct.  The
DEC20 is a bit off the mark: it was developed at the AI Lab at MIT on a
Decsystem10[*] running ITS [and emacs really was "just" a set of macros that
built on 'Real Time Mode', which had been hacked into ITS TECO].
  [*] I think... I can't remember when the PDP-6, on which ITS was originally
      developed, turned into a -10.

/Bernie\

ps, doesn't 'the history of emacs' or some document like that come bundled
along with the GNU emacs distribution?  /b\