[comp.editors] Is your editor manly enough to edit itself?

baur@spp2.UUCP (Steven L. Baur) (09/09/88)

o
Try the following out ...

$ ed `which ed`
# ed returns a question mark -- ed cannot handle binary files

$ vi `which vi`
# vi returns a "line too long" error message and doesn't read the whole
#  file in

$ jove `which jove`	# if you have jove on your system
# jove returns a "line too long" error message also

# Now try your favorite editor and see what happens ...

# now try ... (this will work)
$ cp `which emacs` /tmp	# gnu-emacs
$ emacs /tmp/emacs
# now in emacs do
(replace-regexp "Emacs" "EMACS")
(save-file)
<quit>

And the resulting binary runs.  (Tested on SUN-3 and UNIX-PC)

GNU-Emacs, the editor manly enough to edit itself.  Don't leave home without
it.


steve

dave@sun.soe (Dave Goldblatt) (09/09/88)

From article <1414@spp2.UUCP>, by baur@spp2.UUCP (Steven L. Baur):
> # now try ... (this will work)
> $ cp `which emacs` /tmp	# gnu-emacs
> $ emacs /tmp/emacs
> # now in emacs do
> (replace-regexp "Emacs" "EMACS")
> (save-file)
> <quit>
> 
> And the resulting binary runs.  (Tested on SUN-3 and UNIX-PC)
> 
> GNU-Emacs, the editor manly enough to edit itself.  Don't leave home without
> it.

Freemacs will work as well..

Freemacs, the editor manly enough to edit itself, and yet small enough
to fit on your PC.

'course the author just said "..and the only freely-copyable programmable
editor for your PC.." :-)


Both are true. ;-)

-dg-

-- 

Internet: dave@sun.soe.clarkson.edu    or:   dave@clutx.clarkson.edu
BITNET:   dave@CLUTX.Bitnet            uucp: {rpics, gould}!clutx!dave
Matrix:   Dave Goldblatt @ 1:260/360   ICBM: Why do you want to know? :-)

lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) (09/09/88)

From article <1414@spp2.UUCP>, by baur@spp2.UUCP (Steven L. Baur):
" ...
" # now try ... (this will work)
" $ cp `which emacs` /tmp	# gnu-emacs
" $ emacs /tmp/emacs
" ...

No fair.  It's not editing itself, but rather a copy of itself.  I wrote
a code-file editor a while back that disassembled code interactively to
the screen, and allowed deletion/insertion of symbolic assembly statements.
Insertion was done by making room for the new statement by inserting
nop's and adjusting all references, then assembling the statement typed
and copying the machine code into the code file.  In the last stages of
development, I used the editor to modify its own executing code.  It
was sort of exciting.

		Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu

eirik@tekcrl.TEK.COM (Eirik Fuller) (09/11/88)

In article <1414@spp2.UUCP> baur@spp2.UUCP (Steven L. Baur) writes:
> ...
>
>GNU-Emacs, the editor manly enough to edit itself.  Don't leave home without
>it.
>

According to this argument, you should be editing with adb :-)

This tidbit of info is certainly consistent with gnumacs' X icon, the
bitmap of a kitchen sink.  I'd rather have an editor that can edit
gracefully and other programs that do other things, than one program
that does everything but nothing particularly well.

I'm not explicitly saying I don't think GNU-emacs does anything well.
In fact, I'm favorably impressed with its X mouse support.  I still
prefer vi, though.

ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) (09/12/88)

>>GNU-Emacs, the editor manly enough to edit itself.  Don't leave home without
>>it.

Would anyone like to debate whether "manly" is the appropriate
gender term. Since it is both doing and being done too, perhaps
"bisexual" or "hermaphroditic" might be a more accurate
characterization.... -:)

mck@hpdstma.HP.COM (Doug Mckenzie) (09/13/88)

>>GNU-Emacs, the editor manly enough to edit itself.  Don't leave home without
>>it.

>Would anyone like to debate whether "manly" is the appropriate
>gender term. Since it is both doing and being done too, perhaps

Editing oneself seems a bit masochistic to me.  Reminds me of something
I read about some unfortunate kid who performed surgery on himself.
He did a "good" job:  anaesthesia, sterile environment, good healing.
The only trouble was, he didn't need any surgery.

dab@oswego.Oswego.EDU (Dave Bozak) (09/14/88)

In article <14178@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) writes:
>
>Would anyone like to debate whether "manly" is the appropriate
>gender term. 

NO!

pdc@otter.hple.hp.com (Damian Cugley) (09/17/88)

In article <1414@spp2.UUCP> baur@spp2.UUCP (Steven L. Baur) writes:
>GNU-Emacs, the editor manly enough to edit itself.  Don't leave home without
>it.

eirik@tekcrl.TEK.COM (Eirik Fuller)			Sep 11, 1988
> According to this argument, you should be editing with adb :-)
> 
> This tidbit of info is certainly consistent with gnumacs' X icon, the
> bitmap of a kitchen sink. 

It doesn't take much to be able to edit binaries - 
	- don't do dumb things to `long lines'
	- don't do dumb things to `illegal characters'

Emacs doesn't do anything fancy in order to accommodate silly things like
editing executables; it just tries to avoid breaking for dumb reasons.

...........................................................................
> I'd rather have an editor that can edit gracefully and other programs
> that do other things, than one program that does everything but
> nothing particularly well.

What do you mean by `graceful'? (This is a genuine question.)  

I find Emacs' versatility useful when I'm trying to do things over the
LAN (using X) - `remsh thathost emacs -d thishost:0' allows me to do
almost anything apart from a few terminal-based programs.  The lack of a
`quick reference card' is a bonus as well *:-).

> I'm not explicitly saying I don't think GNU-emacs does anything well.
> In fact, I'm favorably impressed with its X mouse support.  I still
> prefer vi, though.

I thought vi's mouse support was pretty lousy - even simply pasting
more than N (N being POM-dependent) lines of text will cause vi to hang
under the windowing system I use here...

Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against vi per se, I just prefer GNU
Emacs.  If only for ispell-buffer.

pdc
.signature has wandered off somewhere

cantrell@Alliant.COM (Paul Cantrell) (09/17/88)

In article <1414@spp2.UUCP> baur@spp2.UUCP (Steven L. Baur) writes:
># ed returns a question mark -- ed cannot handle binary files
># vi returns a "line too long" error message and doesn't read the whole
># jove returns a "line too long" error message also
># Now try your favorite editor and see what happens ...
>$ emacs /tmp/emacs
># now in emacs do
>(replace-regexp "Emacs" "EMACS")
>(save-file)
><quit>
>And the resulting binary runs.  (Tested on SUN-3 and UNIX-PC)
>GNU-Emacs, the editor manly enough to edit itself.  Don't leave home without
>it.

Works fine on my Video TECO editor - <fsTECO$FRED$>$ewfred$ creates a
perfectly good editor with FRED sprinkled all through it. While this
is not an especially useful thing, it does point out a robustness on the
part of the editor which IS important sometimes. The thing here is that
tools that only work in certain cases are not generally as useful as
tools that work in almost all cases. Sure, the author probably didn't
intend you to edit binaries with his editor, but if it saves you from
writing a special program to do it, great.

My wife uses my Video TECO at DEC while all the other people use EDT.
Occasionally they go to her to edit a file because it has lines longer
than 256 (or was it 128?) and EDT can't hack it. In fact, EDT can't hack
much of anything in the way of file formats. So here are these people
who just want to get their job done, and can't because some short sighted
author thought it didn't make sense to edit lines longer than 256, or that
it didn't make sense to edit binary files with an editor.

So hurray for GNU-Emacs (and Video TECO too!).

					PC

baur@spp2.UUCP (Steven L. Baur) (09/18/88)

in article <630001@hpdstma.HP.COM>, mck@hpdstma.HP.COM (Doug Mckenzie) says:
> 

(I wrote this)
>>>GNU-Emacs, the editor manly enough to edit itself.  Don't leave home without
>>>it.
> 
>>Would anyone like to debate whether "manly" is the appropriate
>>gender term. Since it is both doing and being done too, perhaps
> 
> Editing oneself seems a bit masochistic to me. ...

The point I was trying to make was that GNU Emacs out of all the other
editors I have used (and I do use both Jove and Vi regularly for quick
editing when I don't have emacs running in another window) doesn't have
line length limitations.

The first bug report I ever got on code I had written at TRW involved
output intended to be fed to another program.  One user happened to arrange
things such that a line > 700 characters was output.  The DEC editor EDT
barfed and died on this line, (the DEC editor TPU did not).  (VMS 4.2)
So I guess I am very sensitive to such matters.


steve

sbc@wucs1.wustl.edu (Steve B Cousins) (09/18/88)

In article <2000003@otter.hple.hp.com> pdc@otter.hple.hp.com (Damian Cugley) writes:
...
>almost anything apart from a few terminal-based programs.  The lack of a
>`quick reference card' is a bonus as well *:-).
I happen to have a quick reference card for gnu emacs if you'd like
to borrow it :-)
...
>pdc
>.signature has wandered off somewhere

Steve Cousins				sbc@wucs1.wustl.edu

"I use vi because it starts faster..."