ok@edai.UUCP (06/15/83)
One recent article on the subject of 68000 Unices cited as an example
of their inutility that when you run VIle from csh you have to swap out
csh. All this means is that VIle is HUGE. On our VAX, we have
ed 30 kbytes
top 35 kbytes
emacs 140 kbytes
VIle 210 kbytes
(sizes courtesy of "size", only the "top" size is exact to all quoted figures)
"top" is a MINCE-like editor with rather more commands than bare "emacs",
though of course "emacs" has all those library files and an interactive
programming language in it. VIle has two things that "top" hasn't: the tags
feature (though "ctags" finds an average of 1% of my functions), and it knows
about Nroff paragraph/section commands (but then I wouldn't be caught dead
using Nroff). "top" is actually *swapped* on a VAX, not paged, and I can
testify from hours and hours of experience that it swaps in faster than the
key bits of VIle page in.
I have also heard that the Cshell is a memory hog. On the VAX I don't
care, all those lovely features are very handy. But based on the previous
example, I can't help feeling that a compromise could be found which
offered 80% of the features at <50% of the memory.
Maybe 68k Unices are feasible after all?