nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) (06/19/91)
In article <3271@krafla.rhi.hi.is> einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) writes: In article <NELSON.91Jun17140028@sun.clarkson.edu> nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu (aka NELSON@CLUTX.BITNET) writes: >In article <3257@krafla.rhi.hi.is> einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) writes: > > > By the way, the stream of 7-bit programs from the USA gives me a poor > impression of the intelligence of USA programmers. > > Some products are great and works fine. BUT then there are those > morons that *insist* on masking that bl*ody 8th bit!! > >Excuse me. I had thought that, since the 8th bit was unused by USASCII, >there would be no trouble using it for marking purposes, etc. Now I >find that it causes trouble with non-english alphabets. Why am I a moron >when I tried to make my program simpler and hence more reliable? Why is your program simpler if you use the 8th bit for yourself? (for internal purposes?) instead of just leaving it alone? Freemacs needs meta characters, that fall outside the charater set. It needs these in two places -- in the neutral string (to delimit pending functions and arguments), and in functions (to indicate argument place-holders). Some time ago, I rewrote the neutral string code so that all 8 bits are usable. The code is faster but more complicated. But functions still require the 8th bit as an argument place-holder. I suppose that I *should* rewrite it so that it doesn't, because it would make the program faster, but it also introduces other complications. The next release will be much more circumspect about nuking 8th-bit-set characters, and I will probably code around the places where it fails. But I'll need help from you 8th-bitters, because I don't have any real use for the 8th bit. Should I put you on the Freemacs announcement mailing list? Here's the Freemacs "howtoget.it" blurb: Freemacs is a programmable editor. The .EXE file is only 21K because it only contains a language interpreter and text editor primitives. The bulk of the programming is done in MINT, which is a string-oriented language. Freemacs is yet another Emacs clone. Emacs was first written at MIT by Richard M. Stallman. There are a number of Emacs clones for the PC available. Freemacs has three distinguishing characteristics: o Freemacs is free, and it was designed from the start to be programmable. o Freemacs is the only IBM-PC editor that tries to be like GNU Emacs. o Freemacs can only edit files less than 64K in length. You may freely copy this software. I only ask that you send improvements back to me for incorporation into the package for the rest of us. The distribution is available from one or more of the following sources: EMACS16A ARC The executables and MINT code. EMACS100 ARC Zenith Z-100 version. Requires EMACS16. EMACSPEL ARC Spelling checker. EMACSEGA ARC A collection of EGA utilities EMAC16AS ARC The .ASM source. CUHUG BBS: (315)268-6667 - 1200/2400 8N1, 24 hrs. File area 25. No registration required to download Freemacs. Internet: Anonymous FTP to simtel20.army.mil from PD:<MSDOS.FREEMACS> Internet: Anonymous FTP to grape.ecs.clarkson.edu [128.153.13.196] from /e/freemacs Bitnet && UUCP: Send mail to archive-server@sun.soe.clarkson.edu. You may use archive-server%sun.soe@omnigate if you are on Bitnet, or {smart-host}!sun.soe.clarkson.edu!archive-server if you are using UUCP. The mail message should consist of 'help'. If you do not get a reply within a day, then your return path is broken. You'll need to use the path command to give a mail address that our mailer can grok. Our mailer can send mail to any address with an '@' in it, with the exception of ".UUCP" pseudo-addresses. Or else send $15 (copying fee) to the author. This will assure you of the latest version. Please specify floppy format: 5.25", 1.2 Meg 5.25", 360K 3.50", 720K Russell Nelson 11 Grant St. Potsdam, NY 13676 -- --russ <nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu> I'm proud to be a humble Quaker. I am leaving the employ of Clarkson as of June 30. Hopefully this email address will remain. If it doesn't, use nelson@gnu.ai.mit.edu.
einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) (06/21/91)
In article <NELSON.91Jun19110054@sun.clarkson.edu> nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu (aka NELSON@CLUTX.BITNET) writes: >In article <3271@krafla.rhi.hi.is> einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) writes: > > Why is your program simpler if you use the 8th bit for yourself? (for > internal purposes?) instead of just leaving it alone? > >Freemacs needs meta characters, that fall outside the charater set. >It needs these in two places -- in the neutral string (to delimit >pending functions and arguments), and in functions (to indicate >argument place-holders). Some time ago, I rewrote the neutral string code >so that all 8 bits are usable. The code is faster but more complicated. Humm, meta characters? Can you use 16bit characters in freemacs? (then you could use the upper 9-16 bits as some sort of a meta bit?) No. Then the maximum size of text to edit is then limited to 32K (Right?) But what about useing some character below 0x20 as a 'lead-in' character (some kind of an escape?) and if that character is to appear, then it could be protected by duplicating that character? >But I'll need help from you 8th-bitters, because I don't have any real >use for the 8th bit. Should I put you on the Freemacs announcement >mailing list? Here's the Freemacs "howtoget.it" blurb: That is ok by me. (If you do, please use einari@hugbun.is instead of the more normal einari@rhi.hi.is. For other mail, (for now), use einari@rhi.hi.is) May I bring up a suggestion? How about getting the device-driver that frisk has uploaded to SIMTEL and use that to test freemacs? I can suply you with a sentence that gives you all icelandic characters? Thank you for taking so kindly to my rash posting :-) -- Internet: einari@rhi.hi.is | "Just give me my command line and drag UUCP: ..!mcsun!isgate!rhi!einari | the GUIs to the waste basket!!!!" Surgeon Generals warning: Masking the 8th bit can seriously damage your brain!!
nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) (06/23/91)
In article <3287@krafla.rhi.hi.is> einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) writes: In article <NELSON.91Jun19110054@sun.clarkson.edu> nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu (aka NELSON@CLUTX.BITNET) writes: >In article <3271@krafla.rhi.hi.is> einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) writes: > > Why is your program simpler if you use the 8th bit for yourself? (for > internal purposes?) instead of just leaving it alone? > >Freemacs needs meta characters, that fall outside the charater set. >It needs these in two places -- in the neutral string (to delimit >pending functions and arguments), and in functions (to indicate >argument place-holders). Some time ago, I rewrote the neutral string code >so that all 8 bits are usable. The code is faster but more complicated. Humm, meta characters? Can you use 16bit characters in freemacs? (then you could use the upper 9-16 bits as some sort of a meta bit?) No. Then the maximum size of text to edit is then limited to 32K (Right?) Right, ick. But what about useing some character below 0x20 as a 'lead-in' character (some kind of an escape?) and if that character is to appear, then it could be protected by duplicating that character? That makes scanning backwards tough. May I bring up a suggestion? How about getting the device-driver that frisk has uploaded to SIMTEL and use that to test freemacs? I can suply you with a sentence that gives you all icelandic characters? Perhaps frisk's ICELAND.ZIP should have an example bit of text, along with a known-good method for viewing it on the screen. Maybe he should supply a copy of the documentation written in icelandic? :) -- --russ <nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu> I'm proud to be a humble Quaker. I am leaving the employ of Clarkson as of June 30. Hopefully this email address will remain. If it doesn't, use nelson@gnu.ai.mit.edu.
boyd@cs.unca.edu (Mark Boyd) (06/24/91)
This discussion of why freemacs uses the 8th bit for meta characters reminded me of the file size limit in MicroEmacs. On a IBM PC clone with 550,000 bytes of memory available, MicroEmacs 3.10 will load about 200,000 characters. The executable takes about 150K of memory, so that leaves about 400,000 bytes for the buffer. All of these numbers are approximate, but they do show the dramatic effect of 16 bits per character. Mark
mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald) (06/24/91)
In article <1991Jun23.174824.21869@rock.concert.net> boyd@cs.unca.edu (Mark Boyd) writes: >This discussion of why freemacs uses the 8th bit for meta characters >reminded me of the file size limit in MicroEmacs. On a IBM PC clone >with 550,000 bytes of memory available, MicroEmacs 3.10 will load about >200,000 characters. The executable takes about 150K of memory, so that >leaves about 400,000 bytes for the buffer. All of these numbers are >approximate, but they do show the dramatic effect of 16 bits per >character. > On my 8 megabyte PC, with about 6.3 free, MicroEmacs 3.10 will edit a 4.5 megabyte file. So it uses appreciably less than 2 bytes of storage per character. Doug McDonald