elliot@xenna.encore.com (Elliot Mednick) (02/15/91)
I have tried all three flavors of Emacs that are available as freeware/shareware: FreeMACS, Micro Emacs, and JOVE. For my needs, however, all three are lacking in some respect that forces me to look elsewhere (Epsilon, perhaps?) unless someone can shed some new light on the subject. Here is a short review: FREEMACS: My favorite (albiet a religious opinion). It has the look-and- feel of GNU Emacs, which I have been using of late on a non-PC (read Engineering Workstation -- no flames, please). It has the ability to display on the mode line where the cursor is within the file without constantly having to type typing C-=. I always like to know where I am in the file. Neither Micro Emacs nor JOVE can do this on the mode line. Everything else (shelling out to DOS, etc) seems to be standard GNU Emacs; it is a superset of the other's functionality (i.e. it can do more than the others). BUT (and this is a big 'but' for me) it can only handle files that are less than 64K. This is a huge restriction and renders it useless for me. However, I would recommend this version over the others to anyone for which this is not a problem. Micro Emacs: I used Micro Emacs for two days. At first I kind of liked it until I loaded in a large (>300k bytes) file, split the window, and loaded a smaller file to edit. After a few edits, the message "OUT OF MEMORY" was displayed in the minibuffer. After that, I could not save the file or do anything else with it but quit. When I did, the legth of the file was zero and all was lost! I could not use undelete (from PC Tools) to resurrect it. So much for Micro Emacs. (To be fair, I know people who prefer this over FreEmacs, but then it become religious again, doesn't it?) JOVE: I now use JOVE as my editor, but grudgingly. It seems to handle arbitrarily large files and I can modify the mode line to get it close to what I am used to. Jove has two problems. The first is that it (apparently) does not have mouse support. I can live with that in the short term, but mice are a part of our lives now:-). Any serious editor should support mice. The other problem is the mode line thing I mentioned before. And the third thing (OK, so I lied about having only two problems!) is, and this may be my imagination, when I compile something from within JOVE, it seems as if the UNedited (old) version of the program that I am editing gets compiled. Even after I saved the program. The documentation also says that C-mode is not finished yet, and I like language modes. Especially when it supports compiling and automatically pointing to source lines with errors, a la TC IDE (I didn't try this with the other Emacsi; does anyone do this?) So, does anyone know if FreEmacs will support large files in the future? I hope this helps anyone looking for an Emacs flavor. __ Elliot Mednick (elliot@encore.com) | This .signature file is undergoing Encore Computer Corp. | remodeling for your convenience. Marlborough, MA. 01752 | Please pardon our appearance.
jstone@world.std.com (Jeffrey R Stone) (02/15/91)
(regarding Emacses' language-dependent abilities): I have used Epsilon for several years. It works well in C-mode, and I regularly (many times per session) run pc-lint from within it. It lints the right files and finds the source lines referred to in lint's error messages. I can begin fixing source as soon as the first error message appears, and edit in parallel with lint. Epsilon's text capacity is limited only by the storage available on the machine (conventional memory, EMS memory, or disk). -jeff-
kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) (02/16/91)
Epsilon can trivially give you the cursor position on the status line - write your own code to do just that. -- _ Kevin D. Quitt demott!kdq kdq@demott.com DeMott Electronics Co. 14707 Keswick St. Van Nuys, CA 91405-1266 VOICE (818) 988-4975 FAX (818) 997-1190 MODEM (818) 997-4496 PEP last
davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) (02/16/91)
In article <14061@encore.Encore.COM> elliot@xenna.encore.com writes: | Micro Emacs: I used Micro Emacs for two days. At first I kind of liked | it until I loaded in a large (>300k bytes) file, split the window, and loaded | a smaller file to edit. After a few edits, the message "OUT OF MEMORY" | was displayed in the minibuffer. After that, I could not save the file | or do anything else with it but quit. When I did, the legth of the file | was zero and all was lost! I could not use undelete (from PC Tools) | to resurrect it. So much for Micro Emacs. (To be fair, I know people | who prefer this over FreEmacs, but then it become religious again, doesn't | it?) Having been a user of this for 5+ years, I don't think I've ever seen this problem. However, there are many bad versions of this program out there, which have been compiled with the wrong options and/or compiler (or library) and which have some non-working feature. It's pretty popular at work, too, because it starts up a lot faster than GNU, if you just want to edit a file rather than read news, wash the cat, etc. -- bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen) sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
jka@niksula.hut.fi (Jari Petri Karjala) (02/17/91)
In article <1991Feb15.210903.23839@demott.com> kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) writes: > Epsilon can trivially give you the cursor position on the > status line - write your own code to do just that. Have you tried that? I think it is not that trivial since Epsilon does not normally know current line, but it has to calculate it when you say C-X-L, and it takes time. Current column display is easier but not so useful. No flames towards Epsilon, it is the best editor for PCs I know and I have written several extensions for it in its extension language. BTW, does anyone know ftp-sites for EEL sources? -- /* Jari Karjala ** "Mathematics is a subject in which we never know */ /* jka@niksula.hut.fi ** what we are talking about" -- Bertrand Russel */