[comp.archives] [ibm-pc-binaries] Why Freemacs uses the 8th bit.

nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) (06/21/91)

Archive-name: editors/emacs/freemacs/1991-06-19
Archive-directory: grape.ecs.clarkson.edu:/pub/msdos/freemacs/ [128.153.28.129]
Original-posting-by: nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson)
Original-subject: Why Freemacs uses the 8th bit.
Reposted-by: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN)


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.

-- comp.archives file verification
grape.ecs.clarkson.edu
total 1094
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives    1024 Apr 16 12:48 .desc.pag
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives       0 Apr 16 12:19 .desc.dir
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives     744 Apr 16 12:00 INDEX
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives   47104 Oct 18  1990 ddj0890.zip
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives    4975 Apr 15  1990 patch3.zip
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives     946 Apr 12  1990 files.bbs
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives    6603 Apr 12  1990 patch2.zip
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives    2054 Apr  8  1990 patch1.min
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives    3572 Apr  8  1990 history.min
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives   15215 Apr  2  1990 fortex.zip
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives   18013 Mar 29  1990 emacs100.zip
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives  102948 Mar 29  1990 emac16as.zip
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives  194073 Mar 29  1990 emacs16a.zip
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives   31127 Mar 28  1990 flip.zip
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives    2928 Mar 28  1990 fake101.zip
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives   28104 Mar 28  1990 etags.zip
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives   57508 Mar 28  1990 emacspel.zip
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives    5521 Mar 28  1990 emacsega.zip
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives   15187 Mar 28  1990 contrib.zip
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives    2714 Mar 28  1990 buf160.zip
-rw-rw-r--   1 archives archives      28 Dec  1  1989 dir.bbs
found freemacs ok
grape.ecs.clarkson.edu:/pub/msdos/freemacs/