steiner@informatik.uni-kl.de (Donald Steiner) (04/06/91)
Hi there, Being thrust into the MS-DOS world by purchasing a laptop, I have a few questions regarding GNU Emacs-like programs for MS-DOS. From perusing the various newsgroups it seems like there are three dominant ones: Freemacs & MG, both PD, and Epsilon's commercial product. Not having any further info, I wonder if anybody would be able to spare some time to answer the following questions: 1. Which do you prefer and why? 2. Which is most customizable? I.e., for which would I have most success getting my own functions and simple programs (ala calendar.el, diary.el) to work? Alternatively, which has the best set of PD programs available? 3. Which would run best on a low powered laptop? I'm looking at a 80C86 with either 1 or 3 meg RAM. Emacs is pretty much all I'll be using. Maybe a bit of calendar, addresses & phones etc., but with luck that could be part of Emacs. 4. How does one get ahold of the Epsilon product (in the States), and how much does it cost?. I've located the other 2 on archives here and there. I realize that Epsilon may run counter to rms' policies, but I'm prepared to take the moral consequences of actually *buying* something GNU-like. Thanks a lot for your help, Donald Steiner DFKI Kaiserslautern, Germany steiner@dfki.uni-kl.de
wilhelm@elements.rpal.com (Robert Wilhelm) (04/06/91)
In article <7704@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de> steiner@informatik.uni-kl.de (Donald Steiner) writes:
.............
perusing the various newsgroups it seems like there are three dominant
ones: Freemacs & MG, both PD, and Epsilon's commercial product. Not
having any further info, I wonder if anybody would be able to spare
some time to answer the following questions:
1. Which do you prefer and why?
2. Which is most customizable?
3. Which would run best on a low powered laptop?
I have used Freemacs & MG on a poqet PC - this has to be one of the
more "low powered pc's. The one I have has 512K of RAM and a MD/CGA
compatible display.
Freemacs is much more customizable and has many more features. If you
have hard disk storage or ram disk of a megabyte, say, all the
extension files, and documentation can be loaded as you require.
Freemacs has file name completion, a crude dired, and many extensions
that are similar to GNU emacs. With the mint extension language, I
found that I could cobble most of the simpler extensions I have added
to my emacs setup on other machines. However, on a 8088 running at
about 7mHz, I found Freemacs a bit too sluggish for my habits. The
character buffering and keyboard response consistly confused me. Mind
you this is more a characteristic of my hardware - the freemacs
software is very nice indeed.
MG allows almost no customization beyond keybinding - this is by
design. MG is implemented to be small in size on many platforms. I
find keyboard and display response to be a bit better on my slow
machine. I greatly miss filename completion but most other simple
emacs operations are provided. I use this program most days.
You might also be concerned about program size. MG consumes about 100K
on my disk. For some reason my poqet won't put up with PKlite
compression for MG but MG will compress to about 60K with PKlite. The
minimum space required for Freemacs is closer to 200K and you can
easily consume 400K with extensions and help. Most of the Freemacs
distribution can be compressed only if you use something like a squish
device-driver for on the fly compression.
Both Freemacs & MG are very nice programs.
My opinion is that MG runs better on low powered laptop.
The is also another emacs that I am going to try soon :
MicroEMACS version 3.11 is ready for BETA testing. It is
available via anonymous FTP from midas.mgmt.purdue.edu (which is also
called zeus.mgmt.purdue.edu) in the dist/uemacs311BETA directory
outside the hours of 8am to 5pm on EST on weekdays.
Bob Wilhelm
Knowledge-based Engineering and currently visiting at
Systems Research Laboratory
Dept. of Mechanical Rockwell International Science Center
& Industrial Engineering Palo Alto Laboratory
University of Illinois 444 High Street
at Urbana-Champaign Palo Alto, CA 94301
wilhelm@rpal.rockwell.com
(415)325-0253
hnridder@cs.ruu.nl (Ernst de Ridder) (04/08/91)
In <7704@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de> steiner@informatik.uni-kl.de (Donald Steiner) writes: >few questions regarding GNU Emacs-like programs for MS-DOS. From >ones: Freemacs & MG, both PD, and Epsilon's commercial product. Not >1. Which do you prefer and why? >2. Which is most customizable? I.e., for which would I have most >3. Which would run best on a low powered laptop? I'm looking at a >80C86 with either 1 or 3 meg RAM. Emacs is pretty much all I'll be >4. How does one get ahold of the Epsilon product (in the States), and I used (only picking from the emacs-like products) MicroEmacs, Sail, Epsilon and an emacs-clone which was just called emacs. Currently I'm using Epsilon (4.13, newest is 5.0?). Since this is the one I have the most to tell about, I'll restrict my comments to this one. 1) Epsilon... It's fast, small and has an excellent extension language. -- much better then the macrolanguage supported by MicroEmacs. It's fast enough to be run on an XT (8 Mhz), small enough to be used on a machine without harddisk, can run programs in parallel! (e.g. sorting a file, or compiling), processbuffer -- run interactive programs from within the editor, makes use of EMS or diskswapping -- amount of space used can be customized. 2) Epsilon's extension language (called EEL) is pretty much C-like. Differences to ANSI-C are summed up in less then a page, both extensions and restrictions, the only two restrictions I can recall now is the lack of floats and static variables. All of epsilon's commands are EEL-routines. Command completion works automatically on your own EELroutines. A debugger and profiler are included. The profiler isn't that useful. Compiled code is pretty fast -- the sort-buffer command (written in EEL) is faster than DOS sort. There is no problem adding your own command-line switches, modes ( C, Tex, etc.) or main-loop extensions. EEL even allows you to call interrupts. 3) epsilon.exe is ~65Kb statefile (compiled EEL extensions) varies, out of the box about 70k. memory use for the editor and extension is about 130Kb, when completely swapping (for a shell) 4Kb remains. 4) Epsilon is produced by Lugaru: Lugaru Software Ltd. 5843 Forbes Ave. Pittsburgh, PA 15217 (412) 421-5911 fax: (412) 421-6371 Epsilon is available for DOS, OS/2 and Unix. It costs US $195. Mail order services are generally cheaper >Donald Steiner Ernst de Ridder N.B. I've got nothing to do with Lugaru. I'm just a very satisfied Epsilon-user. When you think I didn't point out the bad sides of Epsilon, that's just because I don't know any. This product really deserves you attention. It's the best editor I know. -- Qualitas qualitatem inducit. Semper ego qualitatem. popa iret
howcome@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Hakon Lie) (04/09/91)
In article <7704@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de> steiner@informatik.uni-kl.de (Donald Steiner) writes:
perusing the various newsgroups it seems like there are three dominant
ones: Freemacs & MG, both PD, and Epsilon's commercial product. Not
1. Which do you prefer and why?
I've used Freemacs and Epsilon on my Zenith Minisport. They're both
adequate for typing text and that's really all I use them for. I
prefer using Freemacs since it comes with a speller and provides an
exellent extension language.
However, there's one irritating bug/feature about Freemacs - it masks
my calls to the resident thesaurus. I am addicted to WordFinder which
looks up a word while in an editor. Alt-F1 tries to find synonyms for
the word by the cursor - this works fine in WordStar (ugh..), SideKick
and Epsilon, but fails in Freemacs. This is probably not the best way
to contact Russell Nelson who did the thing, but if someone has a fix,
let me know.
there. I realize that Epsilon may run counter to rms' policies, but
I'm prepared to take the moral consequences of actually *buying*
something GNU-like.
It's a waste of money, the GNU products are in most cases superior to
the commercial versions. If they aren't -- someone (maybe you) will
make them better..
-h&kon
--
_____
Hakon W Lie /
howcome@media-lab.media.mit.edu ----MIT Media Lab---
(617)253-0312 ----an ec
----s s hnocracy----
----o ti
c tute-of---
hi
stic--dhosek@euler.claremont.edu (Don Hosek) (04/09/91)
In article <1991Apr08.110826.19865@cs.ruu.nl>, hnridder@cs.ruu.nl (Ernst de Ridder) writes: > Epsilon is available for DOS, OS/2 and Unix. It costs US $195. Mail order > services are generally cheaper The Personal TeX catalog I have here lists Epsilon for $159. The catalog is almost a year old, however, so the price may have gone up. (Personal TeX/12 Madrona Avenue/Mill Valley, CA 94941/415-388-8853/Fax: 415-388-8865/pti@well.sf.ca.us) Me, all I want is an Emacs that knows how big the DESQview window it lives in is so PgUp/PgDn work right in a shrunken window. -dh
portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) (04/10/91)
In article <HOWCOME.91Apr8165325@media-lab.media.mit.edu>, Hakon Lie writes: > there. I realize that Epsilon may run counter to rms' policies, but > I'm prepared to take the moral consequences of actually *buying* > something GNU-like. > >It's a waste of money, the GNU products are in most cases superior to >the commercial versions. If they aren't -- someone (maybe you) will >make them better.. I don't understand what you're talking about. Unless you have a 386 or better, you are never going to get GNU Emacs to run on your laptop. Other than that, Epsilon has far, far more features and far more extensibility than every public-domain editor available. The simple fact that memory + disk size is the only limit on the length of files it can edit should put it leagues ahead of Freemacs. Its only disadvantage compared to its competition is that it isn't free. __ \/ Michael Portuesi Silicon Graphics, Inc. portuesi@sgi.com "Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child." -- Vice President Dan Quayle
kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) (04/10/91)
In article <1991Apr9.171225.663@odin.corp.sgi.com> portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) writes: >In article <HOWCOME.91Apr8165325@media-lab.media.mit.edu>, Hakon Lie >writes: >> there. I realize that Epsilon may run counter to rms' policies, but >> I'm prepared to take the moral consequences of actually *buying* >> something GNU-like. >> >>It's a waste of money, the GNU products are in most cases superior to >>the commercial versions. If they aren't -- someone (maybe you) will >>make them better.. > >I don't understand what you're talking about. Unless you have a >386 or better, you are never going to get GNU Emacs to run on your >laptop. Other than that, Epsilon has far, far more features and >far more extensibility than every public-domain editor available. >The simple fact that memory + disk size is the only limit on the >length of files it can edit should put it leagues ahead of Freemacs. >Its only disadvantage compared to its competition is that it isn't >free. I will never understand people who are willing to put up with inferior tools because they're cheap. Your editor is your #1 tool - who cares how much it costs? Bad editors cost you more money in time and frustration than you could *ever* save on the purchase price. I would pay $1000 for Epsilon, and I wish the damn thing were available for all machines (like my non-intel-processor-based UNIX systems) because it beats the hell out of not only every other editor I've tried, but out of emacs too (IMNSHO). The GNU software's great - we use gcc, gdb, bison, less, etc. for all of our (non pc-compatible) work. But it's not free (although it is cheap). But when it comes to an editor, I think Epsilon's the best. -- _ 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 96.37% of all statistics are made up.
howcome@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Hakon Lie) (04/10/91)
In article <1991Apr9.224504.26706@demott.com> kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) writes: In article <1991Apr9.171225.663@odin.corp.sgi.com> portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) writes: >In article <HOWCOME.91Apr8165325@media-lab.media.mit.edu>, Hakon Lie >writes: >> there. I realize that Epsilon may run counter to rms' policies, but >> I'm prepared to take the moral consequences of actually *buying* >> something GNU-like. >> >>It's a waste of money, the GNU products are in most cases superior to >>the commercial versions. If they aren't -- someone (maybe you) will >>make them better.. > >I don't understand what you're talking about. Unless you have a >386 or better, you are never going to get GNU Emacs to run on your >laptop. Other than that, Epsilon has far, far more features and >far more extensibility than every public-domain editor available. There is no doubt that GNU-emacs requires performace. However, that doesn't make it an inferior editor. It requires performace because it does a lot of things other editors won't do. Including Epsilon. How can you claim that an editor without an undo facility has "far more features" ? I would pay $1000 for Epsilon, and I wish the damn thing were available for all machines (like my non-intel-processor-based UNIX systems) because it beats the hell out of not only every other editor I've tried, but out of emacs too (IMNSHO). I am seriously interested in how you came to this conclusion. -h&kon -- _____ Hakon W Lie / howcome@media-lab.media.mit.edu ----MIT Media Lab--- (617)253-0312 ----an ec ----s s hnocracy---- ----o ti c tute-of--- hi stic--
jew@rt.uucp (James E. Ward /87336) (04/10/91)
Kevin D. Quitt said (speaking of GNU software): But it's not free (although it is cheap). But when it comes to an editor, I think Epsilon's the best. How do you manage to pay for GNU software? I thought everybody just down-loaded it and compiled it. That's pretty close to free. The only thing closer would be if they ftp'd it to your machine and compiled it for you, eh? James E. Ward (jew@sunquest.com) Confucious say...
john@jwt.UUCP (John Temples) (04/10/91)
In article <HOWCOME.91Apr9210555@media-lab.media.mit.edu> howcome@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Hakon Lie) writes: >How can you claim that an editor without an undo facility has "far more >features" ? Epsilon has had undo/redo since version 4.0. The current release is at 5.0x. Lugaru's support for Epsilon is quite good. I recently upgraded from version 4 to version 5, and found a display refresh bug. I called Lugaru, they were able to duplicate the problem, and I had a new release in my hands within a week. Another point in Lugaru's favor: they let me go from the 286 UNIX version to the 386 UNIX version at the upgrade price, rather than making me buy a new copy. -- John W. Temples -- john@jwt.UUCP (uunet!jwt!john)
cho@sol4.cs.psu.edu (Sehyeong Cho) (04/10/91)
In article <1991Apr9.224504.26706@demott.com> kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) writes: >deleted.. > The GNU software's great - we use gcc, gdb, bison, less, etc. for >all of our (non pc-compatible) work. But it's not free (although it is >cheap). >deleted.. GNU software's not free? Oops, I must have stolen 'em. :-) -- | Yesterday I was a student. Sehyeong Cho | Today I am a student. cho@cs.psu.edu | Tomorrow I'll probably still be a student. | Sigh.. There's so little hope for advancement.
portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) (04/10/91)
Hakon Lie writes: >portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) writes: >>In article <HOWCOME.91Apr8165325@media-lab.media.mit.edu>, Hakon Lie >>writes: >>>It's a waste of money, the GNU products are in most cases superior to >>>the commercial versions. If they aren't -- someone (maybe you) will >>>make them better.. >> >>I don't understand what you're talking about. Unless you have a >>386 or better, you are never going to get GNU Emacs to run on your >>laptop. Other than that, Epsilon has far, far more features and >>far more extensibility than every public-domain editor available. > There is no doubt that GNU-emacs requires performace. Of course not. I use it on my workstation all the time and I love it. It's a great editor. But at the very least you need at least a 386 and lots of memory to make it run on a PC, and even then it would have to run as a protected-mode program under Windows or extended DOS or something. To my knowledge, nobody has done that port. > However, that doesn't make it an inferior editor. Nobody said that GNU was an inferior editor to anything, including Epsilon. My point is that there is no publically available editor for the PC which can match Epsilon for features and flexibility, including Freemacs, MicroEmacs, mg, Jove, etc. etc. If you manage to produce a 386 extended-mode port of GNU emacs and offer to buy me a Toshiba 2000SX to run it on, perhaps I might switch to GNU. But Epsilon is a powerful editor which runs well on the hardware it was designed for, and makes good use of every system resource available (supports EMS, swaps large files to disk, supports all display devices, etc). It runs fine on my T1000XE with a 10 Mhz 8086. GNU Emacs does not. > It requires performace because it does a lot of things other editors > won't do. Including Epsilon. GNU has a lot more "out of the box" functionality than Epsilon. But I can't think of a single feature that GNU has that could not be implemented in Epsilon's EEL extension language. Epsilon is a full fledged Emacs implementation by every standard Stallman set forth a long time ago. Furthermore, the "out of the box" functionality provided by Epsilon covers about 90-95% of the things that I do with GNU Emacs. > How can you claim that an editor without an undo facility has > "far more features" ? Epsilon has offered a multi-level Undo facility comparable to that in GNU Emacs for a while now. > I am seriously interested in how you came to this conclusion. Have you actually used Epsilon? m. __ \/ Michael Portuesi Silicon Graphics, Inc. portuesi@sgi.com "Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child." -- Vice President Dan Quayle
kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) (04/11/91)
In article <HOWCOME.91Apr9210555@media-lab.media.mit.edu> howcome@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Hakon Lie) writes: >In article <1991Apr9.224504.26706@demott.com> kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) writes: > >How >can you claim that an editor without an undo facility has "far more >features" ? Epsilon has had undo and redo for at least two years now. > I would pay $1000 for Epsilon, and I wish the damn thing were > available for all machines (like my non-intel-processor-based UNIX > systems) because it beats the hell out of not only every other editor > I've tried, but out of emacs too (IMNSHO). > >I am seriously interested in how you came to this conclusion. Because the extension language is C, not Lisp. I can take a program from the net that does something really neat, and directly compile it into my editor. Also because of the customer support from Lugaru. I've been at this game for over 20 years now (frightening thought), and I've used dozens of different editors (including emacs)- none of them can touch Epsilon. On my current UNIX machine, emacs is 5MB on disk, and what's without anything loaded. The loading process takes over a minute. Emacs with everything loaded is 8MB on my machine, and my 8MB RAM system can't even load it! Epsilon is <80K, with another 80K for its state file. Emacs can do things that Epsilon can't, but most of that is because it's running under UNIX and not constrained by DOS. (You *can* run a process in an Epsilon buffer.) I haven't used the (386)UNIX version of Epsilon, but I can't see how there's anything it couldn't do. (Want a newsreader? Don't write one in lisp, import trn or nn code directly into Epsilon!) -- _ 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 96.37% of all statistics are made up.
kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) (04/11/91)
In article <c5cGx5_l1@cs.psu.edu> cho@sol4.cs.psu.edu (Sehyeong Cho) writes: >In article <1991Apr9.224504.26706@demott.com> kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) writes: >>deleted.. >> The GNU software's great - we use gcc, gdb, bison, less, etc. for >>all of our (non pc-compatible) work. But it's not free (although it is >>cheap). >>deleted.. > >GNU software's not free? >Oops, I must have stolen 'em. :-) How much time did you spend bringing it up on your system? Is your time free? -- _ 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 96.37% of all statistics are made up.
cho@sol4.cs.psu.edu (Sehyeong Cho) (04/11/91)
In article <1991Apr10.185733.3294@demott.com> kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) writes: >In article <c5cGx5_l1@cs.psu.edu> cho@sol4.cs.psu.edu (Sehyeong Cho) writes: >>In article <1991Apr9.224504.26706@demott.com> kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) writes: >>>deleted.. >>> The GNU software's great - we use gcc, gdb, bison, less, etc. for >>>all of our (non pc-compatible) work. But it's not free (although it is >>>cheap). >>>deleted.. >> >>GNU software's not free? >>Oops, I must have stolen 'em. :-) > > How much time did you spend bringing it up on your system? Is your >time free? >-- The word "free" means "free of charge," isn't it? If M.J.Fox has got Pepsi free when he ordered "Pepsi Free," (Back to the F.) he wouldn't have got it free because he had to spend time brining the can to his mouth :-) Okay, just joking. I thought you were saying that I must pay $$ to them. -- | Yesterday I was a student. Sehyeong Cho | Today I am a student. cho@cs.psu.edu | Tomorrow I'll probably still be a student. | Sigh.. There's so little hope for advancement.
john@jwt.UUCP (John Temples) (04/11/91)
In article <1991Apr9.055523.1@euler.claremont.edu> dhosek@euler.claremont.edu (Don Hosek) writes: >Me, all I want is an Emacs that knows how big the DESQview window >it lives in is so PgUp/PgDn work right in a shrunken window. Epsilon has -vc and -vl switches to specify the number of columns and lines, respectively, of the window it's in. Under UNIX, it also can use the ROWS and COLUMNS environment variables, but that probably won't work under DOS. Now, if you're hoping your emacs can automatically detect the resizing of the window it's in, that's another story. But I would imagine it's possible via EEL and the DESQview API, assuming DESQview has some means of notifying an application that its window has changed size. -- John W. Temples -- john@jwt.UUCP (uunet!jwt!john)
raymond@math.berkeley.edu (Raymond Chen) (04/11/91)
[This is turning into a religious debate; please respect followups] In article <17335@sunquest.UUCP>, jew@rt (James E. Ward /87336) writes: >Kevin D. Quitt said (speaking of GNU software): But it's not free >(although it is cheap). >How do you manage to pay for GNU software? Depends on what you mean by `free'. Yes, it is `free' in the sense of `you don't have to pay anyone money to anyone to get it'. Not `free' in the sense of `no strings attached'. For example, you are required by the GPL that if anyone asks you for the program and its source code, you are REQUIRED to give it to them at no charge beyond a distribution fee. Moreover, you are REQUIRED to distribute it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party free (save shipping charges) a complete machine-readable copy of the source code. [I'm working from the 11 Feb 1988 clarified edition of the GPL.] The GPL brings out strong emotional responses in many people, hence the redirected follow-ups.
swansonc@acc.stolaf.edu (Chris Swanson) (04/13/91)
>>>>> On 10 Apr 91 18:56:42 GMT, >>>>> in message <1991Apr10.185642.3208@demott.com>, >>>>> kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) wrote: kdq> In article <HOWCOME.91Apr9210555@media-lab.media.mit.edu> howcome@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Hakon Lie) writes: >In article <1991Apr9.224504.26706@demott.com> kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) writes: [bunch of stuff deleted] kdq> I've been at this game for over 20 years now (frightening kdq> thought), and I've used dozens of different editors (including kdq> emacs)- none of them can touch Epsilon. On my current UNIX kdq> machine, emacs is 5MB on disk, and what's without anything kdq> loaded. The loading process takes over a minute. Emacs with kdq> everything loaded is 8MB on my machine, and my 8MB RAM system kdq> can't even load it! Epsilon is <80K, with another 80K for its kdq> state file. [more stuff deleted] What "Unix" are you running that does not impliment some kind of paged or virtual memory? Also, what are you loading into emacs? everyting ever written in elisp?? Right now I am running Emacs w/ all the stock, plus MH and GNUS as well as about 20 other pacakges on a NeXT and my `ps` just reported that I am using 2.05M real memory, and have a total requirement (virtual memory) of 3.09M I know it's alot compared to Epsilon, and I'm sure that Epsilon is a nice editor, but your claims of Emacs using > 8 MB of RAM is somewhat high in my book. I agree that Emacs may be a bit much for a low-end PC system, but let's not slam it out of hand, ok? kdq> -- _ Kevin D. Quitt demott!kdq kdq@demott.com DeMott Electronics kdq> Co. 14707 Keswick St. Van Nuys, CA 91405-1266 VOICE (818) kdq> 988-4975 FAX (818) 997-1190 MODEM (818) 997-4496 PEP last kdq> 96.37% of all statistics are made up. -Chris -- Chris Swanson, Chem/CS/Pre-med Undergrad, St. Olaf College, Northfield,MN 55057 DDN: (CDS6) INTERNET: swansonc@acc.stolaf.edu UUCP: uunet!stolaf!swansonc AT&T: Work: (507)-645-4528 Home: (507)-663-6424 I would deny this reality, but that wouldn't pay the bills...
swansonc@acc.stolaf.edu (Chris Swanson) (04/13/91)
>>>>> On 10 Apr 91 15:16:46 GMT, >>>>> in message <17335@sunquest.UUCP>, >>>>> jew@rt.uucp (James E. Ward /87336) wrote: jew> Kevin D. Quitt said (speaking of GNU software): But it's not free jew> (although it is cheap). But when it comes to an editor, I think jew> Epsilon's the best. jew> How do you manage to pay for GNU software? I thought everybody jew> just down-loaded it and compiled it. That's pretty close to jew> free. The only thing closer would be if they ftp'd it to your jew> machine and compiled it for you, eh? jew> James E. Ward (jew@sunquest.com) jew> Confucious say... I think he was refering to the GNU Public License. Indeed, none of the GNU software costs money, but there is a license (basically stating that you have to make machine readable source available to anyone who gets copies of that program (or anything derived from that program) available at no extra charge other than some form of s&h and you can not restrict them from redistributing it further) and there for you are not "free" to use it any way you like. You must keep it, or the possibility of getting it, free. -Chris -- Chris Swanson, Chem/CS/Pre-med Undergrad, St. Olaf College, Northfield,MN 55057 DDN: (CDS6) INTERNET: swansonc@acc.stolaf.edu UUCP: uunet!stolaf!swansonc AT&T: Work: (507)-645-4528 Home: (507)-663-6424 I would deny this reality, but that wouldn't pay the bills...
phr@lightning.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Rubin) (04/13/91)
In article <1991Apr10.164029.8489@odin.corp.sgi.com> portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) writes:
GNU has a lot more "out of the box" functionality than Epsilon. But
I can't think of a single feature that GNU has that could not be
implemented in Epsilon's EEL extension language. Epsilon is a full
fledged Emacs implementation by every standard Stallman set
forth a long time ago. Furthermore, the "out of the box" functionality
provided by Epsilon covers about 90-95% of the things that I do with
GNU Emacs.
I've used Epsilon quite a lot and admire it, but comparing it to GNU
Emacs is like comparing a bicycle to the space shuttle. Epsilon does
*not* contain the EEL extension language, i.e. you cannot type EEL
expressions at Epsilon and have it interpret them, like you can in
Emacs Lisp. EEL is implemented in a separate program that compiles
EEL scripts to byte code which you then load into Epsilon. This makes
debugging lots of fun. Also, EEL is very similar to C, which for
writing editor commands, is *not* an advantage. For example, there is
no string type--you must use char *'s like in C, and you must malloc
and free the strings as there is no garbage collector. (Am I still
correct?).
I don't mean to knock Epsilon, just to correct some overstatement.
Epsilon actually runs reasonably fast on a *4.77 MHz* Toshiba T1000,
and it is small enough to leave in the ramdisk all the time.
Brief is way too slow for such machines, besides being a lot bigger.
To the person who asks whether Epsilon's default keybindings are
messed up (i.e. "improved" from Emacs's): yes, they, are, but not too
badly. JOVE messes them up considerably more. MG tries to remain
faithful, though they messed up in a few places too, sometimes by
accident.
By the way, has anyone ported ELLE to MS-DOS?miles@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Miles Bader) (04/14/91)
phr@lightning.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Rubin) writes: > To the person who asks whether Epsilon's default keybindings are > messed up (i.e. "improved" from Emacs's): yes, they, are, but not too > badly. JOVE messes them up considerably more. MG tries to remain > faithful, though they messed up in a few places too, sometimes by > accident. Actually, epsilon does an incredible job of picking the best keybindings from both the original emacs and gosling's emacs-- by far the best default set I've ever used. None of this ``We must follow the holy bindings chosen by RMS'' shit. [Note that the last version of epsilon I used was something like 1.0x... At the time, I used Twenex emacs a lot more than Gosling's.] -Miles -- -- Miles Bader -- HCRC, University of Edinburgh -- Miles.Bader@ed.ac.uk
kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) (04/15/91)
In article <SWANSONC.91Apr12175820@grendel3.acc.stolaf.edu> swansonc@acc.stolaf.edu (Chris Swanson) writes: > >What "Unix" are you running that does not impliment some kind of paged >or virtual memory? I'm running on Motorola's Delta 3600 system, SYSV R3.2, and it has virtual memory. >I know it's alot compared to Epsilon, and I'm sure that Epsilon is a >nice editor, but your claims of Emacs using > 8 MB of RAM is somewhat >high in my book. I have acknowleged that those numbers are excessive (but they are correct). I had to do the port to my system based on the documentation in emacs, and it's entirely likey that it was not done correctly. On the other hand, I have, and do use emacs on other systems. >I agree that Emacs may be a bit much for a low-end PC system, but >let's not slam it out of hand, ok? I'm not slamming emacs - if I didn't like it, I wouldn't like epsilon. I just prefer epsilon. And to answer another note about being able to enter extension language directly into epsilon: EEL is compiled, not interpreted. You can edit the eel file, compile it (from within epsilon), and load the compiled code in, making it available and active. I have a function that does precisely that. And while C may or may not have an advantage over lisp for string work, most folks I know can program a lot better in C than they can in lisp. I can program in lisp, I just don't like to. Finally, I do not mean to say in absolute terms: "epsilon is better than emacs". I just much prefer it. -- _ 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 96.37% of all statistics are made up.
portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) (04/15/91)
In article <PHR.91Apr13033047@lightning.Berkeley.EDU>, Paul Rubin writes: In article <1991Apr10.164029.8489@odin.corp.sgi.com> portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) writes: GNU has a lot more "out of the box" functionality than Epsilon. But I can't think of a single feature that GNU has that could not be implemented in Epsilon's EEL extension language. Epsilon is a full fledged Emacs implementation by every standard Stallman set forth a long time ago. Furthermore, the "out of the box" functionality provided by Epsilon covers about 90-95% of the things that I do with GNU Emacs. > I've used Epsilon quite a lot and admire it, but comparing it to GNU > Emacs is like comparing a bicycle to the space shuttle. I prefer to think of it as comparing a Honda to a Mercedes. Both get you to where you want to go, but at least the Honda still has an engine. The Mercedes does it in style. > Epsilon does *not* contain the EEL extension language, i.e. you cannot > type EEL expressions at Epsilon and have it interpret them, like you can in > Emacs Lisp. True. So? > EEL is implemented in a separate program that compiles > EEL scripts to byte code which you then load into Epsilon. This makes > debugging lots of fun. I'm pretty sure that Epsilon offers some sort of debugging facility, but I haven't used it and I don't have the manual handy, so I'll refrain from comment. > Also, EEL is very similar to C, which for > writing editor commands, is *not* an advantage. For example, there is > no string type--you must use char *'s like in C, and you must malloc > and free the strings as there is no garbage collector. (Am I still > correct?). This isn't really an argument between Epsilon and Emacs, but one about Lisp vs. C. I agree that an interpretive, easily customizable Lisp environment is better than a compiled language like C for editor customization. But the Epsilon approach does involve very little overhead, and moves much of the extension language away from the main executable when you're not using it. About 1% of the time I use my editor is spent customizing it; I think it's rather nice that Epsilon doesn't waste memory keeping the extension language around the other 99%. Again, let me repeat my original message: Epsilon is *not* better than Emacs. It doesn't pretend to be. But it certainly doesn't compromise the essentials in order to be able to run on a 4.77 Mhz 8088 with 256K memory and a floppy drive (which I think is the smallest configuration it supports). > I don't mean to knock Epsilon, just to correct some overstatement. No problem here. > To the person who asks whether Epsilon's default keybindings are > messed up (i.e. "improved" from Emacs's): yes, they, are, but not too > badly. Depends on how you look at it. The key bindings in Epsilon to some extent a synthesis between the bindings of Unipress and GNU Emacs, with some Epsilon-specific things thrown in for good measure. The GNU purist may cringe, and even I think the Unipress bindings are brain-dead, but there's a few in Unipress that are pretty reasonable (C-z and M-z for scroll-up-one-line and scroll-down-one-line) and those are the ones that Epsilon picked up upon. (Myself, I bind those functions to M-n and M-p in both editors). __ \/ Michael Portuesi Silicon Graphics, Inc. portuesi@sgi.com "It would be a shame to limit that puppy to four bits." -- John Corbett
ab2r@quads.uchicago.edu (Marshall Abrams) (04/16/91)
C/Lisp--compiled/interpreted?: Yeah, some of us prefer Lisp, but most people seem to like C. But for the purpose of running on a slow machine, a compiled extension language is essential. My guess is that what makes Brief and Freemacs so slow is that they don't compile to binary code. This can be a big liability when most of the editor is written in the extension language. I suppose GNU would be at least as bad on an 8088, if it could be run at all.
mrs@netcom.COM (Morgan Schweers) (04/17/91)
Some time ago ab2r@quads.uchicago.edu (Marshall Abrams) happily mumbled: >C/Lisp--compiled/interpreted?: >Yeah, some of us prefer Lisp, but most people seem to like C. But for >the purpose of running on a slow machine, a compiled extension >language is essential. My guess is that what makes Brief and Freemacs >so slow is that they don't compile to binary code. This can be a big >liability when most of the editor is written in the extension >language. I suppose GNU would be at least as bad on an 8088, if it >could be run at all. Greetings, Freemacs is slow? Tell me where. (ObReason: I wanna optimize that code! ;-) ) Freemacs *IS* psuedo-compiled. I admit to having never seen Epsilon, however. I find Freemacs to be almost blazing fast. (My previous editor having been (cough-spit-mumble).) Can you give some details about the editor that compiles from C? (What sort of data objects does it have for handling buffers, what parts of the 'C' language does it grab?) (Ummm, followup to comp.emacs and comp.editors, please. I've edited the gnu.* out of the header and added in comp.emacs and comp.editors. I'd love to put it into the gnu.emacs.help group also, but I *am* requesting info from people using the commercial products.) Input is desired here. In one sentence paragraphs, please send your problems with Freemacs. I'm gettin' that "I wanna *HACK*" feeling again. *PLEASE* do not include the fact that Freemacs doesn't support >64K files. I'm aware of this, and am looking into ways around it already. So are, probably, many other folks. I've never "summarized" to the net before, but I can try if there is enough interest. I *will* try to summarize to the freemacs mailing group, in an effort to get people to write mods for it to fix the problems people have. In general, what prompted you to *NOT* use Freemacs, and instead spend <X> for commercial product <Y> or get other PD/Freeware/Shareware product <Z>? (Please give short descriptions of your problems, seperate paragraphs for each. This will simpify my later editing *MUCHLY*.) I've been *SWAMPED* with questions about the freemacs mailing list ever since I posted up a request for info on it. Because of that, I hereby introduce the info for the 'freemacs mailing list' so that (hopefully) my freemacs-user-group-information-requests will decrease, to give me time to deal with the people mailing in their problems with Freemacs. (I'm really asking for it, aren't I? ;-) ) To join the freemacs mailing list, send mail to listserve@sun.soe.clarkson.edu with the subject (or the body, I never remember which) 'add freemacs'. Alternatively, you could send mail to freemacs-request@sun.soe.clarkson.edu with a request to be added. I believe the first is a program, and the second is a person, *BUT* I can't guarantee that (obviously). Note, please, that the following are *NOT* things that I want to hear about. 1) 64K limit. 2) The programming language. (Suggested additions might be okay, but keep 'em short. If it looks useful, I'll request more info from you, and we'll see what can be done.) 3) Things involving mice or graphics. I don't do graphics, and I *DON'T* do mice. I believe it's mouse support is okay from what I've heard, and I don't think it does graphics, or will. Other than that, drop me (or the freemacs mailing list (which is freemacs@sun.soe.clarkson.edu)) any flat out *BUGS* you've found. Also drop me any problems with it which convinced you not to use it. OTBW, yes I *AM* crazy. However, it seems like this editor (IMHO) is getting a bad rep because of people making vague claims against it. I wanna know just *WHAT* is wrong. -- Morgan Schweers +---- Consider it my donation to GNU. What the heck, eh? They changed my life, I want to help out a bit where I can. -- mrs@netcom.com ----+
phr@lightning.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Rubin) (04/18/91)
From: miles@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Miles Bader) In-reply-to: miles@cogsci.ed.ac.uk's message of 14 Apr 91 12:16:04 GMT Actually, epsilon does an incredible job of picking the best keybindings from both the original emacs and gosling's emacs-- by far the best default set I've ever used. None of this ``We must follow the holy bindings chosen by RMS'' shit. I don't think the Emacs bindings are holy, just that they are STANDARD. How would you like it if the default configuration of Epsilon mapped all the alphabetic keys to a Dvorak layout? That is considered an improvement over qwerty, but it would confuse the hell out of nearly everyone. I also do not think the rebindings (Gosling's or Epsilon's) are improvements. Some are slightly better, some are worse, some are neutral. All are gratuitous attempts to foist off the implementers' personal preferences where a perfectly useable standard existed. If users want to rebind the keys, they can do it themselves, that's what extensibility is for. I think that vendors offering bindings that they think are improvements is a fine idea, as long as they are options that users can activate if they want to. They should not be the DEFAULT so users have to figure out how to change them to be what they are used to. (At least, the vendor should supply a compatibility file). From: portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) writes: Date: 15 Apr 91 15:33:19 GMT [phr: one can't type EEL expressions at Epsilon ...] True. So? So there's an Emacs feature that some people use frequently, that can't be implemented in EEL in a reasonable way. I often find myself typing Lisp expressions to Emacs for one reason or another. ...I can't think of a single feature that GNU has that could not be implemented in Epsilon's EEL extension language.... That is true, EEL can simulate a turing machine, but Emacs Lisp is a lot more convenient to program in. If you want to see a REALLY inconvenient extension language, try Micro Emacs, for which I think you can also write any extension (I haven't tried). The language is a cross between Forth and assembler, I think. If the ability to implement any feature is all that matters, one doesn't need an editor at all---just a compiler with which you can write your own editor! Emacs extensions I don't expect anyone to reimplement in EEL (though who knows): - Info system/Texinfo converter - smart language indenters (Epsilon has a C mode but it doesn't do nearly as much as Emacs's unless it's been improved) - Desk calculator with arbitrary precision arithmetic, scientific functions, symbolic algebra, and matrices - Bitmap font editor - Gnus reader [to person wanting to compile rn.c with EEL: good luck] - Eliza program - any extension needing lots of subprocess control, like GDB mode (Epsilon has a few such commands but I don't think they're written in EEL; this is mainly because of DOS weakness though) - abbrev mode (has some C hooks in Emacs); dynamic abbrevs - (under construction) graphics editor with user-definable objects (certain kinds of users will make heavy use of having the lisp interpreter available at all times for this) - byte compiler for editor's extension language Some of these may sound like strange things to write as editor extensions, but they were done that way because it was more convenient to write them in Emacs Lisp than in C, which goes to prove the advantage of Lisp for programming ease. > Also, EEL is very similar to C, which for > writing editor commands, is *not* an advantage.... This isn't really an argument between Epsilon and Emacs, but one about Lisp vs. C. Using a C-like-syntax for an editor extension language isn't a bad idea for an editor extension language if it makes users more comfortable. Reproducing all the *warts* of C seems going a bit too far. It would be more reasonable to make a language that looked like C but was better suited to the purpose, in the spirit of `awk'. The way I heard the story, the author of Epsilon first decided to write a C compiler, got as far as the front end and put it aside, later wrote a nonextensible editor, then decided that it needed an extnesion language and had this C front end sitting around... > To the person who asks whether Epsilon's default keybindings are > messed up (i.e. "improved" from Emacs's): yes, they, are, but not too > badly. Depends on how you look at it. The key bindings in Epsilon to some extent a synthesis between the bindings of Unipress and GNU Emacs,... I agree that some of their choices may be slight improvements, but not enough to justify creating incompatibility, as said above. If they wanted to redesign the whole command set and not call the editor Emacs-like, fine. If they want to offer their suggested improvements in an alternative setup file, fine. But to make an almost-compatible command set the default is maddening. What they did to ^T and ^V drives me nuts all the time (and before anyone complains about the illogic of ^U^V scrolling the screen 4 lines instead of 4 screens in emacs: it was the result of opinion polls showing that most respondents preferred that behavior. I doubt if whoever changed it conducted any polls before doing so). From: ab2r@quads.uchicago.edu (Marshall Abrams) Date: 15 Apr 91 20:27:34 GMT Yeah, some of us prefer Lisp, but most people seem to like C. But for the purpose of running on a slow machine, a compiled extension language is essential. ... Last I heard, Eel was not compiled to machine code, but to byte code, just like Emacs Lisp. From: <forgot, didn't save original msg> Emacs takes 8 meg of memory... (later: no, less) I used to use Emacs on a 2-meg Vax 11/750 all the time. That machine is comparable to a 386sx laptop in memory and cpu speed. Note that for most such laptops, for the $195 that Epsilon costs, you can buy an extra 2 meg of memory instead. Then you can run Emacs, and the memory can be used for other things too. Move emacs-vs-epsilon discussion to comp.editors, maybe? ***** [new topic, finally]: ***** Since this is comp.sys.laptops and not comp.editors I feel obliged to get slightly back on the subject by saying the one exception to my remarks on messing up the keybindings: departing from standards is ok (IMHO) when the usage pattern of the new thing is different from the old thing. In particular, I feel the "caps lock" key on laptop keyboards is semi-useless and that the key immediately to the left of "A" should always be "<control>". This is because computers are not used like typewriters. Having <control> accessible makes Emacs a lot nicer to use, for example. In Emacs, when I want to enter a region of text in all caps, I usually enter it in mixed case (easier to read what I'm typing), then use upcase-region to upper-casify it. Unfortunately, I see most of the less expensive new 386sx laptops have the bad placement of the control key (expensive ones, like Toshiba, do it right). If any laptop manufacturers are out there, please take note! At least it should be user selectable somehow (not just in the BIOS as some programs actually read the keyboard scan codes).
msp33327@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael S. Pereckas) (04/20/91)
Somehow I don't think the people on the two sides of this argument are
arguing about the same thing. I like GNU Emacs. I really do. I use
it on the university Sequent I'm posting this from. But it doesn't
run under mess-dos. I can't afford to go out and buy a big disk, more
ram, and then spend $500--$1000+ for unix. I'd like to run unix on my
machine, and when I can afford to do so, I will. And I'll use GNU
Emacs as my editor.
Right now I use Qedit. It is inexpensive, fast, works reasonably
well, and I hacked the keybinding file to sort-of resemble GNU Emacs
so I don't go nuts switching from unix to mess-dos and back. I've
played with most of the free Emacs-like editors for dos, and I don't
like any of them too much. But I'm still looking around.
--
< Michael Pereckas <> m-pereckas@uiuc.edu <> Just another student... >
"This desoldering braid doesn't work. What's this cheap stuff made
of, anyway?" "I don't know, looks like solder to me."woo@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Alex Woo RAA) (04/22/91)
Can someone tell me where is the best place to purchase Epsilon?
We have just had a bad experience trying to purchase an
Epsilon update directly from Lugaru Software, Ltd.
Thanks.
========================================================================
Alex Woo, MS 227-6 woo@ames.arc.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center __o NASAMAIL ACWOO
Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000 -\<, SPANET 24582::WOO
(415) 604-6010 (FAX) 604-4357 .....O/ O {hplabs,decwrl,uunet}!ames!woo
========================================================================
========================================================================
Alex Woo, MS 227-6 woo@ames.arc.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center __o NASAMAIL ACWOO
Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000 -\<, SPANET 24582::WOO
(415) 604-6010 (FAX) 604-4357 .....O/ O {hplabs,decwrl,uunet}!ames!woo
========================================================================