g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu (George C. Harrison, Norfolk State University) (04/18/91)
Does anyone know of a "decent" program (ascii) editor for Unix (SYS V REV. 4). By "decent" I mean anything that is not vi or emacs or versions thereof! I have heard that there is a VMS-like EVE editor, a WordStar-like editor, a WordPerfice-like editor, etc. for Unix, but I haven't been able to trace them to any FTP site or commercial product. You may or may not suppose that I am a Unix fan, but I am sincerely interested in some kind of SCREEN-ORIENTED editor for Unix (on the Amiga) that does not fall into the vi/emacs like functionality (or non-functionality). George.... George C. Harrison, Professor of Computer Science Norfolk State University, 2401 Corprew Avenue, Norfolk VA 23504 Internet: g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu Phone: 804-683-8654
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (04/19/91)
I have a System V release 3 compatible version of the "dte" editor: it's a Wordstar-command compatible windowing editor, in the public domain. (The name stands for Doug's Text Editor, after the author Doug Thomson in Australia (doug@munnari.oz.au)) (perhaps Commodore would be interested in including it in A3000UX at some point?) In any case, I'd be happy to send anyone a copy, or post to alt.sources if there are enough requests. It needs some work handling tabs and control characters (right now they show up as inverse-video uppercase letters), and long lines seem to vanish off the screen... but it's a pretty handy editor for novices anyway... -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' peter@ferranti.com +1 713 274 5180. 'U` "Have you hugged your wolf today?"
aq078@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Glenn Waldron) (04/19/91)
I've just uploaded an Amiga-Unix-specific text editor to ab20... It's called "xi_unix_ed.lzh" and was uploaded to incoming/amiga/EDITORS/ but might be elsewhere now... Glenn. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- Glenn A. Waldron Virginia Tech E-Mail: gwaldron@gnu.ai.mit.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------
ac12@vaxb.acs.unt.edu (04/19/91)
In article <846.280ca9ab@vger.nsu.edu>, g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu (George C. Harrison, Norfolk State University) writes: > > Does anyone know of a "decent" program (ascii) editor for Unix (SYS V REV. > 4). By "decent" I mean anything that is not vi or emacs or versions thereof! > > I have heard that there is a VMS-like EVE editor, a WordStar-like editor, a > WordPerfice-like editor, etc. for Unix, but I haven't been able to trace them > to any FTP site or commercial product. WordPerfect does make a Unix version of their Word Processing program, but I don't know if they have a version that works with SVR4. WordPerfect has pretty good educational pricing, though. There is also a Unix version of TPU (with EVE as the default TPU section). NU/TPU is available from a/soft Development, 11 Red Roof Lane, Suite 4, Salem, NH 03079. Once again, since we are running it inder SUN/OS, I don't know if there is a SVR4 version. > > George C. Harrison, Professor of Computer Science Regards to Ringo and Paul (Sorry, I couldn't resist). :) Philip Baczewski Academic Computing Services University of North Texas
davidm@uunet.UU.NET (David S. Masterson) (04/20/91)
>>>>> On 18 Apr 91 00:01:47 GMT, g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu (George C. Harrison, >>>>> Norfolk State University) said: George> Does anyone know of a "decent" program (ascii) editor for Unix (SYS V George> REV. 4). By "decent" I mean anything that is not vi or emacs or George> versions thereof! Gee, such prejudices... ;-) George> I have heard that there is a VMS-like EVE editor, a WordStar-like George> editor, a WordPerfice-like editor, etc. for Unix, but I haven't been George> able to trace them to any FTP site or commercial product. I think I remember hearing about an EVE mode for Emacs. Have you tried querying MIT about it in comp.emacs or gnu.emacs.help? -- ==================================================================== David Masterson Consilium, Inc. (415) 691-6311 640 Clyde Ct. uunet!cimshop!davidm Mtn. View, CA 94043 ==================================================================== "If someone thinks they know what I said, then I didn't say it!"
alfalfa@milton.u.washington.edu (Corey Lawson) (04/20/91)
Actually, GnuEmacs (at least on the mainframes) has an EDT mode. I don't know about other versions...and I would think it wouldn't be too hard (tedious, but not hard) to make a word mode, a wp mode, etc., as long as you could leave off some special features. But those upgrades would probably be very device-dependent (i.e., what would be the point of having italics if all you have is a vt100 terminal???). -corey lawson alfalfa@milton
zebr360@ut-emx.uucp (Jerry Heyman) (04/20/91)
In article <846.280ca9ab@vger.nsu.edu> g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu (George C. Harrison, Norfolk State University) writes: > > Does anyone know of a "decent" program (ascii) editor for Unix (SYS V REV. >4). By "decent" I mean anything that is not vi or emacs or versions thereof! > I just spent a couple of days porting CRISP (Rev 1.9) to an IBM RT and an IBM RISC System/6000. It is supposed to be similar to the MS-DOS editor BRIEF (but I cannot confirm or deny this because I'm unfamiliar with anything to do with MS-DOS). The half dozen people that I work with were all 'vi' fanatics (me included) and in the last couple of days, we've all been spoiled using this new editor. Its available on UUNET, but I don't have the exact e-mail address with me right now. >George C. Harrison, Professor of Computer Science >Norfolk State University, 2401 Corprew Avenue, Norfolk VA 23504 >Internet: g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu Phone: 804-683-8654 jerry -- Jerry Heyman by day: IBM PSP, AIX Development zebr360@emx.utexas.edu by nite: Adjunct Lecturer at St. Edward's Univ. *All comments are my own and should not be construed to represent any one else
sysop@insider.zer.sub.org (04/20/91)
> in some kind of SCREEN-ORIENTED editor for Unix (on the Amiga) that does not > fall into the vi/emacs like functionality (or non-functionality). Well, vi IMHO is a nice editor. No matter where you go, you'll always find one... But, speaking of a `nice' editor, is there anybody out there programing one that will be at least nearly as good as CED ? If not, and if there are some people that would be interested in writing one, I'd go ahead and try my best... ;-) --- SysOp @ INSIDER -- Bugs ? Data Becker & GFA only produce FEATURES!
cpetterb@glacier.sim.es.com (Cary Petterborg) (04/22/91)
In article <846.280ca9ab@vger.nsu.edu> g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu (George C. Harrison, Norfolk State University) writes: > Does anyone know of a "decent" program (ascii) editor for Unix (SYS V REV. > 4). By "decent" I mean anything that is not vi or emacs or versions thereof! > > I have heard that there is a VMS-like EVE editor, a WordStar-like editor, a > WordPerfice-like editor, etc. for Unix, but I haven't been able to trace them > to any FTP site or commercial product. > > You may or may not suppose that I am a Unix fan, but I am sincerely interested > in some kind of SCREEN-ORIENTED editor for Unix (on the Amiga) that does not > fall into the vi/emacs like functionality (or non-functionality). You appear to want a word processor program not a program editor. If you want a word processor, emacs may not be your cup of tea. Even as a program editor you may not like emacs (I agree about vi). But DON'T say that emacs is not a decent program editor. Emacs, by its proven popularity is a decent program editor. In an insane society the sane man must appear insane. Unless the world is insane, you are wrong. Maybe it is just your ignorance about emacs that is the problem. Are you really a professor? A statement as you made seems awfully narrow minded. My $.02 worth. Cary -- _______________ Cary Petterborg (801)582-5847 x6446 Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp. Simulation Division SLC, UT 84108 UUCP: ...!uunet!sim.es.com!cpetterb *NET: cpetterb@glacier.sim.es.com
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (04/23/91)
In article <CPETTERB.91Apr22112807@mickey.glacier.sim.es.com> cpetterb@glacier.sim.es.com (Cary Petterborg) writes: > But DON'T say that emacs is not a decent program editor. Emacs, by its > proven popularity is a decent program editor. Popularity does not prove anything. MS-DOS is the most popular operating system in the world, judging by the number of users. What you consider a good editor is a matter of taste and what you have programmed into your muscle memory. Flaming someone because their fingers are used to another program is at best unproductive. When I ported "dte" to the systems we have our managers on (mainly because they have lots of spare serial ports and they support our scheduling software) one of the other UNIX guys here was disgusted. My boss was delighted. > Are you really a professor? A statement as you made seems awfully > narrow minded. No comment. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' peter@ferranti.com +1 713 274 5180. 'U` "Have you hugged your wolf today?"
brsmith@cs.umn.edu (Brian R. Smith) (04/23/91)
In <T0XA4Y@xds13.ferranti.com> peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >In article <CPETTERB.91Apr22112807@mickey.glacier.sim.es.com> cpetterb@glacier.sim.es.com (Cary Petterborg) writes: >> But DON'T say that emacs is not a decent program editor. Emacs, by its >> proven popularity is a decent program editor. >Popularity does not prove anything. MS-DOS is the most popular >operating system in the world, judging by the number of users. No, popularity alone doesn't say much. But, vi comes with every unix system, and MANY folks go through the trouble of replacing it with emacs. GNU emacs is more powerful, more flexible, and has "Zippy the Pinhead" quotes... >What you consider a good editor is a matter of taste and what you >have programmed into your muscle memory. Well, yes, that is true. BUT, the standard emacs keys (the 8-10 keys for cursor movement, delete-char, kill-line, etc.) are also found in the Athena string widget, the Motif string widget, the Open Look string widget, FrameMaker, tcsh, etc. I don't know if emacs is the cause of this consistency, but it is convenient. If you HAVE to learn either vi or emacs, I'd say go for emacs. I haven't seen anything friendlier on a unix machine. Just another $0.02 to heap on the pile... -- Brian brsmith@cs.umn.edu
aru@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Sri-Man) (04/23/91)
In article <1991Apr23.155426.18260@cs.umn.edu> brsmith@cs.umn.edu (Brian R. Smith) writes: >In <T0XA4Y@xds13.ferranti.com> peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: > >>Popularity does not prove anything. MS-DOS is the most popular >>operating system in the world, judging by the number of users. > >No, popularity alone doesn't say much. But, vi comes with every unix No one said what the criteria was for "popular" was. >emacs. GNU emacs is more powerful, more flexible, and has "Zippy the >Pinhead" quotes... Agreed...vi people should admit this..its great for debugging code. >Well, yes, that is true. BUT, the standard emacs keys (the 8-10 keys >for cursor movement, delete-char, kill-line, etc.) are also found in >the Athena string widget, the Motif string widget, the Open Look News to me, doesn't work on my terminal. Although the arrow keys work on vi. :-) Look guys, you know this vi vs gnuemacs thing is not going to get anywhere, so why start what looks like a flame war between emacs and vi. So lets just drop it. You guys sound suspiciously like Amiga users. ;-) Sri
lindwall@beowulf.ucsd.edu (John Lindwall) (04/24/91)
In article <1991Apr23.155426.18260@cs.umn.edu> brsmith@cs.umn.edu (Brian R. Smith) writes: >In <T0XA4Y@xds13.ferranti.com> peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: > >>In article <CPETTERB.91Apr22112807@mickey.glacier.sim.es.com> cpetterb@glacier.sim.es.com (Cary Petterborg) writes: >>> [Religion] >> [More religion] > [RELIGION] Please stop. OK, OK, if some of you guys need reinforcement send me email, and I'll gladly tell you how your editor is the *best* and how smart you are for choosing it. -- John Lindwall lindwall@cs.ucsd.edu "Oh look at me! I'm all flooby! I'll be a son of a gun!" -- Flaming Carrot
g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu (George C. Harrison, Norfolk State University) (04/24/91)
In article <CPETTERB.91Apr22112807@mickey.glacier.sim.es.com>, cpetterb@glacier.sim.es.com (Cary Petterborg) writes: > In article <846.280ca9ab@vger.nsu.edu> g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu (George C. Harrison, Norfolk State University) writes: > >> Does anyone know of a "decent" program (ascii) editor for Unix (SYS V REV. >> 4). By "decent" I mean anything that is not vi or emacs or versions thereof! >> > You appear to want a word processor program not a program editor. > If you want a word processor, emacs may not be your cup of tea. Even > as a program editor you may not like emacs (I agree about vi). But > DON'T say that emacs is not a decent program editor. Emacs, by its > proven popularity is a decent program editor. > > In an insane society the sane man must appear insane. > > Unless the world is insane, you are wrong. Maybe it is just your ignorance > about emacs that is the problem. Are you really a professor? A statement > as you made seems awfully narrow minded. > > My $.02 worth. > I'll admit that my views of emacs and vi are personal, but I really don't prefer them as editors and neither do a lot of others. My point was not to slam these editing environments (sorry, if it sounded like that), it was to get some suggestions for alternatives to those of us who like to use EVE (under VMS), WordPerfect's Program Editor, Brief, etc. I have received several suggestions for PD and Commercial editors. I think that we'll go Commercial on this as a vi-able alternative. Oh... ya... I am a narrow-minded (and absent-minded) professor. > Cary > -- > _______________ > Cary Petterborg (801)582-5847 x6446 > Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp. Simulation Division SLC, UT 84108 > UUCP: ...!uunet!sim.es.com!cpetterb *NET: cpetterb@glacier.sim.es.com George... George C. Harrison Norfolk State University, 2401 Corprew Avenue, Norfolk VA 23504 Internet: g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu Phone: 804-683-8654
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (04/25/91)
The Flaming Carrot doesn't push religion. The Flaming Carrot is a fearless fighter for truth, justice, and shooting crooks in the head! Pthththt... -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' peter@ferranti.com +1 713 274 5180. 'U` "Have you hugged your wolf today?"
bqt@cia.docs.uu.se (Johnny Billquist) (04/25/91)
In <846.280ca9ab@vger.nsu.edu> g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu (George C. Harrison, Norfolk State University) writes: > Does anyone know of a "decent" program (ascii) editor for Unix (SYS V REV. >4). By "decent" I mean anything that is not vi or emacs or versions thereof! > >I have heard that there is a VMS-like EVE editor, a WordStar-like editor, a >WordPerfice-like editor, etc. for Unix, but I haven't been able to trace them >to any FTP site or commercial product. > >You may or may not suppose that I am a Unix fan, but I am sincerely interested >in some kind of SCREEN-ORIENTED editor for Unix (on the Amiga) that does not >fall into the vi/emacs like functionality (or non-functionality). Hmmm. You might take this for a joke, but have you checked into TECO? There is a TECO written in C for unix. TECO is really weird before you know it, but it can be screen oriented, or character oriented. You can write programs in it, and edit any kind of files. The original EMACS was written in TECO. ====================================================================== Everybody know that the DECstation - I'm on a bus is a pdp8, which is a RISC, but - on a psychodelic trip, where did MIPS computers get into it? - reading murder books - and tryin' to stay hip. - Johnny Billquist - Billy Idol D89.JOHNNY-BILLQUIST@AIDA.CSD.UU.SE ======================================================================
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (04/25/91)
Editor war! Editor war! Don't feel for a moment like like comp.unix.amiga doesn't have equal rights on taking something like this to comp.sys.amiga.advocacy!!!!! brsmith@cs.umn.edu (Brian R. Smith) writes: > No, popularity alone doesn't say much. But, vi comes with every unix > system, and MANY folks go through the trouble of replacing it with > emacs. GNU emacs is more powerful, more flexible, and has "Zippy the > Pinhead" quotes... Yep, and _lots_ of other garbage that needs yanking out for a decent run time size. Nice editor, if it would only stop there. > The standard emacs keys (the 8-10 keys for cursor movement, > delete-char, kill-line, etc.) are also found in the Athena string > widget, the Motif string widget, the Open Look string widget, > FrameMaker, tcsh, etc. I don't know if emacs is the cause of this > consistency, but it is convenient. Of course, that doesn't hold a candle to the fact that learning the vi keys by heart makes you a killer nethack player. ;-) > If you HAVE to learn either vi or emacs, I'd say go for emacs. I > haven't seen anything friendlier on a unix machine. Nope, learn them both. Emacs has feature power, view windowing, good reformating, superior shell execute and capture capabilities; vi has _much_ superior navigation capabilities and filter interfaces. Emacs is much better for code, vi is much better (teamed with some decent text filters) for text. For coming up quick to get a short job done, vi wins hands down; for an editor you can stay in all day, GNUemacs can't be beat. Neither one of them has a file/buffer access mechanism or multi-file _really_ fast simultaneous edit capability worth warm spit, though each lets you carry the same edit from file to file with some savings in keystrokes but still lots of tedium. Compared, that is, to a decent interactive editor that performs a text substitution or string search on all the files in all the directories pulled out by a pathname regular expression, or selected by a mouse sweep on a multiscreen file requestor, faster than you can see the affected file names fly by. Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us> -- Wishing wistfully that Stuart Mc<whatever> would port his editor "Hack" from '386 MS-DOS to Unix so we'd actually have a halfway acceptable large project source code editor in Unix boxes.
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (04/25/91)
cpetterb@glacier.sim.es.com (Cary Petterborg) writes: > g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu (George C. Harrison, Norfolk State University) > writes: >> Does anyone know of a "decent" program (ascii) editor for Unix (SYS V >> REV. 4). By "decent" I mean anything that is not vi or emacs or >> versions thereof! >> I have heard that there is a VMS-like EVE editor, a WordStar-like >> editor, a WordPerfice-like editor, etc. for Unix, but I haven't been >> able to trace them to any FTP site or commercial product. >> You may or may not suppose that I am a Unix fan, but I am sincerely >> interested in some kind of SCREEN-ORIENTED editor for Unix (on the >> Amiga) that does not fall into the vi/emacs like functionality (or >> non-functionality). Compared to the best programmer's editor I've seen (company proprietary on an MS-DOS '386 box, not for sale), nothing on Unix is even close. You best bet would be to chase down the folks who do Brief, and ask if they intend or have a Unix version. As the workstation market expands and comes down in price, and the installed base goes up, and the binary OS call standard spreads, the market becomes big enough for the shrink wrap product vendors to consider, so there may be something available by nwo. > You appear to want a word processor program not a program editor. If > you want a word processor, emacs may not be your cup of tea. Even as a > program editor you may not like emacs (I agree about vi). But DON'T > say that emacs is not a decent program editor. Emacs, by its proven > popularity is a decent program editor. Nonsense. Emacs may be a good editor (I like it) but that doesn't follow from your logic. The two driving forces in its widespread use are that it is public domain, and thus widely ported, and also thus free, and that there isn't much else around better. It's a big step up from vi for editing code, but it is a long, long way from "decent". 1) There are whole categories of desirable features either missing or so obscure as to be unanvailable; like decent, easy to type, text chunk, rather than file or window oriented, navigation commands; like useful file requestors; like buffer selection without retyping the buffer name every time. 2) There are lots of completely counterintuitive, grotesquely bad and hideously inconvenient design flaws that are grandfathered in and will never get fixed, like: sabotaging users whose destructive backspace key is not DEL but ^H by using that for the hard wired (and nearly impossible to remap at edit time) "help" key, and the counterintuitive and frustrating near miss on being character oriented, as when a newline gets ignored as a self-insert when a blank line already follows it. 3) It's scripting and macro command language is wonderfully obscure and only loveable by people heavily into AI or text processing programming; most Emacs users haven't a clue about Lisp, which means for most people the macro facility is unavailable. 4) The learning curve is much too steep. You can sit down with a good shrink wrap, menu oriented editor for microcomputers and everything is a mouse selection or two away, available for instant use; it can take months to even _find_ the emacs online help, much less be comfortable with using it. There are good and sufficient reasons that lots of people detest emacs. > In an insane society the sane man must appear insane. > Unless the world is insane, you are wrong. Maybe it is just your > ignorance about emacs that is the problem. There speaks a man who has never used a _really_ good editor. > Are you really a professor? Yes, George is really a professor, and he's almost as old as I am, and a lot more useful to the world. > A statement as you made seems awfully narrow minded. Not nearly as much so as yours. Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
cpetterb@glacier.sim.es.com (Cary Petterborg) (04/25/91)
I should have known when I posted my original reply that there would be a flame fest. I have been hearing enough grumbling from the engineers here about Emacs until they learn it that I felt somehow compelled to respond. BTW, all the engineers here in my department were told to use Emacs. All those who have really tried to use it have found that they REALLY like it for program development. Where I worked before, the company president liked an editor we no longer supported. We made emacs work just like his favorite editor. As time went on, he abandoned his emulator mode and started using the standard emacs stuff, with some of his own modifications that he developed on his own. He was on a dumb ASCII terminal and hardly ever left Emacs because it gave him almost every- thing he wanted. To this day he swears by Emacs for program development. He even uses it for word processing, as I do. 'nough said. In article <1991Apr25.083732.6664@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: > > You appear to want a word processor program not a program editor. If > > you want a word processor, emacs may not be your cup of tea. Even as a > > program editor you may not like emacs (I agree about vi). But DON'T > > say that emacs is not a decent program editor. Emacs, by its proven > > popularity is a decent program editor. > > Nonsense. Emacs may be a good editor (I like it) but that doesn't follow > from your logic. The two driving forces in its widespread use are that > it is public domain, and thus widely ported, and also thus free, and > that there isn't much else around better. Not even commercial software. Isn't it interesting that Emacs is even sold by some commercial software companies. Not GNU Emacs, which is in most cases superior, but Emacs nonetheless. If they are making a profit, it must be good enough for people to pay good money for it. > It's a big step up from vi for editing code, but it is a long, long way > from "decent". If you JUST want to edit, maybe not, for you and some others. > 1) There are whole categories of desirable features either missing or so > obscure as to be unanvailable; like decent, easy to type, text chunk, > rather than file or window oriented, navigation commands; like useful > file requestors; like buffer selection without retyping the buffer name > every time. I don't know what system you are working on, but all currently opened buffers are only a <shift><ctrl>mouse-click away on mine. Very fast and very easy! As for loading of files into buffers (not already loaded into a buffer), they are only a <shift>mouse-click away, and I can navigate with my mouse through the directory hierarchy. If you want to know what to do to get this in your system, I will be glad to tell you. > 2) There are lots of completely counterintuitive, grotesquely bad and > hideously inconvenient design flaws that are grandfathered in and will > never get fixed, like: My, my... > sabotaging users whose destructive backspace key is not DEL but ^H by > using that for the hard wired (and nearly impossible to remap at edit > time) "help" key, Easily changed in your .emacs file. Simple really. Add to your .emacs: (global-unset-key "\C-h") (global-set-key "\C-h" 'delete-backward-char) Doesn't look nearly impossible to me. (Yes, I just tried this and it works beautifully.) > and the counterintuitive and frustrating near miss on being character > oriented, as when a newline gets ignored as a self-insert when a blank > line already follows it. Please explain. > > 3) It's scripting and macro command language is wonderfully obscure and > only loveable by people heavily into AI or text processing programming; > most Emacs users haven't a clue about Lisp, which means for most people > the macro facility is unavailable. Try asking in gnu.emacs.help, I'll bet someone will send you the necessary code to do the functionality you desire. I would suspect that a professor could even get a student to write the necessary code to do just about anything he wants. He's the one that started this, right? And aren't professors supposed to be fonts of knowledge about the subjects they teach students? ;-) (No reflection on you really Prof. Harrison. I know that professors are as specialized as MD's today. Gone are the days of the country doctor...) > 4) The learning curve is much too steep. You can sit down with a good > shrink wrap, menu oriented editor for microcomputers and everything is a > mouse selection or two away, available for instant use; it can take > months to even _find_ the emacs online help, much less be comfortable > with using it. Ever try the emacs on-line tutorial? Oh, I guess you haven't. > There are good and sufficient reasons that lots of people detest emacs. > > > In an insane society the sane man must appear insane. > > > Unless the world is insane, you are wrong. Maybe it is just your > > ignorance about emacs that is the problem. > > There speaks a man who has never used a _really_ good editor. There speaks a man who has never really used Emacs. > > Are you really a professor? > > Yes, George is really a professor, and he's almost as old as I am, and > a lot more useful to the world. No doubt. (;-) > > A statement as you made seems awfully narrow minded. > > Not nearly as much so as yours. No doubt. ( : - 0 ) > > Kent, the man from xanth. > <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us> Sincerly, and hopefully with composure, Cary -- _______________ Cary Petterborg (801)582-5847 x6446 Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp. Simulation Division SLC, UT 84108 UUCP: ...!uunet!sim.es.com!cpetterb *NET: cpetterb@glacier.sim.es.com
frank@morpheus.UUCP (Frank McPherson) (04/26/91)
In article <1991Apr25.083732.6664@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: > > sabotaging users whose destructive backspace key is not DEL but ^H by > using that for the hard wired (and nearly impossible to remap at edit > time) "help" key, > -- One solution (admittedly, not a great one) to the problem of Emacs using Delete instead of CTRL-H is to just dump the help functions. As you say, they're next to impossible to use, anyway. So, here's what you do to use CTRL-H (more popularly known as Backspace) for the purpose it was intended: add this line to the file .emacs in your home directory and it'll map the delete-backward-char function to the backspace key on your Amiga. Incidentally, the old assignment of delete-backward-char to the delete key is still around, so you can use either one. (define-key global-map "\C-h" 'delete-backward-char) -- Frank McPherson INTERNET : emcphers@fox.cs.vt.edu -- -- AmigaUUCP : uunet!vtserf!morpheus!frank --
himacdon@maytag.uwaterloo.ca (Hamish Macdonald) (04/26/91)
>>>>> On 25 Apr 91 21:58:35 GMT, >>>>> In message <frank.4582@morpheus.UUCP>, >>>>> frank@morpheus.UUCP (Frank McPherson) wrote: Frank> So, here's what you do to use CTRL-H (more popularly known as Frank> Backspace) for the purpose it was intended: add this line to Frank> the file .emacs in your home directory and it'll map the Frank> delete-backward-char function to the backspace key on your Frank> Amiga. Incidentally, the old assignment of Frank> delete-backward-char to the delete key is still around, so you Frank> can use either one. Frank> (define-key global-map "\C-h" 'delete-backward-char) The better solution is to swap BS and DEL at the lowest levels of emacs input, using the keyboard-translate table. This lets all emacs code transparently think its getting a DEL, when what you are typing is CTRL-H. I'm not going to say how here, but if anyone wants to know, they can send me email. Hamish. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- himacdon@maytag.uwaterloo.ca watmath!maytag!himacdon
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (04/29/91)
Good to hear that there is _any_ solution, though my request for one that can be used at edit time is still unanswered. The more important point is still not understood, however -- no commercial product worth its price would be released with a braindead misfeature like the rape of the backspace key disabling "out of the box" use of GNU emacs for much of the world, yet repeated calls over several years to the keepers of GNU emacs have elicited no change whatever -- this bogosity is graven in stone because the keyboard of the implementer of GNU emacs happens to have DEL where over half the keyboards in the world have BS, and that settles the issue. By this single example do I destroy the claim that the CopyLeft paradigm of programming has anything useful to offer the software marketplace, and fully defend George Harrison's right to find emacs less than ideal. Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
jac@gandalf.llnl.gov (James A. Crotinger) (04/29/91)
frank@morpheus.UUCP (Frank McPherson) writes: > One solution (admittedly, not a great one) to the problem of Emacs using > Delete instead of CTRL-H is to just dump the help functions. As you > say, they're next to impossible to use, anyway. > So, here's what you do to use CTRL-H (more popularly known as Backspace) for > the purpose it was intended: add this line to the file .emacs in your > home directory and it'll map the delete-backward-char function to the > backspace key on your Amiga. Incidentally, the old assignment of > delete-backward-char to the delete key is still around, so you can use > either one. > (define-key global-map "\C-h" 'delete-backward-char) You don't have to dump help to do this. Just reassign the help key to something else. For example, the following lines remap the help key to be the one labeled "HELP" on a Sparcstation keyboard (which sends the sequence <ESC>[-1z): (global-unset-key "\M-[") (global-set-key "\e[-1z" help-map) (global-set-key "\e[-1z\e[-1z" 'help-for-help) (global-set-key "\C-h" 'backward-delete-char-untabify) ;(global-set-key "\177" 'delete-char) To find out what to use to map the Amiga's help key to "help-map", get into emacs and type <CTL>q followed by the help key. If the help key is getting sent, it'll show up as text (when using a regular Amiga and VLT, it comes out as <ESC>Ol (big O little l), so you'd replace \e[-1z with \eOl). The last line maps the delete key to do the same thing it does on the Amiga (delete the character "under" the cursor). Unfortunately the Sun has the positions of the delete and backspace keys mixed up, which causes me great frustration, so I commented it out. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- James A. Crotinger Lawrence Livermore Natl Lab // The above views jac@moonshine.llnl.gov P.O. Box 808; L-630 \\ // are mine and are not (415) 422-0259 Livermore CA 94550 \\/ necessarily those of LLNL
msucats@att1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU (msucats) (05/03/91)
In article <1991Apr25.083732.6664@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>, Kent writes: > The more important point is still not understood, however -- no > commercial product worth its price would be released with a braindead > misfeature like the rape of the backspace key VMS does not allow any obvious kind of remapping of ^H to DEL either. > disabling "out of the box" use of GNU emacs for much of the world, yet > repeated calls over several years to the keepers of GNU emacs have > elicited no change whatever -- this bogosity is graven in stone > because the keyboard of the implementer of GNU emacs happens to have > DEL where over half the keyboards in the world have BS, and that > settles the issue. This isn't a justification, but an explanation: ...however, a good number of hackers in the world use, or have used, systems where DEL means delete-to-the-left and can't be remapped. It was just Un*x's bad luck to allow DEL to do this instead of forcing # upon the user. :-) The standard drives out the configurable. I bet Emacs v19 is shipped with the swap easily available, tho. I was really annoyed by switching back and forth too, until I was forced to settle on a single delete-to-the-left key for all the systems I use. > By this single example do I destroy the claim that the CopyLeft paradigm > of programming has anything useful to offer the software marketplace, and > fully defend George Harrison's right to find emacs less than ideal. By this single example do I destroy the claim that DEC has anything useful to offer the software marketplace, and fully defend your right to complain vigorously to the FSF. Jay Carlson msucats@att1.mankato.msus.edu