NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/comp/sys/apollo/3993

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-19 | 3.4 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!darwin.sura.net!ukma!cs.widener.edu!dsinc!pitt.edu!usenet.cis.pitt.edu!lutz
From: [e-mail] (John Lutz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: Need Some Advice..
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 19 Nov 92 20:40:35 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
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Sender: [e-mail]
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In-reply-to: [e-mail]'s message of 19 Nov 92 14:29:38 GMT


>>>>> John Breen
>>>>> who can be reached at: [e-mail]
>>>>> (whose comments are cited below with " johnb> "),
>>>>> had this to say in article <[e-mail]>
>>>>> concerning the subject of Re: Need Some Advice..
>>>>> (see <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> for more details)
 johnb> One thing I haven't seen anyone mention when this subject comes up, is
 johnb> the DM's ability to make multiple copies of a window.
 johnb>
 johnb> If there is a was to do this under X, I'd appreciate it if someone
 johnb> would tell me.

Well, I have been following this thread for a while now and feel I need to
pipe in.  Two words. tcsh - emacs.
    As far as i am concerned, an xterm running tcsh beats the hell out of
a pad: command completion(for *real*), full shell programming that looks and
acts like the programming language that I work with all the time, fast (try
more in a pad. (ho hum into raw mode, ho hum clear the screen, ho hum, display
the text, ho hum hit <return> (!?!?!?!?!?!?) to go back into cooked mode.
Furrfu!)).  I can keydef the apollo keys to make the xterm window scroll up or
down, just like a pad.
    I consider GNU Emacs the ultimate in editors.  Yes, the learning curve
is steep and long, but you can do practically everything in emacs so you will
have lots of practice.  Edit a file in multiple windows, view multiple
windows, read news, send mail, read mail, file management using dired, compile
files in a buffer window, debug in another, edit in a third, use the calc
package to do math, and the plot interface to plot the results using gnu plot,
edit files on any other machines you have FTP access to via ange-ftp just as
if you were sitting on that machine, netsurf via gopher, run ispell on any
buffer-region-word I want to, etc, etc, etc. If you
don't like some aspect of the editor, you have *ALL* the source code to make
any changes you want. If you don't know or want to program in lisp, there is
probably a package in the elisp archives (which by the way, has it's own
package which allows you to interactively search and retrieve these packages
using ange-ftp) which will do what you want.  Oh, and tcsh uses gnu emacs
conventions as its editor.

    All of this combined with the fact that I *know* that GNU emacs and
tcsh will be ported to whatever HP comes up with down the road, or whatever
other hardware we decide on, or whatever major Unix-type box we have here at
the university makes me feel that the time I have spent learning emacs has
been well spent.

    And I haven't even gotten around to compiling Epoch yet.....

-jl
--
John Lutz                               University Anesthesiology
[e-mail]                3471 5th Ave. Suite 910
[phone]                           Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3221
"Look, it's trying to think." - Albert Rosenfield