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Date:Mon Sep 4 12:37:29 1993 
Subject:Re: emacs & ved; flame-bait. 
From:Tim Read 
Volume-ID:930904.01 

>>>>> On Fri, 3 Sep 1993 13:34:25 GMT, kers@uk.co.hewlett-packard.hpl (Chris Dollin)  said:

> What *do* people like? [Err, perhaps this should go to private email,
> otherwise we will have a large number of p-o'ed po-p users.]

I disagree, I don't think that this issue should be kept off the new group. I
believe that there is a lot of support around for separating the language from
the editor.  Why do we have to be forced to use one particular editor? 

I hope that no one is put off by this discussion, in any case if they are
using a decent news reader (like $$$ in em..  no I'll resist the temptation!),
they can always tag a thread as unwanted, and no further postings on the
subject will appear.

Ok, so off the top of my head (and thanks to Ceri), the things I like about
emacs are (in no particular):

+ mode dependent key maps, and the ability to extend them and define your own.
+ the info system (and the ease of translation into postscript). A hierarchical
  info system is much preferable to a flat one like the poplog help ref and
  teach system. You end up going around in circles.  
+ all commands are issued by simple combinations of C- and M- keys which:
  + are the same across all gnu-emacs variants that I have encountered.
  + are the same across all terminals (unlike ved where there seems to be a
    different key map for each different terminal type (AHHHHHHHH). 
  + are supported to some extent in most decent unix shells (tcsh, zsh, bash,
    ksh) for substitution and command line editing. Also in some packages like
    Framemaker. 
  + make the finding out of key bindings C-h b, and function variable names C-h
    whatever, very easy. 
  + make use of sensible mnemonics for basic functions ([p]revious, [n]ext,
    [b]ack, [f]orward, [d]elete, [k]ill, [y]ank, [w]ipe (?)), which make
    learning and reapplying keys in different modes very easy. 
  + finally if you really get stuck there is always the command line, so that
    if you don't know the binding you can do M-x function.
+ the zillions of different modes that are available. I could go on about
  these for ages, but a couple of key points:
  + modes for all the major languages (several dialects of lisp, C, C++,
    Pop11, Perl, etc etc - and different styles for any particular language). 
  + threaded mail and news reader, also a choice of several other mail and
    news readers
  + a superb ftp mode (thanks to Andy Norman).
  + a spread sheet (oleo).
  + a full interface to ispell, which has saved my life on many occasions.
  + an absolutely amazing LaTeX mode (auc-tex), with the only source level
    LaTeX debugger I have encountered. Hacking LaTeX without this would be a
    real pain in the.. 
+ full gnu-emacs exists on many different architectures and operating systems,
  from the usual unix and vms machines down via PCs, MACs, onto the old
  Ataris. I haven't got a copy for my Psion3 yet, but I am working on it..
+ a tutorial is offered as soon as you startup emacs, unlike ved.
+ there are hooks built into a lot of groovy packages that make them dead easy
  to use within emacs.
+ powerful regular expression matching facilities.
+ elisp.
+ it is free.
+ it is faster than ved to start up from scratch, and even with a large
  customisation setup, you can byte-compile it to keep the time down. 
+ many thousands of users world wide, so no matter where you are, there is
  lots of local support and FAQs and self help groups. 
+ robustness. Better multiple buffer handling. Multiple windows on the
  same buffer (ved can't do that).

That is all that occurs to me right now, no doubt there are many more. 

Finally, your point about white space and the positioning of the cursor is not
a problem, as all functions that manipulate words etc, can cope easily with
arbitrary white space.

In the interest of presenting a balanced argument :-) , one criticism with
emacs would be the way that it doesn't show up marked regions like ved does -
very irritating..

 Tim



--
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   Tim Read, Email: tmr@cs.bham.ac.uk, The Attention and Affect Project, 
   Cognitive Science Research Centre, School of Computer Science,
   The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, England
   Phone: +44-(0)21-414-4766, Fax: +44-(0)21-414-4281
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