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Date:Mon Dec 11 21:03:47 1992 
Subject:Editors 
From: Robin Popplestone  
Volume-ID:921213.01 

I must confess to using Ved for almost everything, even having hitched it
up to viewers for .dvi, .ps and .o files. In general computationally
literate culture (as opposed to computer science types) it would appear to
be evolving as more consistent with how most people actually use computers
than is EMACS, and thus arguably a more general purpose ASCII editor.

There are certain architectural features of EMACS one does like however.
The interpretation of commands via the neat argument descriptors for
functions is better than VED's ad-hoc vedargument stuff. The modes (like
them or not - often I feel imprisoned by modes) are an interesting
application of the shallow binding of variables (i.e. the simple
forms of dlocal in POP-11). Since shallow binding is usually regarded as a
BAD THING by theorists, one finds its use in EMACS interesting.
(Essentially an EMACS buffer has a set of shallow-bound variables which are
related to the mode, whereas VED in fact has a fixed set of shallow-bound
variables for each buffer).

It would be nice to find a POP-11 program which summarised one's mail file.

Robin