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EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable Display Editor (1981)

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51–59 of 59 posts

Re: EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable Display Editor (1981)

#51

The original IDE, and originally outlawed for 'regular' users because it dragged the the DEC KL10 to its knees in I/O traffic if more than 20 or 30 terminals ran it at the same time. It is an interesting environment but for what ever reason I ended up back in VIM (at school it was Emacs or FINE, at home 'MicroEMACS' and at Sun it was 'vi') Now vim is my go to editor but I'm not as fast as some folks who have melded w…

Heh, you were lucky. When I were a lad, vi was reserved for the Honours students and post-grads. Us undergrads had to use `ed`.

Ed! You was lucky to 'ave ed! In my day all we 'ad was a magnetized needle and a very steady hand!

Re: EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable Display Editor (1981)

#52
post #47
post #3

I actually found an earlier version of this paper in my teachers room (published 1979). It's AI Memo 519 (the linked paper is 591A) and I can't find a reference to this anywhere. I even emailed Stallman and he couldn't remember when it was first published (he thought that it was published in 1981 first to). I uploaded it to archive.org: https://archive.org/details/MITAIMemo519 My teacher suspects he got it from a guy…

Surprised you got a reply via email. I thought he prefers snail mail.

Are you thinking of Donald Knuth? rms replies to email.

Re: EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable Display Editor (1981)

#53
post #47
post #3

I actually found an earlier version of this paper in my teachers room (published 1979). It's AI Memo 519 (the linked paper is 591A) and I can't find a reference to this anywhere. I even emailed Stallman and he couldn't remember when it was first published (he thought that it was published in 1981 first to). I uploaded it to archive.org: https://archive.org/details/MITAIMemo519 My teacher suspects he got it from a guy…

Surprised you got a reply via email. I thought he prefers snail mail.

Richard Stallman uses Emacs to read and send email: http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/

It's possible you're mixing up with Donald Knuth: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html

Re: EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable Display Editor (1981)

#54
post #13
post #7

Am I reading this right? You used to... not be able to see your code verbatim as you were editing it? My god, that sounds horrible.

You are reading that right. If it makes it seem any more sane, that's because many text editors of the time weren't written for screens ("displays"), but for teletypes, where you couldn't possibly see your code verbatim as you were editing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ASR-33_at_CHM.agr.jpg For example, the standard editor on early Unix was 'ed'. It is available on most modern *nix systems, if you care to tr…

vi evolved from ex (not ed), didn't it?

Re: EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable Display Editor (1981)

#55
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are reading that right. If it makes it seem any more sane, that's because many text editors of the time weren't written for screens ("displays"), but for teletypes, where you couldn't possibly see your code verbatim as you were editing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ASR-33_at_CHM.agr.jpg For example, the standard editor on early Unix was 'ed'. It is available on most modern *nix systems, if you care to tr…

vi evolved from ex (not ed), didn't it?

Well, ex is 'ex'tended ed, and vi and ex are the same program.

From 1976-1979, the way to open vi was to execute 'ex', and run the 'vi[sual]' command in ex. In 1979, ex learned to launch the 'vi' command automatically if argv[0] is "vi", and a symlink from 'bin/vi' to 'bin/ex' was added.

Re: EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable Display Editor (1981)

#56

I found this amusing, towards the end: Bravo comes from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Its orientation is toward text formatting, and it can display multiple fonts, underlining, etc. It makes heavy use of a graphical pointing device, the `mouse' (see Augment). It is not programmable and offers no special help for editing programs as opposed to text. For more information, see your local industrial espionage agen…

Some trivia: Bravo, the first WYSIWYG word processor, was developed by Butler Lampson and Charles Simonyi at PARC. Simonyi left PARC in 1981 to join Microsoft and led the Word and Excel projects.

Re: EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable Display Editor (1981)

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever used a 300bps modem to connect to the internet? If you did then you would see how avoiding rendering could make you much much more productive.

If anyone using a Mac wants to experience this, there exists the retro terminal emulator "Cathode" which can emulate various modem speeds (along with curved glass, CRT phosphor persistence, etc) http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/

I'm late, but there is now a similar *nix terminal emulator: https://github.com/Swordifish90/cool-old-term

Re: EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable Display Editor (1981)

#58
post #47
post #3

I actually found an earlier version of this paper in my teachers room (published 1979). It's AI Memo 519 (the linked paper is 591A) and I can't find a reference to this anywhere. I even emailed Stallman and he couldn't remember when it was first published (he thought that it was published in 1981 first to). I uploaded it to archive.org: https://archive.org/details/MITAIMemo519 My teacher suspects he got it from a guy…

Surprised you got a reply via email. I thought he prefers snail mail.

    [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
    [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
    [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Re: EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable Display Editor (1981)

#59
post #19
post #2

This is nice to see a relatively brief introduction to the essential features. Steve Yegge wrote: "Go look over Paul Nordstrom's shoulder while he works sometime, if you don't believe me. It's a real eye-opener for someone who's used Visual Blub .NET-like IDEs their whole career." Does anyone know of any public video of Mr. Nordstrom using emacs, or can someone who knows him request one? [edit: properly attribute the…

Well, Emacs Rocks: http://emacsrocks.com/

Not only that, but also: Emacs Loves You. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1sXuHnf_lo
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