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From: hollen@zeta.megatek.uucp (Dion Hollenbeck)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Programmable Editors
Message-ID: <599@megatek.UUCP>
Date: 29 Jun 89 15:00:23 GMT
References: <25295@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Sender: news@megatek.UUCP
Lines: 68

From article <25295@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, by srt@maui.cs.ucla.edu (Scott Turner):
> 
>   The recent discussion of whether or not mEmacs is programmable has
> triggered me to think a bit about whether or not one wants, on a
> micro, a programmable editor at all.
> [...good stuff deleted ...] 
>   In light of this, what is needed more than a programmable editor is
> one that can be programmed at build-time.  [...more deleted...]
>   There are two advantages to this.  First, such an editor will have a
> quicker start-up time, since it will not have to read initialization
> files.  And that's important under an OS like MS-DOS where there is no
> job control and an editor may be started many times in a session.
> Second, such an editor will as small and efficient as possible, since
> unused portions of the editor won't be included in the executable.
>  [...more deleted..]

I agree with you to the advantages of being able to customize and
editor in the source code and then re-compile/link to get the executable
small, fast-loading and customized.  The important point you seem to
overlook is that the MAJORITY of people who own PC's and are sophisticated
enough to know that a customizable editor would be nice DO NOT OWN COMPILERS,
much less know how to program!

Even someone like myself, who is a professional programmer, may not have
the appropriate compiler and does not have the $200 to get it.  Case in
point, I purchased ANNA BOOKS XT BIOS source code.  It is wonderful!!
The only problem is that even though making changes to BIOS source code
is a trivial exercise for me, it is set up to be compiled/assembled
with MSC 5.0 and I only have 4.0.  I am not about to upgrade to 5.0 just
to compile one program and I cannot spend the time to write and debug
all the functions from the 5.0 standard library which are new since 4.0.

I feel that this situation makes the mechanism of GNU Emacs the most
desirable.  The user gets a completely compiled working version of the
editor.  He also has a language (Emacs LISP) in which he can extend 
the editor, debug the text code, and when it is all bug-free, 
byte-compile it for faster loading.

I think that you are missing the point by not seeing the greater picture.
Even if as you say, you are going in and out of your editor all day
long, lets look at some figures.  Assume that it takes 20 seconds to
load the editor (which is a VERY long time to load any application
program on a PC).  Let us also assume that you add a text file which
contains your new editor extensions and that extends the editor load
time to 30 seconds.  You spend 10 minutes programming.  Your load time
even when 150% of the original only consumes 5% of your use time.  

But, you retort, I load my editor, change a couple characters, exit,
load it again, change a couple..... and so forth.  If you have this kind
of use, an extensible editor is not what you should be using.  You should
be using a really small, fast, fairly dumb editor.  If you need the 
sophisticated capabilities of an editor like Emacs (my preference on
a Sun workstation on UNIX where I have scads if MIPS) or Multi-Edit (my
preference for the PC by a large margin) you should not be bothered by
the SMALL extra overhead of loading custom configuration files.
On the other hand, if you are doing a cycle of edit, compile, test, edit,
compile..... you should be able to do this from inside your editor (both
Emacs and Multi-Edit provide these capabilities) and if you can't, I
would suggest you have chosen the wrong editor for the task.

My opinion is that you can get everything you want in an editor if you
have made the right choice of editors and that for some people, the
right choice is more than on editor for more than one kind of task.

	Dion Hollenbeck             (619) 455-5590 x2814
	Megatek Corporation, 9645 Scranton Road, San Diego, CA  92121

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