Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!rutgers!gatech!ncar!asuvax!mcdphx!mcdchg!att!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Programmable Editors
Summary: need a tiny non-programmable one
Message-ID: <8806@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 30 Jun 89 15:00:29 GMT
References: <25295@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <599@megatek.UUCP>
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 23

In article <599@megatek.UUCP> hollen@zeta.megatek.uucp (Dion Hollenbeck) writes:

>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.

>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.

Exactly!  What we need is a truly tiny editor that is suitable for things
like quick fixes in source files, replies to mail, etc. One window, one
buffer, all text in memory would be fine, with perhaps a few dozen commands
(unfortunately RE search & substitute has to be in there..).  What it
*really* needs, though is the ability to transparently pass its file to
the "real" editor when you decide you need to use the more complex functions.
That is, it should be able to exec the larger version and maintain its
positioning in your current file.  It should also be able to read the
keymappings that the larger editor uses for its subset of commands.
Does anything like this exist?

Les Mikesell