Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!voder!versatc!leadsv!laic!nova!darin
From: darin@nova.laic.uucp (Darin Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: What Emacs for Amiga?
Message-ID: <613@laic.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jul 89 20:51:11 GMT
References: <418@adiron.UUCP>
Sender: news@laic.UUCP
Reply-To: darin@nova.UUCP (Darin Johnson)
Organization: Lockheed AI Center, Menlo Park
Lines: 37

>If they can run an X server on Amiga, why not GNUmacs?  Has it been done?  If
>not, would any Amiga users care to recommend a flavor of Emacs for the
>machine?

GNU Emacs is BIG!  On my Sun, it is 1.9 Meg.  Admittedly, this includes all
the predefined commands that you probably don't care about.  Then add in
all the space allocated at run time, including the stack.  It also doesn't
worry about all that wasted space since it assumes you've got virtual
memory.  Maybe someone with lots of expanded memory may be working on it,
but not likely.  Porting X to the Amiga is a hard task, but not nearly as
bad as GNU would be.  The server itself is not a hog, it is all those
applications running on it.

Best bet is to go with MG2A, which used to be called MicroGnuEmacs.  It is
a micro-Emacs, with a Gnu feel to it (default bindings are Gnu-like,
incremental search, etc.).  Plus it is very Amiga-ized.  You can resize the
window, change fonts, use menus, use the mouse, turn the window into an
Icon to get it out of the way, etc.  The several mouse bindings are built
in, and you can redefine them if you want (such as M-C-Shift-LeftMouse :-)
The next release will have an AREXX interface (which looks very good from
what I've seen) so it will be programmable (as well as being able to talk
to all your other applications).

Also, there is the "other" brand, MicroEmacs.  I tried using it a few
times, and it seemed pretty powerful.  But since Gnu was ingrained, I kept
screwing up royally.  And the Amiga-ized versions always lag behind the
current version.  I don't think an AREXX version will be available for a
long time, if ever.  This is a bit smaller than MG, so if you're tight on
memory, it may be the way to go.

If you want real punishment, there is MEmacs on the EXTRAS disk...

Some commercial editors (Uedit, CEDPro) allow you to redefine keys to
look a lot like Emacs.

Darin Johnson (leadsv!laic!darin@pyramid.pyramid.com)
	We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.