Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!srcsip!nic.MR.NET!thor.acc.stolaf.edu!mike From: mike@thor.acc.stolaf.edu (Mike Haertel) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: Origin of term "Emacs" Keywords: Etymology, Emacs Message-ID: <5503@thor.acc.stolaf.edu> Date: 6 Sep 89 22:06:46 GMT References: <2481@orion.cf.uci.edu> <491@imokay.dec.com> <253@seti.inria.fr> Reply-To: mike@thor.stolaf.edu () Organization: St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN Lines: 35 In article <253@seti.inria.fr> jourdan@seti.UUCP (Martin Jourdan) writes: >In article <491@imokay.dec.com> ellis@ultra.enet.dec.com (David Ellis - Secure Systems) writes: >> Steve Wooldridge (swooldri@orion.cf.uci.edu) asks: >> > I am trying to track down the orgin of the term "emacs." Is it an >> > acronym for something? >> As far as I know, EMACS stands for "Editor MACroS". [...] >I also encountered the much nicer recursive acronym: EMACS == "Emacs >Makes All Computing Simple[r]". But I grant that this probably is not >the true origin... Just to settle this once and for all. (I suppose someone will ask again next year . . .) The first Emacs was really a macro library for ITS TECO, a programmable editor. TECO (if you must know, it stands for Text Editor and COrector) is programmed in a true macro language (incidentally, I refer to the ITS version and not the more common but infinitely less capable version distributed, for example, with VMS). Emacs did stand for "Editor Macros." Although the recent editors of that name are programmable, they do not use macro languages, so the name has lost any meaning it once had, and is basically just a sort of trademark. Incidentally, I have this all on "reasonably" good authority, as I am employed by the Free Software Foundation, whose founder, Richard Stallman, is the author of the original ITS Emacs as well as GNU Emacs. (I've always thought that Emacs, if it stands for anything, stands for "Eventually Munches All Computer Storage." Certainly it does on my machine, which has only a measly 2MB of RAM.) You can order the original Emacs paper from the MIT AI lab if you're interested in its early history. -- Mike Haertel ``There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.'' -- J. S. Bach